In between budget posts, I’ve lately been in a bit of a tiff with Chris Kelly, an Attorney General candidate and former Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, over his stale, predictable fearmongering about potential early prison releases.  There are a bunch of other estimable candidates in the Attorney General’s race, one who did himself a ton of good yesterday by leading the fight against the offshore drilling proposal.  So maybe I shouldn’t take too much time on Kelly.  But there’s a short-term policy fight coming up next month to determine how to implement $1.2 billion in cuts to the corrections budget, and with some good activism and common sense we can stare down the Tough on Crime crowd and post a needed victory for sensible criminal justice policies.  Therefore it’s worth looking at Kelly’s latest post:

The prison release plan is supposed to save $1.2 billion, but that’s just accounting trickery. In fact, a Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics study finds that nearly 70% of early-released inmates are rearrested within three years, 20% of them for violent crime. That will mean more than $3 billion in increased costs from crime while causing serious harm to hundreds of thousands of innocent victims.

I’ve spoken to police chiefs, law enforcement groups and civic associations throughout California about the issue, and they’re deeply worried about the crime wave this scheme will unleash. It will be hard enough to make San Jose a safer community in tough economic times without the problems caused by early release.

Obviously, Kelly hasn’t talked to the California Police Chiefs Association, which endorsed the plan as a smart step to begin to move away from the failed prison policies of the last thirty years.  Foremost among these new ideas is the concept of targeting resources – instead of warehousing the terminally ill or blanket strict supervision on everyone released regardless of determining possibility of recidivism, we can put resources into programs that provide opportunity for prisoners to pay their debt to society and move on.  This deal doesn’t do all of that, but it does, for example, put ill and infirm prisoners under home detention or in a care facility, which doesn’t impact public safety and saves money.  It offers incentives for prisoners to complete rehabilitation plans.  It reviews the cases of illegal immigrants in jails instead of just tossing them in the lap of the ICE to deal with, which would actually be the kind of misguided policy Kelly warns against.  And most important, it includes an independent sentencing commission, outside of politics, which can look at our sentencing laws and make recommendations for the legislature to adopt on an up-or-down vote.

Using the buzzword of “early release” of “dangerous prisoners” is an old Tough on Crime ploy from way back, evoking memories of the Willie Horton ad in the 1988 Presidential race.  It’s irresponsible and not relevant to what is being discussed.  We have the perfect Tough on Crime prison policy right now – and it’s not working in every respect, to the extent that federal courts have stepped in to take control of it.  Overcrowded prisons cannot fulfill their core mission of rehabilitating those jailed, and that’s especially true where nonviolent offenders who need medical treatment for addiction and not incarceration are concerned.  Brute force has not worked in making the state safer and has certainly caused our budget to skyrocket.  And the truth is that more sensible policies can save money and create better prisons at the same time.

We need real reform in prison and parole policy, through concentrated resources, community corrections, and maintaining manageable prison capacity for those who really need to be there, and what will get decided in the legislature next month represents an important step.  It can be easily derailed by fearmongering from the likes of Chris Kelly, trying to win an election on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised, on whom such brute-force policies typically rain down.

Over the next month I’ll be looking far more closely at this issue, as it’s the first big battle in regaining control of our state.  And it’s a winnable fight.

Far be it from me to agree so aggressively with my friend Steve Maviglio, but he’s absolutely right that Chris Kelly is making a fool out of himself by holding to outdated and dangerous Tough on Crime rhetoric in his campaign for Attorney General.  Kelly, the former Facebook chief privacy officer, has created a Cause called “Protect Our Communities.”  As Maviglio says, George Runner couldn’t have done it better himself:

Do you think the early release of 20,000 convicted felons will solve California’s budget crisis?  I don’t.

Please stand with me:  Click here to join my new “Protect California Communities” cause on Facebook and help me build grassroots opposition to this phony budget plan!

Our state is already more than $26 billion in debt and issuing hundreds of millions more in IOUs every week.

We need innovative solutions to get out of this mess. But a plan by Governor Schwarzenegger and some in the Legislature to early release nearly 20,000 felons from state prison is not one of them.

I’m all for prison reform — but this is surrender, not reform. Even if it would save us money — which it won’t — putting thousands of dangerous criminals back on the streets is a risk that California should never take.

