Kenosha News: Evers vetoes bill that would cut state funding for municipalities that cut police funding.
The Daily Beast: How a federal pot prisoner, pardoned by Trump, ended back in custody. The Washington Post: Antiabortion activists, seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade, cite Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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Slate: A Trump judge just gave Brett Kavanaugh a way to overturn Roe v. Wade without admitting it.
Reason: The pandemic showed that home detention can work. The preliminary data are quite promising: The overwhelming majority of those released on home detention have not reoffended. Of the 28,881 prisoners allowed on home detention last year, only 151 individuals, less than 1 percent, violated the terms of their confinement. Only one person has committed a new crime. Additionally, research on technical parole and probation violations shows that removing people from community supervision and reincarcerating them when they have not committed an offense increases the likelihood of criminal recidivism and makes future reentry into society more difficult. In short, home detention seems to be largely successful. Most prisoners under the program have stayed out of trouble and are working to become law-abiding citizens. In doing so, they are saving taxpayers the exorbitant price of incarceration—which, on average, costs over $37,500 per year versus $13,000 per year for home confinement and monitoring. The Brookings Institution: Why President Biden should ban affective computing in law enforcement. Available evidence suggests that affective computing is not effective enough to be used in law enforcement. In an evaluation by the Canada Border Services Agency, an experimental automated interviewing system called AVATAR performed dismally as a lie detector. Despite taking over one million measurements in each interview—including eye tracking, facial movements, and vocal features—AVATAR was unable to reliably identify deceit. This evaluation even gave the affecting computing system an absurd handicap by using the same data for both model development and evaluation, which typically leads to overly optimistic results. Psychologists are quick to note that there is no scientific basis to indicate body language, facial expressions, and vocal pitch are even indicative of deception. Journalistic explorations of similar commercial interviewing software found them to be confused by interviewees wearing glasses or by adding bookshelves in the background. Another commercial system failed to recognize the interviewee was not speaking English when attempting to rate their English competency. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Republican lawmaker seeks to seize voting machines and ballots from Milwaukee and Brown counties. WTMJ: Inmate phone calls rake in millions per year.
According to a study by the Prison Policy Initiative, the prison phone industry generates $1.4 billion per year. According to the most recent biennial budget, the State of Wisconsin collected $3,224,600 in telephone revenues in 2019. The State DOC received $1,587,979.69 as part of that revenue. The State DOC declined to be interviewed but provided information for this story. While the DOC received nearly $1.6 million of the $3.2 million from these phone calls, they say that money is essentially reinvested into the residents at their facilities. Courthouse News: Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Brett Blomme to plead guilty to child pornography charges. Reuters: Federal appeals court says Tennessee can enforce 48-hour wait period for abortions. Mother Jones: How the American Medical Association helped spread the opioid crisis. Thousands of physicians took the (AMA) course, which was first released in 2003 and updated periodically over the next decade. Recently, I asked Dr. Roneet Lev, chief medical officer to the Office of National Drug Control Policy from 2018 to 2020, to take a look at the modules. She concluded, “I would call this ‘How to Create an Addict’ education.” The Conversation: The pandemic pushed more people, including innocent ones, to plead guilty. "Evers' judges" is our effort to present information about Gov. Tony Evers' appointees to the bench. The information is taken from the appointees' own judgeship applications. Italics indicates a direct quote from the application. Name: David D. Conway Appointed to: Dane County Circuit Court Appointment date: Aug. 25, 2020 (elected April 2021) Education: Law School – Marquette University Undergraduate – University of Notre Dame High School – Assumption High School, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin Recent legal employment: April 2019-present – Chief, Civil Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Wisconsin June 2015-present – Assistant, U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Wisconsin January 2010-June 2015 – Associate attorney, Venable LLP, Washington, D.C. Bar and Administrative Memberships: Wisconsin State Bar Wisconsin Supreme Court Maryland Court of Appeals District of Columbia Court of Appeals United States Supreme Court United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin United States District Court for the District of Maryland United States District Court for the District of Columbia General character of practice: Assistant U.S. attorney and the Civil Division chief of the office for the Western District of Wisconsin, leading six assistant U.S. attorneys and a seven-person support team handling civil litigation involving the federal government in western Wisconsin. Earlier at Venable LLP in Washington, D.C., assisted clients on a wide variety of consumer protection issues, focusing especially on false advertising and unfair competition under federal and state advertising laws. Also defended clients in lawsuits brought by consumers, competitors, and regulators in both federal and state courts and before the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Describe typical clients: As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, my primary client is the United States in all matters. On a day-to-day basis, I work closely with federal agencies and employees sued in their official and individual capacities, as well as with agency counsel and agents who assist on my cases. Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the Civil Division are generalists. However, my particular expertise is in civil defensive litigation under the Federal Tort Claims Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the United States Constitution. Number of cases tried to verdict: Two List up to three significant trials, appeals, or other legal matters in which you participated as a judge or lawyer in the past seven years: Atkinson v. MacKinnon, et al., (W.D. Wis.): Between July 2015 and August 2016, I served as lead trial counsel for three Federal Bureau of Prisons correctional officers sued in their individual capacities by a pro se federal inmate before U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb. The plaintiff alleged that the three defendants had violated his rights under the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by demoting him and reducing his prison pay on account of his Muslim faith, and then retaliating against him with negative work evaluations after he filed a prison grievance. In bringing these claims, the plaintiff asserted that the defendants had made bigoted remarks and threats to him about his religion. During a two-day jury trial, I led a successful defense by contrasting the plaintiff’s shifting prior statements with the defendants’ consistent version of events. The picture that emerged showed that the defendants had disciplined the plaintiff because he had been caught stealing on the job, not because of his religious faith. The jury returned a favorable verdict in about one hour. This case was significant in that it pertained to a sensitive, ill-defined area of law (religious rights) that rarely reaches trial, and it involved three individual-capacity defendants whose careers, reputations, and personal finances depended on a robust defense. Smith-Williams, et al. v. United States, (W.D. Wis.): Between November 2017 and November 2018, I served as lead counsel for the United States in a dental malpractice and negligent supervision class action brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act by six Tomah VA dental patients before U.S. District Judge William Conley.… Plaintiffs alleged suffering emotional distress upon learning from the Tomah VA that one of its dentists had failed to properly sterilize his dental drill bits, potentially subjecting them to low-level risks of infection. Although the plaintiffs had all conclusively tested negative for any disease, they sought $50,000 each for their emotional harm. And they proposed to do the same on behalf of a class of 592 of the dentist’s patients. Therefore, the outcome of this case depended heavily on the court’s class certification decision. If certified, the case would go from being a relatively routine six-person lawsuit to an unwieldy litigation with up to $30 million at stake. To complicate matters further, no precedent existed for FTCA class actions because, prior to this case, no federal court had ever allowed one to survive dismissal for lack of administrative exhaustion by each class member. After the parties submitted detailed briefing, the court denied the plaintiffs’ class certification motion.… By denying class certification, the court drastically narrowed the scope of the lawsuit, which set in motion an eventual non-class settlement prior to trial. This case was significant in that it involved a high-profile incident at the Tomah VA; it charted new waters on the issue of FTCA class actions; and it threatened to pose enormous monetary exposure to the United States taxpayer if mishandled at the class certification stage. Reuters: Law school association says banning critical race theory is censorship.
“The efforts to ban critical theories, just like other attempts at censorship, undermine one of the primary purposes of education: teaching students how to think for themselves,” reads the AALS (Association of American Law Schools) statement. The Tributary: In Florida, Marsy's Law hides the identities of cops who shoot people. Herald-Tribune: Florida working to ban real mail from incarcerated people and charge them for copies. Politico: Landlords sue to stop President Biden's eviction moratorium. The Intercept: Austin police decline to respond to some calls, blame reform attorneys. Members of the Austin Police Department are telling residents that they can’t respond to requests for help because reform-focused district attorneys at the city and county levels won’t prosecute crime. While neither district attorneys’ policies forbid police from intervening in crimes or even making arrests, some officers are telling residents that their hands are tied. The push comes as the local police union and allied political leaders are ramping up a campaign for a November ballot measure that would require the city to hire hundreds of new officers next year. By Gretchen Schuldt A bipartisan group of lawmakers is asking its colleagues to co-sponsor legislation to fully fund a new $42 million juvenile prison in Milwaukee County to replace the scandal-plagued Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake facilities in Irma. The Legislature voted in 2018 to close Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake by July 1 of this year and transfer its residents either to a new Type 1 facility to house serious juvenile offenders, or to secure residential care centers that would be built in different areas of the state. "That date has come and gone, and we have yet to break ground on the first state Type 1 building," the legislators said in the co-sponsorship memo they are circulating to their colleagues. It was authored by State Reps. Michael Schraa (R-Oshkosh), Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk), and Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee), and Senators Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), Mary Felzkowski (R-Irma), and Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee). A court-appointed monitor reported last month that youth at the facilities were growing more frustrated and the staff seemed defeated. The new state budget includes $4 million for planning, design, and site selection for a new Type 1 facility, but does not include money to build it. "In the four years since the passage of 2017 Act 185, the environment at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake has remained unstable," the legislators wrote. "The pandemic only exacerbated the difficulties there, with programming pauses and staff turnover contributing to an explosion of violent activity in 2020." A petition of no confidence against facility administrators by union employees showed that staff injuries were up 4,700% in the first six months of the year from the last six months of 2020. In addition, youth/staff battery was up 117%, sexual misconduct was up 75%, and use-of-force incidences were up 58%, the memo said. "It is far past time for this facility to close," the memo said. "The Legislature must do its part and approve the funding for the new Type 1 correctional facility, for the sake of the employees who work there, and the youth that have been placed in the care of the state. It is our duty." WBAY: Brown County officials say the State Public Defender's Office is failing.
