By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times
September 26, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties.

Some experts say the process has become coercive in many state and federal jurisdictions, forcing defendants to weigh their options based on the relative risks of facing a judge and jury rather than simple matters of guilt or innocence. In effect, prosecutors are giving defendants more reasons to avoid having their day in court.

“We now have an incredible concentration of power in the hands of prosecutors,” said Richard E. Myers II, a former assistant United States attorney who is now an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. He said that so much influence now resides with prosecutors that “in the wrong hands, the criminal justice system can be held hostage.”

One crucial, if unheralded, effect of this shift is now coming into sharper view, according to academics who study the issue. Growing prosecutorial power is a significant reason that the percentage of felony cases that go to trial has dropped sharply in many places.

Plea bargains have been common for more than a century, but lately they have begun to put the trial system out of business in some courtrooms. By one count, fewer than one in 40 felony cases now make it to trial, according to data from nine states that have published such records since the 1970s, when the ratio was about one in 12. The decline has been even steeper in federal district courts. (more…)

July 27, 2011

By Phil Ray (pray@altoonamirror.com)
The Altoona Mirror

JOHNSTOWN - The suicide of a Blair County Prison inmate was “predictable” and “preventable,” an attorney for the man’s family told a federal jury Tuesday

Jeremy Corbin, 32, of Bellwood suffered from severe depression and other mental health issues when he was admitted to prison on the morning of Oct. 18, 2006, and tests administered by a corrections officer showed that Corbin was a suicide risk, attorney Andrew J. Shubin of State College said.

Corbin was placed in a special cell for inmates at risk but was released later that day into the general jail population by the prison’s forensic specialist, Jennifer Feathers, who determined he wasn’t at a risk.

Two days later, Corbin ended his life by using a bed sheet in his cell to hang himself.

During an emotional opening statement, Shubin said that had Corbin been allowed to stay in the suicide prevention cell in the prison, which had no bed sheets, he may be alive today.

The jury was shown a picture of Corbin and his family in better times, just two years before his suicide, when the family moved into a new home in Bellwood.

Pictures of the cells in which Corbin was housed in the Blair County Prison were displayed. (more…)

June 24, 2011
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL BARBARO

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes. (more…)

June 21, 2011
By Peter Hall, OF THE MORNING CALL
Easton Area students will be free to wear bracelets proclaiming “I ♥ Boobies!” while school officials appeal a ruling that the breast cancer awareness slogan is protected under the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin on Tuesday refused to lift a preliminary injunction that prevents school officials from enforcing a ban on the popular rubber bracelets. In April, she sided with two middle school girls who were threatened with discipline for wearing the bracelets, finding the slogan is not vulgar or likely to cause a disturbance.

Easton Area School District officials last month asked McLaughlin to lift her injunction while the district’s appeal before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending. They claimed the injunction leaves the district with no guidance on how to revise its dress code for the 2011-12 school year and threatens administrators’ ability to maintain order in the schools.

By Caleb Taylor and Yasmin Tadjdeh, PA INDEPENDENT

HARRISBURG — The state House voted unanimously Monday to ban a series of synthetic drugs, as lawmakers spoke in defense of public health.

“There is not a day that goes by that we don’t pick up the newspaper, turn on the television or radio, and hear some near tragedy, or tragedy, that has occurred because of the abuse and use of these substances,” said state Rep. Jennifer Mann, D-Lehigh.

The legislation, SB 1006, adds a series of chemical compounds used as synthetic marijuana and synthetic cocaine to the state’s list of controlled substances. To be included on the list, a substance must have a high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use in the United States and lack medical safety, according to state law.

The chemicals, which can be found in some bath salts and incenses, can cause symptoms, such as strong hallucinations, that are similar to those present after using other illegal drugs. (more…)

Jurist.org
Sara Rose [Staff Attorney, ACLU of Pennsylvania]

A middle-school student, annoyed after being disciplined by her principal for violating the school dress code, vents her frustration by posting a crude MySpace profile on the Internet parodying the principal. The profile, which the student created entirely from home and made available to a small group of friends, includes a photo of the principal but not his name or school. The profile only comes onto school grounds at the behest of the principal. Nevertheless, once the identity of the profile’s author is discovered, the school suspends her from classes for ten days.