Please stand with me: Click here to join my new “Protect California Communities” cause on Facebook and help me build grassroots opposition to this phony budget plan!

“Dangerous criminals” back on the streets include the terminally ill, nonviolent drug offenders and people returned to prison for the crime of technical parole violations, which eats up about 2/3 of total incarcerations in California in any given year.  This is the kind of absurd rhetoric that has our prisons full to bursting, that has created 1,000 sentencing laws passed by the Legislature in the past 30 years, ALL OF THEM increasing sentences, that has turned our parole policy and prison health care systems into a national joke and a federal crime, that has cost the state billions in overtime for prison guards and overall system costs, that has scared the public into passing really dangerous, pernicious laws like three strikes, that has nearly busted our Treasury, destroyed our corrections system and eliminated any possibility for rehabilitation.  

The Attorney General position can be one of leadership in producing alternatives to our prison crisis.  Kelly has forfeited any ability to call himself a leader by playing to the least common denominator.  He can go back now to devising schemes to strip privacy on social networking sites.

(I want to welcome SF’s District Attorney Kamala Harris. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

States across our country are facing budget deficits. California is projected to begin next fiscal year with a deficit of nearly 25 billion dollars, equaling one fourth of the state’s entire general fund. Over 10 billion of that general fund supports corrections and law enforcement. In this fiscal crisis, there is no denying the facts: tough budget times are here for public safety agencies. As the District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco, I am personally familiar with the difficult circumstances we face. Without a significant shift in local and state practices, we can predict that shrinking law enforcement and corrections funding will result in higher crime rates, less support for victims, and fewer offenders being held accountable. If ever there was a time to think outside the box and break with the failed approaches of the past, the time is now. We need to do something different.

In San Francisco, I have developed a smart on crime approach: we must be tough on serious and violent offenders while we get just as tough on the root causes of crime. In my office, we have raised felony conviction rates and sent more violent offenders to state prison, at the same time we have launched innovative, cost effective approaches to reduce recidivism, truancy, and childhood trauma. With a genuine investment in breaking cycles of crime, we can improve public safety at the same time that we save precious public resources.

EDIT by Brian: See the flip

Reentry: Why it Matters to Law Enforcement

Over the last thirty years, our prison population has soared. In 1980, California had a prison population of about 24,000 in a state of 24 million. Today we have an inmate population of 172,000 out of 36 million people. This means that since 1980, our population has grown by 50 % while our prison population has grown 617%.

Today, the majority of those inmates are not first-time offenders. Each year, approximately 70 percent of those released from California prisons commit another offense, resulting in the highest recidivism rate in the nation. These repeat offenses are preventable crimes that claim more victims and harm communities’ quality of life. It costs an estimated $10,000 to prosecute just one felony case, and about $47,000 per year to house just one inmate in prison. Every time an inmate is released and commits a new crime, local and state jurisdictions pay those costs over and over again.  To keep our communities safe and use public money wisely, we must ensure that people coming out of the criminal justice system become productive citizens and stay out.

Four years ago my office pioneered a model reentry initiative called "Back on Track" to reduce recidivism among nonviolent offenders. Back on Track combines accountability with opportunity to ensure that first-time nonviolent drug offenders are held accountable, stop committing crime and become self-sufficient. In Back on Track, offenders plead guilty and commit to strict court supervision as they complete an intensive personal responsibility program. They get trained for a job, go back to school, get current with child support, enroll in parenting classes, and become positive contributors in their communities. The program encompasses swift sanctions for making bad choices and clear incentives for good ones. As a result, less than 10 percent of Back on Track graduates have re-offended compared to a 54 percent recidivism rate statewide for the same population of offenders. We have achieved this success at a fraction of the cost of traditional corrections approaches. Back on Track costs about $5,000 annually per participant, compared to $35,000 to 47,000 for jail or prison.

To graduate, Back on Track participants must be employed or in school. The program has been selected as a national model by the National District Attorney’s Association and at least two jurisdictions have replicated the initiative. Back on Track demonstrates that preventing recidivism is both viable and cost-effective.