There are currently 300 cases in the county in need of a lawyer, a responsibility that falls on the state public defender’s office.... “It’s the state’s responsibility, and in some cases, I’m not saying you aren’t trying but it’s failing. The system is failing. Right now, it’s failing the person who’s in jail to a speedy trial,” Chairman Patrick Buckley said while sitting as a member of the audience. Tax Foundation: States projected to post higher marijuana revenues in 2021. Politico: The one area where the U.S. Supreme Court's six conservative justices could agree. It turns out the one area where the conservative justices agreed this term was on siding with the government against incarcerated people or immigrants. Reuters: Judge blocks Texas governor's order preventing transport of immigrants. The Hill: Trump goes to court to block release of tax returns to Congress. The Crime Report: Nine ways states can bolster their public defender services.
The authors ask: “Does the way attorneys are compensated create perverse incentives?” In places without public defender offices, courts appoint counsel on a case-by-case basis, compensating them at very low hourly rates. Alternatively, courts may hire private attorneys to represent an unlimited number of clients for a set fee. Both models incentivize attorneys to do “as little work as possible,” since a set fee determines their profit. ABC News: Canadian trucker now free, says he had no idea there was all that cannabis in his truck. The New York Times: Conservative group, seeing big issue in crime, seeks recall of prosecutors. The initial focus is three prosecutors who were elected in the affluent Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington in 2019 amid a national wave of pledges by Democrats to make law enforcement fairer and more humane. The group, Virginians for Safe Communities, said the targets of the recall effort were Buta Biberaj of Loudoun County, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti of Arlington County and Steve Descano of Fairfax County, all of whom hold the position of commonwealth’s attorney. The campaign faces uncertain prospects, starting with clearing signature-gathering requirements and legal hurdles. But the organizers described it as part of a broader national push to harness voters’ concerns about rising crime rates in cities and a backlash to anti-police sentiment. Politico: President Biden hires lawyer to help undo Trump immigration policies. The New York Times: Biden administration to keep using Trump public health rule to turn away immigrants. The decision, confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday, amounted to a shift by the administration, which had been working on plans to begin lifting the rule this summer, more than a year after it was imposed by the Trump administration. The C.D.C. said allowing noncitizens to come over the border from either Mexico or Canada “creates a serious danger” of further spread of the coronavirus. President Biden has come under intense pressure for months from some Democrats and supporters of more liberal immigration policies to lift the rule, which critics say has been employed less to protect public health than as a politically defensible way to limit immigration. Unsung hero: Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin's first woman lawyer and an advocate for equal rights8/2/2021
By Colleen Ball Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin’s first woman lawyer, is mostly known for her epic battle with Chief Justice Edward Ryan. In 1875, he denied her admission to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court solely because of her gender. According to Ryan: The law of nature destines and qualifies the female sex for the bearing and nurture of the children of our race and for the custody of the homes of the world and their maintenance in love and honor. And all life-long callings of women, inconsistent with these radical and sacred duties of their sex, as is the profession of law, are departures from the order of nature; and when voluntary, treason against it. Chief Justice Ryan crossed swords with the wrong woman. Goodell assailed his decision in the national press. She drafted a bill to prohibit gender discrimination in the practice of law, persuaded male legislators to pass it, and a male governor to sign it. Her triumph opened the Wisconsin bar to women, but her many other impressive feats are scarcely known. She was born to abolitionist parents who were so passionate about equal rights that their dishes were inscribed with the Declaration of Independence. Goodell later recalled: When I sat down to dinner every day I read my plate, till I had learned it all by heart—learned it so well I never forgot it. And thus literally with my child’s bowl of bread and milk I drank in also the question of equal rights . . . As a young woman, Goodell promoted equal rights by helping her father publish The Principia, an anti-slavery newspaper in New York. When he was away on business, she was the managing editor. After the North won the Civil War, she landed a job at Harper’s Bazaar, America’s first fashion magazine, where she honed her skills as a writer and editor, rubbed shoulders with progressive New Yorkers, and came to regard herself as a professional woman, rather than a potential wife and mother. In 1871, her parents, then in their 70s, moved to Janesville, Wisconsin. Goodell followed to care for them. She was dismayed to find that, unlike her New York friends, Janesville women had “ballot phobia.” They refused to support the women’s suffrage movement for fear of appearing “unwomanly.” To her they seemed “content with their degradation.” Goodell would not stand idly by. While managing her parents’ health and home, she championed equal rights for women. She started writing for the Woman’s Journal, the leading suffragist periodical published by Lucy Stone and her husband, Henry Browne Blackwell. She published dozens of articles arguing that woman should have the right to vote, equality in marriage, the