Everyday Injustice

This week on Everyday Injustice we talk with Sacramento area attorney Mark Reichel. He discusses the new Sacramento DA a bit about Sheriff Jim Cooper. He then discusses the Trump prosecution and the implications for the country. Listen to the full interview as Reichel lays out his concerns for the future of democracy.

This week on Everyday Injustice we feature legendary attorney Stephen Bright and James Kwak who just released a new book, “The Fear of Too Much Justice.”

Bryan Stevenson writes, “An urgently needed analysis of our collective failure to confront and overcome racial bias and bigotry, the abuse of power, and the multiple ways in which the death penalty’s profound unfairness requires its abolition. You will discover Steve Bright’s passion, brilliance, dedication, and tenacity when you read these pages.”

In The Fear of Too Much Justice, “legendary death penalty lawyer Stephen B. Bright and legal scholar James Kwak offer a heart-wrenching overview of how the criminal legal system fails to live up to the values of equality and justice.”

Listen as Everyday Injustice discusses wrongful convictions, racial inequities, mental illness, the trial penalty and underfinanced indigent defense and much more.

This week on Everyday Injustice, we are joined by Yusuf Dahl, formerly incarcerated for the distribution of drugs, now a successful entrepreneur.

“Growing up in poverty, Yusuf fell under the wing of his brother who taught him how to survive on his own on the streets of Milwaukee. By age 14, he was in juvenile detention for a three-year sentence where he learned the best path to wealth creation in his community was drug dealing.

“Upon his release, Yusuf adeptly followed his business plan and soon was operating a network of drug houses across Milwaukee before being sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison.

“After serving five years and teaching himself software development, Yusuf struggled to find a living wage as a young black male with a criminal record.”

Dahl explains during the interview, that the Thurmond Amendment was an exception added on a voice vote in 1988 to the Fair Housing Act.

“One offense is sufficient for a landlord to refuse to rent to a drug dealer,” Senator Thurmond said. “It is that simple.”

Since Thurmond’s amendment passed, millions of people have gone to prison for drug offenses. Tens of millions more have convictions but did not serve time.

The disproportionate weight has fallen on Blacks. Listen as Yusuf Dahl tell his remarkable story and the work he is doing to attempt to end the Thurmond Amendment.

This week on Everyday Injustice features Jon B. Gould, the Dean of UC Irvine school of Social Ecology.

Gould is a distinguished scholar in justice policy, social change and government reform, has held key positions in the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has written five books and more than 100 articles on erroneous convictions, indigent defense, prosecutorial innovation, hate speech, sexual harassment and international human rights.

Listen as we discuss Jon B. Gould’s work on wrongful convictions as well as his work reporting on findings on the Criminal Justice Act and its findings about inadequate levels of public defense.

In May, the US Supreme Court granted Richard Glossip a stay of execution after the Attorney General of Oklahoma has gone to believe like many others that Glossip’s conviction is fatally flaw, “unsustainable” and “a new trial imperative.”

Many have argued that new evidence discovered in independent investigations along with problems with the state’s prosecution and the destruction of evidence leads to the conclusion that there was not enough evidence to warrant a conviction, let alone a death sentence.

And yet, as is so often the case, the wheels of the system once rolling have proven difficult to stop.

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk to attorney and anti-death penalty advocate David Dow about the Glossip case and how it exemplifies problems in the overall system.

David Dow went from a death penalty supporter to founding the Texas Innocence Network and running a death penalty clinic. He has since written a number of books, including Executed on a Technicality.

This week on Everyday Injustice features Marvin Zalman, a retired professor from Wayne State University in Detroit. Zalman talked about his role in establishing statewide sentencing guidelines and how it inadvertently paved the way for the tough on crime era.

He also discussed how the tough on crime era helped lead to high levels of wrongful convictions.

Listen as Professor Zalman discusses his work and how that work led to mass incarceration.

Eric Genuis is a Canadian composer and pianist who now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. He is noted for his Concerts for Hope. He performs his original compositions more than a hundred times a year.

This week on Everyday Injustice, Eric Genuis describes how he came to perform for incarcerated people – including condemned men on death row – hundreds of times each year and the impact of his music on those people.

He talked about the power of music to lift and heal.

Listen as Eric Genuis discusses what it’s like to play in prisons, inner city schools, and rehab centers across the country and the world.

David Dow went from a death penalty supporter to founding the Texas Innocence Network and running a death penalty clinic. He has since written a number of books, including “Executed on a Technicality.”

This week on Everyday Injustice, David Dow explains the various injustices within the death penalty system.

As he writes in his book, “I simply conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed.”

Instead of punishing the worst and the worst, he found, “The ultimate penalty was being consistently applied in a wrongful and arbitrary fashion.”

Moreover the system was making a tremendous amount of errors.

“According to Professor James Liebman’s definitive study of all death penalty cases from 1976 though 1995,13 death row inmates prevailed on their appeals in federal court more than half the time. That is a stunning statistic that bears repeating: In half of all death penalty cases over a twenty-year period, a federal court reversed either the conviction or the sentence or both. In no other area of law are reversals the norm.”

That changed with the passage of the 1994 Death Penalty law – which made appeals much more difficult to sustain, but did not end the problems.

The recidivism rate for those who get a masters while incarcerated is zero. For years, in an effort to become more punitive, prisons have cut back on programming including education – and they have done that to their and to society’s detriment.

The pendulum has swung back in the direction of carceral education as we have learned that it is one of the most effective ways to reduce recidivism.

This week on Everyday Injustice, we speak with Matthew Luckett, a professor at Cal State Dominguez-Hills, who is heading up a prison masters program in the humanities that will allow incarcerated people to continue their education and better situate themselves for release.

At the age of 17, Sean Wilson was incarcerated and spent 17 years in prison. Since his release six years ago, he has dedicated his life to reforming the system.

Sean Wilson is the Organizing Director of Dream.Org. Wilson brings an advantage and insight into a system he believes to be broken and in need of reform. Before joining the Dream.Org JUSTICE team, Wilson was the ACLU of Wisconsin’s Smart Justice Campaign Manager, where he managed the campaign to reform probation and parole.

His mission includes mentoring youth and highlighting the changes that need to be made in our justice system to ensure children aren't raised behind bars. He shares his story of being in prison and thinking "this can't be life" to thinking today that the dream life he's living can't really be life, because it's so good.

Listen as Sean Wilson discusses his life’s path and the problems with the current system and how we can change it.