Truancy: Keeping Children in School Means Keeping Our Streets Safe

In 2007, after another year of high homicide rates in San Francisco, I asked my staff to review the victims’ histories to assess trends. We found that over the prior four years, 94% of homicide victims under the age of 25 were high school drop outs. We then reviewed SF public schools data and found that over 5,000 students were habitually or chronically truant each year, and nearly half of those kids were in elementary school. These are the kids on route to becoming high school drop outs.

In response, I joined with the San Francisco Unified School District to launch a citywide truancy initiative focused on getting elementary and middle school kids back in school. As the city’s chief prosecutor, I sent every parent in the district a letter explaining that I was prepared to prosecute parents if they broke the law by keeping their children out of school. I was surprised to discover that many parents didn’t know that California law makes education mandatory for children under the age of 18. Thousands of parents attended informational meetings on truancy after receiving the letter, and we fielded hundreds of calls from parents who had questions or needed help.

We also held face-to-face "D.A. Mediation" meetings with over 2,000 parents. Suddenly, the principals didn’t need to work so hard to convince parents to take seriously the consequences of keeping their child from school because a prosecutor was in the room. Through these mediations, we met parents in need of help to get their kids in school. One mother of three, for example, was homeless and holding down two jobs. We connected her to services so she could do what she wanted to do – be a good mother and put her children in school.

Mediations resulted in significant progress for most of the parents. Still, some continued to fail. In these cases, my office filed criminal charges. The children of these parents, some as young as six years old, had missed as many as 80 days of school out of a 180 day school year. Once we filed criminal charges, things started to change. Those parents report to a Truancy Court that combines consequences and support services to make sure that parents get their children in school.

Since we started this initiative, truancy rates for elementary school kids in San Francisco have dropped by 23 percent. And it did not take millions of dollars, bureaucratic red tape, or a decade to see results. It only took genuine commitment and a willingness to shake up the status quo.

What starts out as chronic truancy makes a child far more likely to end up dropping out of school, becoming a victim, or getting arrested. Taking swift corrective action now will reduce the likelihood of harmful and costly consequences later.

Childhood Trauma: Breaking the Silence to Help Children and Youth  

Last year in San Francisco, a teenage boy was gunned down while waiting outside a school for a ride. His senseless murder was witnessed by dozens of young students who were outside at the time. Months later, many of these youth had not accessed mental health support to recover from what they saw. Worse still, for some, it was likely not the first time they had witnessed violence. Some young people come from homes where violence is the norm, while others see violence in their neighborhoods far too frequently. The impact of repeated exposure to violence on children is enormous: they can’t concentrate in school, they’re detached, or they act-up and misbehave.

Like soldiers at war, children are highly likely to suffer from trauma from repeated exposure to violence. And like soldiers coming home, they often suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Unfortunately, many of these children go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed and thereby not treated appropriately. Worse still, children repeatedly traumatized by violence at an early age are more likely to fall through the cracks and become either victims or perpetrators of violence later in life.

Studies have shown that up to 35 percent of children and youth exposed to community violence develop PTSD. Exposure to community violence affects everything from a child’s sleep, to their school success, to the physical development of their brains.

In the District Attorney’s Office, we often see the needs of children from distressed families or neighborhoods go untreated. To address these unmet needs, last year we joined with California State Senator Mark Leno to craft ground-breaking legislation to provide funding for mental health counseling for traumatized children and youth. Signed into law last year, our bill allows children who witness community violence to access up to $5,000 for therapy and mental health support.

When we look at children growing up in tough environments, we need to see them through a prism instead of a plate glass window. Left unaddressed, their complex and difficult surroundings can overwhelm their minds and harm their chances for future success. If we can recognize their needs and get timely help, we can substantially increase life prospects for these children before it’s too late.

What Needs to Happen Can Happen

These are just a few examples of what can be done to improve public safety and break the cycle of crime. Being smart on crime requires changing our thinking. Albert Einstein once said, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." The State of California is at an economic crossroads that demands new approaches. I am confident that we can meet that demand through a long-term strategy of responsive, preventative and evidence-based "smart on crime" approaches, thereby ensuring a better and safer future for all of us.

This post was initially published at ACSblog: http://www.acslaw.org/node/13582

Once again, a judge has invalidated parts of a “tough on crime” ballot initiative.  Earlier it was Jessica’s Law, Prop. 83, which was ruled partially unconstitutional.  Now Prop. 9, passed last year, has been found to have illegal provisions.

