Archive

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that Proposition 35, a 2012 California ballot initiative that would have restricted the rights of registered sex offenders to communicate on the Internet, is likely unconstitutional. The opinion affirms an earlier district court ruling in Doe v. Harris, a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Electronic Fro... Read More

Californians want smart criminal justice strategies and recognize that longer sentences, especially for low-level, nonviolent crimes, have not made our communities any safer. The question is whether our political leaders in Sacramento are listening. Read More

It appears the Federal Aviation Administration may have fallen into the "constitutional sinkhole" that is Ferguson, Missouri. Earlier this week, the Associated Press released an alarming set of documents revealing the FAA's decision to approve a no-fly zone over Ferguson – a no-fly zone requested by local police in order to muzzle media coverage of protests in the wake of the killing of unarmed bl... Read More

As the 2014 California legislative session came to an end, you may have seen headlines about California passing a “first-in-the-nation law.” While these headlines covered issues such as the statewide plastic-bag ban, they also applied to landmark civil liberties and civil rights legislation sponsored by the ACLU of California. Read More

Accessing medicine prescribed by a doctor should never be a crime, but Shasta County’s Measure A would make some medical marijuana cultivation a misdemeanor offense. Sick people should not be criminalized for their efforts to grow the medicine necessary to deal with the pain of debilitating diseases. Read More

California had the chance to be a leader in requiring police to get a warrant to use surveillance technology. But Gov. Brown vetoed a bill, AB 1327, that would have done just that for police drones.This is a big disappointment and Gov. Brown missed the mark with this veto.AB 1327 would have provided basic statewide protections against abuse by police drones. Without it, cities and counties are lef... Read More

Today Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California Fair Sentencing Act (SB 1010) authored by Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles). The legislation eliminates the groundless disparity in sentencing, probation, and asset forfeiture guidelines for possession of crack cocaine for sale versus the same crime involving powder cocaine that has resulted in a pattern of racial discrimination in sentencing and inca... Read More

Last week, two men who had been sentenced to death 30 years ago were proven innocent by DNA testing. Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were teenagers when they were wrongly accused of the brutal rape and murder of a child in North Carolina. One of the most shocking parts of the story is that prosecutors hid evidence that linked a convicted rapist to the murder, a man who went on to kill another ch... Read More

As the former District Attorney of Los Angeles County, a county that sends more people to death row than the entire state of Texas, I know that the death penalty is deeply emotional, highly divisive, and very political. However, both sides of the death penalty debate can agree on one thing: California’s death penalty system is broken beyond repair. Read More

“BART Watch" is a new app designed to encourage users to report suspicious activities. But we’re calling out this app for its own suspicious activities - having no privacy policy that explains the sensitive information it collects and may be sharing with others, and for encouraging people to file potentially spurious complaints about innocent residents. Read More