Trials for Dakota Access Pipeline protesters begin next week, but there aren’t enough attorneys to take their cases. The Morton County Sheriff’s Department lists 264 people who have no lawyer at all, and the 265 people who have been assigned public defense attorneys aren’t receiving adequate counsel. In order to fix the problem, advocates from North Dakota and Minnesota are …
Leid Stories – 11.30.15
Laquan McDonald Killing: Protest, Yes, But Political Punishment Is Needed
Prosecuting Egregious Police Crimes: When the Law Is Out of Order
The indictment last week of Chicago Policer Jason Van Dyke on first-degree-murder charges for shooting to death 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on Oct. 20 last year has ignited a renewed groundswell of grassroots protest against police brutality and the double standard of justice that favors rogue cops when prosecuting such cases. Leid Stories in a commentary explains why vigorous protest not only is appropriate, it should include organized political punishment—of the Democratic Party in particular.
Jury selection begins today in Baltimore City Circuit Court in the trial of Officer William Porter, the first of six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, 26, who died on April 19, a week after suffering traumatic injuries while being transported to a stationhouse in a police van. “Attorney at War” Alton H. Maddox Jr., who has litigated several precedent-setting police-brutality cases in New York, discusses key issues with the prosecution of Porter and Gray’s other alleged killers.