A key part of a victims’ rights measure voters approved in November was blocked Thursday by a federal judge, who ruled that the state cannot restrict parole violators’ right to state-provided legal counsel when considering whether to send them back to prison.

Senior Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the U.S. District Court in Sacramento ruled against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state in issuing an injunction against part of Proposition 9, the measure known as the Victims’ Bill of Rights Act of 2008: Marsy’s Law.

The initiative dictates that the state provide legal counsel to parole violators only under certain circumstances, including when the case is unusually complex or when the parolee is indigent or has issues of mental competency.

The SacBee has more.  I don’t know how this could ever have even reached the ballot in the first place.  And this is part of our insane parole policy, which even before this law was failing the state.  67% of all inmates sent to prison in 2007 were parole violators, often for technical violations.  As I wrote then:

It is a financial and moral disaster that we are throwing men and women back in jail for parole violations at such an accelerated rate, far beyond any other state in the country.  This is clearly a factor of the state’s parole policy, which is too constrictive and too quick to return people to prison.  It surely leads to the high recidivism rate for those who commit crimes multiple times – if they feel they can’t escape the system once they’re in it, they simply have no incentive to rehabilitate themselves […]

We are diseased by the prison-industrial complex.  Prison construction is good for the CCPOA and supposedly good for the economy but it’s based on a flawed notion that all construction spending is valuable.  In fact, prison construction, especially of the type so needless that bringing parole policy in line with the other 49 states in the union would practically eliminate the overcrowding crisis and rendering the need for more beds moot, crowds out other, more valuable building projects that have a tangible value to people’s lives.  We are violating the human rights of inmates and the Constitutional provision against cruel and unusual punishment, as well as stifling innovative public investment, because the parole officers have a powerful lobby and the Tough on Crime dementia has infested the minds of practically every legislator in the state for 30 years.

At the national level, we are finally seeing the seeds of a robust prison reform movement.  Jim Webb and Arlen Specter have submitted a bill to completely overhaul the criminal justice system.  The bill would commission a panel to review incarceration rates, sentencing policies, gang violence, prison administration and reintegration of offenders.  This sounds like a small step, but considering that absolutely nothing has been done to stop the train of “tough on crime” insanity from rolling down the track in decades, it’s significant.  A copy of the legislation is here.  Sen. Webb remarked:

“America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace,” said Senator Webb. “With five percent of the world’s population, our country houses twenty-five percent of the world’s prison population. Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980. And four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals. We should be devoting precious law enforcement capabilities toward making our communities safer. Our neighborhoods are at risk from gang violence, including transnational gang violence […]

“We are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life, and we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail,” concluded Webb. “I believe that American ingenuity can discover better ways to deal with the problems of drugs and nonviolent criminal behavior while still minimizing violent crime and large-scale gang activity.

The bill has 14 co-sponsors, neither or whom are named Boxer or Feinstein.  Tell them they should know better, with the prison crisis consuming more and more of the state budget and destroying the lives of nonviolent offenders.

This is a major, if tentative, victory for criminal justice reform advocates.

California’s three-strikes sentencing law suffered a blow Tuesday when a federal appeals court struck down as unconstitutional a 28-years-to-life sentence for a sex offender who failed to register with local police at the correct time of year.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case of Cecilio Gonzalez back to federal district court in Los Angeles for resentencing after finding his 2001 penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the 8th Amendment.

Gonzalez’s harsh sentence was grossly disproportionate to his “entirely passive, harmless and technical violation of the registration law,” the appeals court said.

This case represented the unintended consequence of three-strikes carried out to its most ridiculous extreme.  28 to life for registering, but not at the right time of year?  Nuts.  This isn’t a crime in 11 states, and the maximum sentence allowed by customary law in California is three years.

In case the “tough on crime” absolutists start shieking about “activist liberal judges” overturning the will of the people, consider who wrote this opinion: Jay Bybee.  Nominated by George W. Bush Jay Bybee.  Writer of the fucking torture memo Jay Bybee.  Even a guy who justified the torture of prisoners considers this cruel and unusual punishment.  There is no indication whether or not Jerry Brown would carry this to an appeal, but considering the opinion of this very conservative jurist, I would imagine the US Supreme Court would at least potentially rule the same way, although they struck down a similar challenge to three strikes in 2003 on a 5-4 vote.  Put it this way, I don’t see Bybee as more conservative than Anthony Kennedy.

