Archive

This week, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued a terrific decision in our lawsuit against the FBI for records about surveillance of the Occupy movement. We hope that this decision will lead to the shining of some much-needed light on the FBI and its surveillance of political protest movements. Read More

Oakland city officials yesterday announced that the City Council had taken initial steps toward approving a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the National Lawyers Guild against the City of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department (OPD) for use of excessive force against Occupy Oakland Protestors in October and November 2011. Read More

In a move that threatens the ability of Californians to hold their elected officials accountable to the public interest, the legislature late last week included a sly, last-minute amendment to the 2013-2014 budget now awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature that substantially limits the public's right to know what our local leaders are doing in our name.This 11th hour amendment makes it easier for p... Read More

Today, we sent a letter to the Alameda County Sheriff asking him whether he plans to pursue his earlier-announced plans to acquire a drone. Budget documents we obtained through a Public Records Act request suggest that he is not planning to acquire a drone in Fiscal Year 2013-14. But a conclusive answer from his office would provide the public with the clarity and transparency it deserves.Last Dec... Read More

If a lengthy jail sentence kept people from becoming addicted, we wouldn't have any drug problems. But California knows from experience that lengthy jail sentences for possession of a small amount of drugs for personal use just makes things worse – wasted lives, overcrowded jails, and devastating budget deficits. Fortunately, California may be about to turn the corner toward commonsense reform.The... Read More

The California Assembly’s Committee on Public Safety approved a bill Tuesday that would reform California’s drug sentencing laws for simple possession, significantly reduce incarceration costs for counties and help the state end its ongoing incarceration crisis. S.B. 649, the Local Control in Sentencing Act, authored by Sen. Mark Leno, now moves to the full Assembly for consideration, the final hu... Read More

This week, when the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors rejected an enormously expensive proposal to double the size of the county's jail, it made the county a shining example of local government favoring "smart on crime" policies that enhance public safety and reduce incarceration over the dusty old "tough on crime" platitudes of the past.Rather than commit the cash-strapped county to buildin... Read More

The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision upholding Maryland's arrestee DNA testing law is a serious blow to genetic privacy. The ruling allows the police to seize the DNA of innocent Americans who have never been convicted of any sort of crime, without a search warrant. And as Justice Scalia makes clear in his scathing dissent, the majority opinion goes against decades of precedent that makes it clear tha... Read More

Yesterday afternoon the California Court of Appeal held that our prison system has, once again, completely failed to comply with state law when it adopted a problematic procedure for carrying out lethal injection executions.Given that there is now no legal protocol for lethal injection executions, no known legal source for the drugs, and that manufacturers worldwide are increasingly reluctant to m... Read More

SACRAMENTO – The California state Senate today approved a bill that would reform California’s drug sentencing laws for simple possession, significantly reduce incarceration costs for counties and help the state end its ongoing incarceration crisis.S.B. 649, the Local Control in Sentencing Act, authored by Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), was approved by the Senate in a 23-14 vote, and moves now t... Read More