The Justice Gambit
"Commentary on events in the U.S. system of justice from a social science perspective."
Author: Michael Blankenship is a professor of criminal justice at Boise State University.
Blawg Related Categories: Criminal Justice • Death Penalty • Sentencing/Post Conviction
Recent Posts from The Justice Gambit
-
The Cost of Killing in Idaho
BOISE - Thomas Creech sits and waits on Idaho’s death row. Creech was already serving a life sentence for a double murder in 1981, when he was convicted of bludgeoning a fellow inmate to death…
-
No Constitutional Protection Against Being Framed
"THERE IS NO Freestanding Constitutional 'Right Not To Be Framed.' " So states a brief filed by Iowa prosecutors hoping to persuade the Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit against them for allegedly fabricating evidence…
-
Justices will scrutinize life sentences for youths
It did not take long for the judge to determine that the convicted rapist in front of him was irredeemable. "He is beyond help," Judge Nicholas Geeker said of Joe Harris Sullivan. "I'm going to…
-
Like Giving Car Keys to A Drunken Teenager
State officials will soon seek bids from private companies for 9 of the state’s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 here on death row. It is the first effort by…
-
The Death Penalty in Texas Looks Bad?
Questions about whether Gov. Rick Perry allowed the execution of a man some arson experts say may have been innocent, and then hindered an investigation into the evidence, continue to reverberate across Texas, where issues…
-
An Example of Prosecutorial Misconduct
After spending three years investigating the conviction of a Harvey man accused of killing a security guard with a shotgun blast in 1978, journalism students at Northwestern University say they have uncovered new evidence that…
-
Governor Perry Did What?
DALLAS, Texas (CNN) -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday shook up the ranks of a state commission that is probing whether a man executed in 2004 belonged on death row, forcing the commission to…
-
Decriminalizing Drugs in Mexico
Reporting from Tijuana and Mexico City - Mired in a bloody battle with major drug traffickers, Mexico is quietly eliminating jail time for possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.Read more...This…
-
Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?
At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is “too expensive,” how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life…
-
The Politics of Crime Control
After an impassioned debate over the cost and benefit of California's massive prison system, the state Senate on Thursday narrowly approved a controversial bill to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending on state…