This does not invalidate three strikes entirely, but it certainly gives a ray of hope to those locked up for a minor third crime to challenge their sentencing.  And it provides a framework to show how unjust and counter-productive these stringent mandatory sentences are.  Three strikes is more of a symptom than the entire problem – the legislature has approved over 1,000 higher sentences in the past 30 years.  But this is an important start, to end the tyranny of “tough on crime” absolutism that has contributed to busting the state budget and making this the worst state in the union when it comes to the corrections system.

Today, in recognition of International Human Rights Day, the American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive analysis of the pervasive systemic and structural racism in America. The report, Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice, is a response to the U.S. report to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released earlier this year. The U.S. report was a whitewash, sweeping under the rug the dramatic effects of widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in this country.

It’s time to begin an honest conversation about the fact that racial bias remains perhaps the most significant barrier to opportunity for people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos. The ACLU report finds that discrimination in America permeates education, employment, the treatment of migrants and immigrants, law enforcement, and access to justice for juveniles and adults.

The results for California are particularly disturbing. The report documents the persistence of racial inequity and institutionalized discrimination in California’s educational and criminal justice systems, and in the treatment of immigrants. Among the examples cited in the report:

•Compared to schools attended mostly by white students, schools with a high concentration of African-American and Latino students are 74% more likely to lack textbooks for students to use for homework; 73% more likely to have evidence of cockroaches, rats or mice; and three times more likely to report that teacher turnover is a serious problem.

•In California, African Americans are given third-strike, 25-to-life prison sentences at a rate nearly 13 times the rate of whites. African Americans are 6.5% of the population, but they make up 45% of third strikers.

•Children of color are 20 times more likely to be sentenced to life without parole than white children in California, the worst racial disparities in the country. The California Supreme Court is currently considering the case of a 14 year old boy who is the youngest person in the United States to be sentenced to life without parole for a crime involving no physical injury to the victim.

Other reports echo these findings. Just last week, the Justice Policy Institute released a study of racial disparities in prison sentences for drug offenses in the 198 most populated counties in the nation. Four California counties made it into the top ten for sending the most African Americans to prison for drug offenses: Alameda, Kern, San Francisco, and San Mateo Counties. According to the report, Alameda and San Mateo Counties each send 35 times more African Americans than whites to prison for drug offenses, even though research shows almost no racial difference in drug use or sales.

A study by Building Blocks for Youth showed that, in Los Angeles County, youth of color are 2.5 times more likely than white youth to be transferred to adult court and, once in adult court, 3 times more likely to be sentenced to confinement than are white youth. Research conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency shows that African American youth are incarcerated at a rate 6 times greater than white youth in California.

The conclusion is inescapable: One of the most diverse states in the country, California has a two-tiered, separate and unequal educational and criminal justice system. In those institutions where we need justice the most, systemic racial bias is among the worst in the nation.

While the evidence of systemic human rights violations continues to pile up, California lawmakers continue to turn a blind eye. Despite overwhelming public support for limiting the three strikes law to violent felonies, the legislature has failed to act. As a result, judges continue to send people to prison for life for petty theft and other non-violent offenses. And despite overwhelming public support for alternatives to juvenile incarceration and judicial condemnation of the youth prisons, our state government has failed to shut them down.

The three simple criminal justice reforms that did pass the legislature this year—all intended to prevent wrongful convictions and ensure that only the guilty go to prison—were vetoed by the Governor, despite widespread support in newspaper editorials.  The California criminal justice system sends more people to prison, in raw numbers and per capita, than almost any other criminal justice system in the world—and the overwhelming majority of these people are African American and Latino.

California officials should be leading the conversation about how we can all work together to steer the state in a more promising direction. To turn this equation around, we need to have the courage to begin a more constructive—and productive—conversation about the relationship between race, justice and opportunity in this state.

Maya Harris is Executive Director of the ACLU of Northern California.