right to own property, the right to enter professions, and so on. She also decided to become an attorney. She studied law on her own while informally apprenticing for the firm of Pliny & Norcross and pushed to be admitted to the bar. In those days, bar exams were conducted orally in a courtroom by a judge and senior lawyers. Rock County Circuit Court Judge Harmon Conger knew that no woman had been admitted to the bar in Wisconsin. Lavinia’s admission would be controversial, so he kept postponing her exam until he no longer could. On June 17, 1874, Judge Conger had to examine a young man who wanted to practice law. Late in the day he “suddenly and unexpectedly” summoned Goodell to be examined at the same time. The questioning was “awful severe,” but Goodell not only passed, she upstaged the male candidate. Her admission as the first woman lawyer in Wisconsin created a sensation in Janesville and the national press. She immediately ordered business cards. 1n 1874, only a handful of women in the United States were lawyers. Several took the bar exam just to prove that they could pass it, but they did not practice law. Not Goodell. She used her law license to advance her causes in court and lobby for changes in the law. One of those causes was temperance, because drunk men abused, neglected, and impoverished their wives and children. Shortly after passing the bar, Goodell learned that Fort Atkinson saloon keepers were illegally selling liquor on Sundays and the male district attorney refused to prosecute them. Local temperance leaders thought the new lady lawyer might be up to the task. Indeed, she was. On August 4, 1874, Wisconsin’s first woman lawyer won her first two court trials back-to-back. The saloonkeepers immediately appealed to the Jefferson County Circuit Court where they would be tried by a jury of their peers--i.e., men. (Women couldn’t yet serve on juries). Big mistake. Goodell was smart and on a mission. She prepared long and hard. On September 17, 1874, she prevailed in her first jury trial. This marked the first time any woman tried a case to a jury in Wisconsin and even in the United States. Goodell proceeded to try many cases. Among the most noteworthy was Tyler v. Burrington, where she defended a middle-aged widow on a claim against her deceased husband’s estate. When the case reached the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Chief Justice Ryan issued his famously misogynous opinion (noted above) denying her admission to practice due to her gender, which only motivated her to lobby for a change in the law. Meanwhile, she kept litigating in the circuit courts. Women who had grounds for divorce couldn’t find male lawyers to represent them. Goodell took their cases. She also developed a knack for criminal defense work. While visiting a client in jail she felt another calling. The awful conditions were only breeding more vice. She established school and prayer services in the Rock County Jail with the goal of rehabilitating inmates so that they could be productive members of society upon their release. She toured what is now Waupun Correctional Institution and proposed penal reform legislation to the Wisconsin legislature. Goodell smashed so many barriers. She became Wisconsin’s first female notary, which gave her and eventually other women a respectable source of income. She was the first woman in the United States to run for city attorney. She received 60 (male) votes. After she successfully lobbied the legislature and governor to allow women to practice law, she was finally admitted to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Then she became the first woman to win a case there. She also co-founded Wisconsin’s first female law firm—Goodell & King. Along the way, Goodell circulated Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s suffrage petitions around Janesville, co-founded the Janesville women’s temperance association, served as vice president of the Society for the Advancement of Women, and vice president of the American Women’s Association. She was Wisconsin’s signatory to the 1878 Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which the U.S. Congress ultimately passed in 1920 as the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote.
The list goes on even though Goodell practiced law just six years and spent the last three of them battling ovarian cancer, which took her life at age 41. She did not smash barriers for the glory of it. She did it because she believed that women had as much right to social, civil, and political equality as anyone else. She shrewdly persuaded influential male lawyers, judges, and politicians to her point of view, which then opened doors for women. Yes, she blazed trails. Just as important, she inspired and actively helped others to venture onto them. Learn more about Lavinia Goodell by visiting www.laviniagoodell.com or taking this walking tour of her Janesville stomping grounds. Please help us identify people and events that deserve more recognition for their place in Wisconsin’s legal history. You can send as much information as you want, but at minimum we need: -The name of the person / identity or name of event -A picture, if available -A brief description of the person or event and the person or event’s impact on Wisconsin law or legal history -Where we can find out more about the person or event Please send the information to gretchen@wjiinc.org or mail it to WJI, P.O. Box 100705, Milwaukee, WI 53210 Thank you! This project is supported by: Reuters: Democrats propose adding 203 federal trial court judges.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Officials brace for wave of evictions as moratorium ends. The Atlantic: Connecticut becomes first state to make outgoing calls from prisons free. Forbes: Four steps we can take to end mass incarceration. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: State DOC set to grant monopoly status and eliminate competition for vendor of personal goods for incarcerated people. |
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