Those are the facts of a case, JS v. Blue Mountain School District [PDF], recently decided in the student’s favor by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The case squarely presented an issue increasingly confronted by schools and their students: How far can public schools can go in punishing students for speech that they post on the Internet outside of school? On one side are the school districts and school board associations, which argue that schools should be permitted to police their students’ speech no matter where it occurs if the speech is about the school. On the other are groups like the ACLU, which believe putting such far-reaching authority into the hands of school administrators impermissibly infringes on students’ First Amendment right to free speech. (more…)

WDUQ News, Pittsburgh

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

“Good Samaritan” Bill in PA House
A bill granting partial immunity to underage drinkers who call the authorities when their friends’ lives are threatened due to alcohol is winning praise from student leaders.

Dan Florencio, the president of Penn State University’s Interfraternity Council, said he’s heard a similar story time after time. “Someone just appeared really, really sick, and people were just like, ‘oh, let him sleep it off.’ Because they don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” he explained. “They don’t want to implicate themselves or the person. So they just let them sleep it off, or brush it off, when really, something really bad could be happening to the person’s body, because of alcohol.” (more…)

May 24, 2011
by Adam Smeltz

For at least 10 years, the State College teachers’ union has wanted the inclusion of same-gender domestic-partner benefits in school-district employee contracts, union President Holli Jo Warner said Monday.

In fact, Warner said the union — the State College Area Education Association — has asked the State College school district for that policy addition in the last two rounds of contract talks — one about five years ago, the other a decade ago.

“Through the negotiations process, we did not achieve that goal,” Warner told StateCollege.com. ” … We are currently in the process of negotiations (again) … and I’m sure it will be talked about again.”

StateCollege.com approached Warner about the subject in light of a federal lawsuit filed against the district last week.

In the case, district employee Kerry Wiessmann and her partner, Beth G. Resko, have targeted the district policy that prevents workers’ same-gender domestic partners from qualifying for the same benefits made available for opposite-gender domestic partners.

That policy, according to their complaint, violates Wiessmann and Resko’s First and 14th Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. The women are seeking a change in the policy.

The school district is expected to respond formally in court. But in a preliminary statement released to reporters on Friday, the district administration indicated that the benefits policy in question stems from the collective-bargaining process. (more…)

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD
New York Times
May 20, 2011

The battle to legalize same-sex marriage may be dominating the headlines, but that issue could take years to resolve. More immediately, a growing number of companies have taken it upon themselves to make life a little more equal for their gay employees.

These companies are reaching into their own pockets to pay for an extra tax that their gay employees owe on their partners’ health insurance — something that their married heterosexual co-workers don’t have to worry about because the federal government recognizes them as an economic unit.

To gay employees, gaining equal benefits is about more than the money. The gesture itself validates their relationship with their partners at a time when the government has not.

Most heterosexuals take for granted that they can add a spouse or children to their employer’s health plan. But gay employees with partners have that option only if they work for an organization that offers domestic partner coverage. (more…)

by Adam Smeltz
statecollege.com

The State College Area School District is facing a federal civil action from a school worker and her partner, both alleging that the district discriminates in its employee-benefits policy.

Kerry Wiessmann, who is an elementary-school counselor, and her partner, Beth G. Resko, brought the complaint against the district on Tuesday. Their concern is a district rule that keeps school workers’ same-sex domestic partners from qualifying for the same benefits made available for opposite-sex domestic partners, according to the filing.

In fact, the district’s “refusal to provide Ms. Wiessmann and her partner … with the same family health benefits offered to other employees and their families violates their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, including the right to equal protection of the laws without regard to sexual orientation or sex, and the right to intimate association; as well as the Equal Rights Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution,” the lawsuit reads. (more…)