Everyday Injustice

Justin Brooks, the director of the California Innocence Project has spent his career freeing the innocent from prison. He told Everyday Injustice that after 30 years, he decided to put his insights into a book.

His message to all of us: it could happen to anyone – it could happen to you.

At the same time, there are inequities and flaws in the system that disproportionately mean that people of color and the poor get wrongly convicted.

As one review of the book noted: “this book forces us to consider how any of us might be swept up in the system, whether we hired a bad lawyer, bear a slight resemblance to someone else in the world, or are not good with awkward silence.”

Further, “The stories of Brooks's cases and clients paint the picture of a broken justice system, one where innocence is no protection from incarceration or even the death penalty.”

You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent is available for pre-order now and will be out in the spring of 2023.

Following the primary elections, reformers were braced for setbacks in the reform prosecutor movement – but a strange thing happened this November, that set back never came.

Everyday Injustice spoke with Miriam Krinsky of Fair and Just Prosecution. She discussed the formation of her organization, and why she believed that reform prosecutors fared much better than expected in the midterm elections.

We also discussed her book, Change From Within: Reimagining the 21st-Century Prosecutor. Krinsky described how the book came together and the stories that the 13 elected prosecutors told about their background and how they became reformers.

Despite a tough environment this year for reforms, the big picture, as Krinsky describes is one of progress and expansion of the movement. Krinsky explained how in just over five years, we have gone from a handful of reform prosecutors, to having reform prosecutors representing huge swaths of the population.

She believes that the public now understands that the carceral system is broken and support many of the reform policies.

This week on Everyday Injustice, Brian Hofer of Secure-Justice discusses the surveillance state, and the abuse of state power as well as the current state of criminal justice reform.

A recent incident in Berkeley, where the leak of text messages showed the president of the police officers union making racially charged remarks and calling for arrest quotas.

The leak was made public by Secure Justice and led to the pausing the appointment of Jennifer Louis as police chief until after an independent investigation can take place.

Hofer told the media, “The text messages are revealing a racist culture and we’re seeing it reflected in the metrics.”

Nearly 35% of police stops in Berkeley in the last year were of Black people, despite the fact that only 8% of the city is Black.

This is not the only scandal, Hofer also talks about San Francisco’s efforts to utilize private surveillance for purposes of criminal investigation despite little evidence that it would aid in such efforts.

This week on Everyday Injustice we talk with Elliot Hosman, the Prison Advocacy Coordinator at Ella Baker Center on their work on behalf of resentencing.

California has some of the most severe sentence enhancements in the nation. But with the help of some key legislation, including SB 1393, the Fair and Just Sentencing Reform Act, and 1170(d), the Recall of Sentence and Resentencing there are mechanisms now in place to allow for a reconsideration of those overly harsh sentences.

In 2018, Governor Brown signed into law AB 2942, which empowered DA’s to make resentencing referrals and signed AB 1812, to give trial courts guidance into what post-conviction factors may be relevant to the resentencing decision.

Listen as Elliot Hosman tells their story, and discusses the need for resentencing as well as the work of the Ella Baker Center.

One of the important ways to disrupt mass incarceration is to get formerly incarcerated people to get college and graduate degrees. Such programs help to greatly reduce recidivism rates.

Popping up all over the state at Underground Scholars Programs. Organizations that help “create pathways into higher education for formerly incarcerated and justice system-impacted individual” by providing support networks for the unique challenges that formerly incarcerated students face.

Two representatives from the UC Santa Barbara Gaucho Underground Scholars program joined Everyday Injustice this week, sharing their amazing stories of going from incarcerated to scholars and the challenges of being a formerly incarcerated student and why such support programs are so vital.

The advent of DNA testing has transformed the criminal legal system since 1989. For the first time, DNA testing provided absolute proof that people were convicted of crimes that they did not commit.

The National Registry of Exonerations has tracked over 3200 exonerations since 1989, by creating a dataset and narrative they have been able to study common factors, statistically analyze, and have allowed us to better understand flaws in the criminal legal system that lead to wrongful convictions.

This week on everyday injustice we talk with Director Simon Cole, who talks about their work and what we have learned from wrongful convictions.

Listen to what the data says about government misconduct, forensic science, false confessions and eyewitness misidentification.

In the 2010 landmark decision Padilla v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel demands that criminal defense attorneys inform their clients of adverse immigration consequences that may flow from a guilty plea.

UCLA Law Professor Ingrid Eagly and her colleagues asked the critical question of whether public defenders are have adequately incorporated Padilla into their defense.

Their findings not surprising “reveal a patchwork system in which each county in California has created its own approach to immigration advising.”

Some counties have created full immigrant defense offices while many other counties have languagished: “They have not hired immigration experts, developed county protocols for immigration advising, or implemented immigration law training for their attorneys who accept indigent court appointments.”

Listen as Professor Eagly discusses Padilla and its impact on public defenders in California.

On August 4, Andrew Warren, the twice-elected State Attorney for Florida’s Hillsborough County was about to announce a major breakthrough in a 39 year old cold rape and murder case when he was informed by armed deputies entering his office that Gov. Ron DeSantis had suspended him from office.

Why? Warren believes that the move was politically motivated by stances he took on prosecuting abortion cases.

Warren has now sued DeSantis in federal court, arguing that the order suspending him was an unconstitutional abuse of authority and infringed on his First Amendment rights.

Andrew Warren this week joins Everyday Injustice as he discusses his case, his record as DA, and the political move that DeSantis has made.

Governor Newsom and the state legislator recently enacted CARE Court to help address chronic homelessness and mental health problems. But reformers believe that the program, while well intentioned, will exacerbate rather than solve existing problems.

Criticisms range from the compulsive nature of the treatment to the lack of new money put into mental health treatment – a system stretch way too thin.

Joining Everyday Injustice is Karen Chien to discuss what she and others see as the problems and shortcoming of CARE Court.

Kara Chien has worked as a Deputy Public Defender since 1989 and has led the San Francisco Public Defender’s Mental Health Unit since 2007.

She and her team advocate against criminalizing individuals with mental illness, representing clients with developmental disabilities and chronic and severe mental illness in both civil and criminal court.

Stephen Liebb spent 33 years behind bars for first degree murder. 19 of those years were spent at San Quentin.

He earned his release on parole in 2013. Now he works as a legal assistant at the San Francisco Public Defender’s office on the Freedom Project, helping to free others from prison.

Listen to Steph’s remarkable story – hired by the legendary Jeff Adachi in 2018, but a lawyer at the time of his arrest in the 1980s, and his work behind bars to help his fellow incarcerated people file petitions and writs, giving them a chance to challenge their detention.

On October 13, the Vanguard will present Stephen Liebb with an award for his work as a formerly incarcerated individual at the Vanguard Justice Awards Gala.

Liebb will be among nine individuals honored on October 13 in Sacramento. Tickets and sponsorships can be purchased online: http://tiny.cc/vanguard_2022