WJI's Daily Reads for Mar. 4, 2022

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Supreme Court chooses Evers' redistricting maps.

Fox 11 News (WLUK): Waupaca Sheriff asks state to review his department after district attorney's disclosure that a crime report was improperly altered to delete exculpatory information.

Appleton Post Crescent: More details on the report altered by Waupaca Sheriff's Department to delete information favorable to a defendant.

CBS 58 (WDJT): State Legislature finance committee approves funding for new youth prison near Milwaukee.

The Guardian: Examples of Black people receiving harsher sentences for unintentional voting errors than whites who committed fraud.

A few years previously, (Pamela) Moses, who is Black, permanently lost the right to vote after committing a felony. But no one had actually removed Moses from the voter rolls or told her she couldn’t vote. And in 2019, when state officials began looking into her eligibility, a probation officer signed a certificate saying Moses had completed her sentence and was eligible to vote. So she applied to do so. Even though corrections officials conceded they made an error, Moses was indicted anyway.

Moses was convicted by a jury in November. In late January, she was sentenced to six years and one day in prison. . . .

about a month after Mason was sentenced, a white justice of the peace in the same county pleaded guilty to forging signatures to get on the ballot when he was running for office. He was sentenced to probation.
“You have Ms Mason’s case of what at worst is an innocent mistake … on the other hand you have someone who intentionally – you can’t innocently forge signatures, and they received probation,” said (ACLU-Texas Attorney Thomas) Buser-Clancy. “It’s the same county, same DA, very different results, when you would expect it to go the opposite way.”

SCOTUSblog: U.S. Supreme Court ruling allows federal officials to withhold information on torture at CIA sites.

The dispute before the Supreme Court stems from Abu Zubaydah’s efforts to depose and seek documents from two former CIA contractors who Abu Zubaydah says supervised his interrogations. He wants to use the information in a criminal investigation in Poland, where prosecutors are investigating the abuse that occurred there. The U.S. government asserted that the information is protected by the state secrets privilege because, even though the location of the detention site has already been publicly disclosed, Abu Zubaydah’s request could compel former CIA contractors to confirm the location of the site – which would itself compromise national security. The Supreme Court agreed.

Reuters: Sacklers agree to pay $5.5 billion to settle Purdue Pharma opioid claims.