(There are some good, common-sense bills on the Governor’s desk. Here are a few that the Governor should sign. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

By John Terzano, The Justice Project

Health care reform may have stalled in California, but Governor Schwarzenegger still has a chance to make the state a leader in fixing a national problem: wrongful convictions. Three major criminal justice reform bills are now on the Governor’s desk.  The measures are designed to safeguard against wrongful convictions by making practical changes to eyewitness identification procedures, reforming the process by which confessions are attained, and regulating the use of jailhouse snitch testimony. 

With more than 200 exonerations to date in California it is critical that measures are enacted before more mistakes are made.  The governor has the ability to not only protect the innocent but enhance public safety and the integrity of California’s law enforcement by signing these important bills into law, and setting a standard for the nation.

The first in this trio of vital legislation-Senate Bill 756-addresses the development of new guidelines for statewide eyewitness identification procedures.

Eyewitness identification is notably unreliable.  Study after study has shown that faulty eyewitness identification is one of the most common causes of wrongful conviction.  In fact, it has played a pivotal role in 75% of the cases nationwide where DNA later exonerated the person convicted.  See The Justice Project’s policy review Improving Eyewitness Identification Procedures at http://www.thejusticeproject.org/solution/eyewitness-id.html for more information.

Practical changes to identification procedures like cautionary instructions to witnesses, effective use of fillers, full documentation of lineup procedures, witness statements of certainty, and double-blind administration can significantly improve the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.

In addition to this critical reform, recording custodial interrogations (Senate Bill 511) and corroborating jailhouse snitch testimony (Senate Bill 609) have been shown to help prevent wrongful convictions. 

False confessions have played a significant role in wrongful convictions in California, and in approximately 20% of wrongful convictions nationwide.  Because confessions are often viewed as the most powerful evidence at trial, other types of evidence that point to a defendant’s innocence might be disregarded in lieu of a confession.  Decades of psychological research have demonstrated how some traditional and aggressive interrogation techniques can lead to false confessions.  Senate Bill 511 will require electronic recording of interrogations in both juvenile and adult cases and will protect law enforcement from false claims of coercion or abuse by providing an objective record.  For more information see The Justice Project’s policy review Electronic Recording of Custodial Interrogations at http://www.thejusticeproject.org/solution/interrogations.html

Senate Bill 609 would require corroboration for jailhouse snitch testimony, meeting one of the best practices for reforming the use of snitch testimony identified in The Justice Project’s newest release, Jailhouse Snitch Testimony: A Policy Review at http://www.thejusticeproject.org/solution/snitch/. Jailhouse snitch testimony is widely regarded as the least reliable form of evidence in the criminal justice system.  Higher standards for admitting snitch testimony at trial must be put in place to protect the innocent. 

Law enforcement, prosecutors, and the community will all benefit from the adoption of these three reform measures.  Implementation of these bills will result in stronger prosecutions, more efficient proceedings, and more reliable outcomes in criminal cases giving the public greater confidence in the criminal justice system.

Given the many documented cases of injustice in California and across the nation, the need for improvements within the criminal justice system is especially great.  The time is now for Governor Schwarzenegger to take a step forward toward criminal justice reform.  We hope that he will see the benefits of these bills to California and the nation and sign them into law.

The ACLU Action alert is at www.aclunc.org/justice

John F. Terzano is the President of The Justice Project, a nonpartisan organization that works to address unfairness and inaccuracy in the criminal justice system, with a focus on the capital punishment system.

When the innocent go to prison, the guilty go free.

Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert interviewed the 200th DNA exoneree, Jerry Miller, http://www.innocenceproject.org/news/Blog.php 

Herman Atkins spent 12 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit–watch his story, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd-5HFipAqI

Three bills in the California Legislature would help prevent the most common causes of wrongful conviction:

Senate Bill 511 (Alquist) will require the electronic recording of police interrogation in cases involving homicides and other violent felonies. 

Senate Bill 756 (Ridley-Thomas) will require the appointment of a task force to draft guidelines for the conduct of police line-ups and photo arrays to increase the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. 

Senate Bill 609 (Romero) will require the corroboration of testimony by jailhouse informants. 

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice—a group of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and defense attorneys—has recommended all three reforms, http://ccfaj.org/legislation-2007.html. 

These reforms will help protect the innocent and make sure the guilty are convicted. 

TAKE ACTION: Urge your State Assembly Member to support these bills at http://www.aclunc.org/justice