Until recently, many people in Wisconsin may have assumed there was little or no problem in Wisconsin with racial disparities in policing. After a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake in the back recently, however, protests erupted in the city of 99,000. The...
Criminal Defense
What kinds of police raids should we tolerate?
Another high-profile case of mistaken identity recently played out in Nashville. Police officers, acting on bad information, raided a family home at 6:05 a.m. They apparently knocked but gave the family no time to answer before knocking their door down with a ram. Can...
Many police interrogation techniques are causing false confessions
False confessions are a real danger in the criminal justice system. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 12% of all exonerations since 1989 involved a false confession. According to the Innocence Project, that number goes up to 62% when considering...
Should a criminal record be a life sentence to poverty?
Did you know that one in every three Americans has some type of criminal record? That’s 70 million people. Unfortunately, having a criminal record is extremely stigmatized, and it can keep you in poverty for a long time. According to the Clean Slate Initiative, nearly...
Kicked off the jury because she thinks Black lives matter
When prosecutors and defense attorneys pick a jury, they can ask any relevant question of the potential jurors. When a potential juror's answer indicates they cannot be impartial, the lawyer can legally keep them off the jury. In addition, each side gets a limited...
Should researchers stop working on technology for the police?
Facial recognition technology is flawed. Unfortunately, the technology tends to misidentify some people as others, which can mean the police arrest the wrong person. And, the technology has been shown to be racially biased.In fact, in 2018 the ACLU used Amazon's...
Misdemeanors pull people of color into the criminal justice system
As we discuss racial disparities in the criminal justice system, it's important to understand that the reason people of color are more deeply affected than their white peers is not because people of color are more prone to committing crimes. In fact, federal data...
Large tech companies refuse to sell facial recognition to police
In the wake of nationwide and global protests over police racism and brutality, several large tech companies have backed off of plans to sell facial recognition technology to law enforcement.Facial recognition technology has been broadly criticized as a privacy...
Should schools get rid of police resource officers?
In the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, communities are reassessing the way they use police. Some, like Minneapolis, have made at least some changes to their police use of force policies.Minneapolis has also decided to suspend...
Can police kill with impunity? The ‘qualified immunity’ doctrine
After the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, protests erupted around the globe. Protestors decried the use of excessive force in these cases and in a long list of others over the previous months, years and decades.As a...