PSJD Public Interest News Digest – June 12, 2020
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Interested public. Major stories this week follow on the heels of last week’s events–many of which are ongoing. In particular, Public Defenders across the United States marched for racial justice this week. In the world of legal technology, the public learned more about the technological tools law enforcement has brought to bear against protesters while several major tech companies made commitments to refrain from selling specific technologies to law enforcement. Journalists continued their efforts to catalog the various efforts for pro bono assistance springing up in communities across the United States.
These stories and more are in the links below.
Take care of one another,
Sam
Editor’s Choice: Systemic Racism & the Unauthorized Practice of Law
- A member of the LSC’s emerging leaders council argued on Law.com that “unauthorized practice of law…policies promote racial inequity and guarantee that black Americans don’t have equal opportunities and equal rights under the law.”
Secret Police
Protest Responses
Defenders
- Across the United States, “Public Defenders…are marching in remembrance of George Floyd, Bronna Taylor, Tony McDade, and the countless others who died because of white supremacy.” The event was a “nationwide day of solidarity involving at least 70 [] public defenders’ offices[.]” Some examples:
- Cincinnati, OH.
- New York, NY.
- Los Alamos, NM.
- Las Cruces, NM.
- Aztec, NM.
- San Francisco, CA.
- Oakland, CA.
- Santa Barbara, CA.
- Fresno, CA.
- Wilmington, NC.
- Palm Beach, FL.
- Miami, FL.
- Tallahassee, FL.
- Rochester, NY.
- Detroit, MI.
- Chicago, IL.
- Columbus, OH.
- Knoxville, TN.
- Anchorage, AK.
- Las Vegas, NV.
- Pittsburgh, PA.
- Salt Lake City, UT.
- Worcester, MA.
- Washington, DC.
- In New York NY, “Porsha-Shaf’on Venable, a supervising public defender who staffs the Good Call hotline [a free arrest support hotline]” spoke with Elle about her experience working through the protests: “The first night of protest, I was slaughtered[.] I probably answered five to 10 calls an hour, and I’m low-balling the number…We’ve gone from maybe two to three lawyers during a night to 19 lawyers per shift.“
- In California, “California Attorneys for Criminal Justice (CACJ), a statewide association of criminal defense attorneys in private practice and working in public defender offices, unveiled a package of legislative proposals to address ongoing racial bias in law enforcement and the judicial system.”
Pro Bono Representation
- Across the United States, “more than 9,000 people have been arrested in connection to [the anti-police-brutality] demonstrations—a number that keeps growing every day.” Yahoo.com has compiled a list of spreadsheets, Twitter threads, and other resources where people are collecting information about lawyers that have offered pro bono services.
- Also across the United States, “[t]he Press Freedom Defense Fund and National Press Photographers Association are joining forces to provide legal advocacy for journalists arrested or injured covering news stories.”
Class Actions
- In Washington DC, “Black Lives Matter D.C. and other protesters [] sued President Donald Trump, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and other federal officials for allegedly violating their first First and Fourth Amendment rights.”
- In New York NY, “a letter from the National Lawyers Guild[] and most of the city’s public defender organizations to Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea[] said the city’s “Large Scale Arrest Processing Procedure” deprives arrestees of their normal rights. The letter followed a lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society this week charging that more than 100 protesters were illegally held more than 24 hours before being released or seeing a judge.”
Prosecutors
- In Philadelphia PA, “[t]he Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is creating a task force to investigate the more than 2,000 arrests made in connection to George Floyd protests [in a] ‘collaborative review effort’…intended to reduce jail populations amid the COVID-19 pandemic, honor the rights of protestors, and prosecute those who have endangered the public, which includes police officers.”
- In San Francisco CA, “District Attorney Chesa Boudin [] announced changes within his office designed to ensure police accountability, including the appointment of a seasoned civil rights attorney to lead an investigations unit.”
- In Los Angeles CA, “Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey announced today that she will not file charges against any protester for a curfew violation or failure to disperse. She directed her legal staff to decline to prosecute these cases in the interest of justice.”
Legal Technology
- In Washington DC, “[t]he Justice Department has granted the Drug Enforcement Administration, typically tasked with enforcing federal drug-related laws, the authority to conduct ‘covert surveillance’ on protesters across the U.S., effectively turning the civilian law enforcement division into a domestic intelligence agency. The DEA is one of the most tech-savvy government agencies in the federal government, with access to ‘stingray’ cell site simulators to track and locate phones, a secret program that allows the agency access to billions of domestic phone records, and facial recognition technology. Lawmakers decried the Justice Department’s move to allow the DEA to spy on protesters, calling on the government to ‘immediately rescind’ the order, describing it as ‘antithetical’ to Americans’ right to peacefully assemble.”
- In New York NY, digital and human rights groups argued that “[l]aw enforcement agencies should be banned from using racially biased surveillance technology that fuels discrimination and injustice…, amid protests over police brutality against black Americans.”
- In a letter to Congress, “IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the company will not support any technology that could lead to mass surveillance, racial profiling or ‘violations of basic human rights and freedoms’.”
- In Redmond WA, “Microsoft Corp. [said] it would await federal regulation before selling facial recognition technology to police, making it the latest big firm to back away from the business following protests against law enforcement brutality and bias.”
- In Seattle WA, “Amazon announced [] a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial-recognition technology, yielding to pressure from police-reform advocates and civil rights groups.”
- On the internet, “[a] consumer advocacy group [] slammed Zoom Video Communications Inc.’s plan to only offer strengthened encryption protections to paying users.”
- Meanwhile, TechCrunch asked “[t]he protests and unrest of the last week have produced enormous volumes of footage documenting police brutality and other crimes. Where is the platform for this important evidence to be collected, collated, and made public? If a major tech company doesn’t step up to the plate soon it can only be attributed to hypocrisy and cowardice.”
Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship
Student Loans
- In Washington DC, “[a] series of court filings…are raising concerns about the Trump administration’s management of an unwieldy system for recouping past-due student debt, as thousands of borrowers continue to have their paychecks shorted or await the return of their seized pay.”
- Forbes reported that “[t]here’s a good chance the next stimulus bill will not include any student loan forgiveness.”
COVID-19 & Decarceration
Access to Justice – Civil
- In Tuscon AZ, “[the] state court system is moving to help those who experience domestic violence obtain free legal assistance [through] a pilot program to have a new type of worker provide legal advice to employees and clients of the Emerge! Center Against Violence Abuse.”
- In Toronto ON, “Community lawyers say legal aid legislation at committee could make it harder for marginalized people to access justice.”
Access to Justice – Criminal
Criminal Justice Reform
- In Kansas, “Republicans in the Kansas Senate…denied a judgeship to a respected longtime public defender, Carl Folsom III, because he was once assigned to represent a man convicted of possessing child porn.”
- In Queens NY, “[t]he Queens District Attorney’s office has launched a Major Economic Crimes Bureau to investigate and prosecute a variety of large-scale financial crimes[.]”