If you have any connection to drug courts you know of West Huddleston. He has been a remarkable force in advancing drug courts.

The End of an Era at NADCP

 

On May 8, 2015, after seventeen years of incredible service with the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP), West Huddleston will step aside as Chief Executive Officer to serve as a Vice President and General Manager of  AMS-Scram Systems , the industry leader in cutting-edge justice technology.  We are so proud of what has been achieved under his leadership and we know that his impact on our system of justice and treatment will continue and be felt for many years to come.

West has dedicated the past twenty-five years of his professional life to pioneering programs that blend compassion with accountability to bring treatment and recovery to individuals caught up in the justice system. For nearly two decades at NADCP, he has given us his heart and intellect, his talent and passion. His impact on the justice system stretches to nearly every community in the United States and numerous countries across the globe.

After helping start and turn NADCP’s National Drug Court Institute (NDCI) into the preeminent source of advanced education, research and scholarship to the Drug Court field, West was unanimously board-appointed as CEO of NADCP in 2006. As CEO, West made his vision, our mission, “to put a Drug Court within reach of every American in need”. He rallied the field and pushed Congress for the expansion of Drug Courts and to apply the model to other populations including DWI offenders, native communities, juvenile and child protection cases, and most recently, to our veterans. In doing so, West founded NADCP’s National Center for DWI Courts and Justice For Vets.  Most recently under his leadership, NADCP has developed Best Practice Standards for Adult Drug Courts that are revolutionizing program operations to achieve an even greater impact.

As a national steward of the Drug Court, DWI Court and Veterans Treatment Court movement, he initiated a public policy strategy to bolster federal funding, and a public relations strategy to make Drug Courts, DWI Courts and Veterans Treatment Courts a household name. When West joined NADCP there were 347 Drug Courts and when he became CEO, the federal appropriation was $20 million. Today, there are 2,966 Drug Courts, DWI Courts and Veterans Treatment Courts and the federal appropriation is $104 million with another $260 million dedicated in state budgets. Millions of citizens have been exposed to the life-saving promise of Drug Courts through West’s All Rise campaign, celebrity PSAs and massive national media coverage.

West’s leadership and relentless belief that no individual is beyond hope is not his greatest legacy.  His impact extends beyond policy, publications and best practices; it can be found in the faces of those who were actually given life-saving treatment and a real shot at recovery in one of the many programs he has fought so hard to enable.

To honor his immeasurable impact on the justice system, the treatment court field, NADCP and the lives of those we serve, West will has earned our respect and upmost gratitude.  However, he is not leaving Drug Courts.  He will continue to be involved in an advisory capacity and special position at NADCP for years to come.

During this time of transition to new leadership, NADCP remains as strong and vibrant as ever, representing over 30,000 professionals in Drug Courts, DWI Courts, Veterans Treatment Courts, and Mental Health Courts throughout the nation and the world.

As Board Chair I will lead a national search process for a CEO to carry on the proud legacy fostered by West Huddleston.   In the meantime, with the deep bench of beloved and skilled leaders of staff and advisors, NADCP will continue its amazing work to ensure that Drug Courts, DWI Courts and Veterans Treatment Courts are championed, supported and celebrated.

I thank you for your ongoing support of NADCP, and most of all, for the life-saving work you do each and every day.

 

Judge Keith Starrett

Chairman of the Board

 

 

 

 

The title of this post is the headline of this notable new piece from The New Republic.  Here are excerpts:

During his second inaugural address this past January, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal shared the story of Sean Walker. After serving 12 years of a life sentence for murder, Walker was paroled in 2005 and began working in the governor’s mansion while in a state transitional center. At the time of Deal’s address, Walker was working for Goodwill as a banquet catering sales coordinator and was nominated for Goodwill International Employee of the Year. As of January, Walker was planning to take college courses with the hope of becoming a counselor.

Deal, who got to know Walker at the governor’s mansion, shared the story to underscore his own “message to those in our prison system and to their families: If you pay your dues to society, if you take advantage of the opportunities to better yourself, if you discipline yourself so that you can regain your freedom and live by the rules of society, you will be given the chance to reclaim your life.” He continued, “I intend for Georgia to continue leading the nation with meaningful justice reform.”

That last sentence could seem at best like optimism, and at worst like hyperbole. However, one could reasonably argue that Georgia is doing more to reform its criminal justice system than any other state in the country — from sentencing to felon employment after release to juvenile detention.

Over the last four years, mandatory sentencing minimums have been modified, and judges’ discretion in sentencing has been expanded. The adult prison population has been given enhanced access to educational resources, including a program that enables two charter schools in the state to go into prisons to teach inmates, and those participating earn a high school diploma instead of a GED. (Studies suggest that some recipients of a GED tend not to fare any better in employment prospects than high school dropouts do.)

In addition, inmates with felonies applying to work for the state no longer have to check a box on their job applications that discloses their criminal histories and would often disqualify them from being considered for a job from the outset. “We banned the box,” said Deal, “It is not going to affect them getting an interview.” The state has also invested $17 million into measures aimed at reducing recidivism and rehabilitating low-risk, nonviolent offenders — including expanding accountability courts like those for drug use and DUIs, and funding community-based programs that have already proven to be more cost-effective than a prison sentence and are designed to reduce crime in the long run….

Some, like Vikrant Reddy, a senior policy analyst at Right on Crime and at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Effective Justice, label Georgia’s criminal justice reforms conservative because they are saving the state millions, putting them in line with conservative fiscal values. Others, like Alison Holcomb, the national director of ACLU’s Campaign to End Mass Incarceration, call the reforms expansive for their holistic agenda—with improving educational and re-entry opportunities for inmates at the top of the list. The reforms have been called innovative, though some argue that it isn’t the reform initiatives themselves, so much as the way they’re being applied together that is unprecedented.

Brady v. Maryland is nearly 50 years old and, as a result, one might expect that within the legal profession few implementation problems still exist.  After all, the decision is not a toddler.  Yet each week there are appellate decisions finding violations of Brady.  Some of those violations are egregious.

Miriam H. Baer (Brooklyn Law School) has posted Timing Brady (Columbia Law Review, Vol. 115, No. 1, 2015) on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

Criminal discovery reform has accelerated in recent years, triggered in part by the prosecution’s widely perceived failure to abide by its constitutional obligation, articulated in Brady v. Maryland, to disclose exculpatory evidence. Practitioners and academics, disillusioned by the Supreme Court’s hands-off approach, have sought reform along three axes: legislatively expanding criminal discovery’s scope, increasing the degree and likelihood of prosecutorial sanctions, and altering the organizational dynamics that encourage prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence.

None of these approaches, however, addresses the issue of timing and its effect on prosecutors.

Over the course of a prosecution, incentives to withhold evidence develop, and temptations to withhold it recur. Accordingly, popular reform efforts such as mandatory “open-file” discovery remain incomplete. Just like Brady itself, these well-intentioned reforms are destined to fall short of their goals so long as they fail to address criminal discovery’s temporal dimension.

This Article inquires how timing affects the prosecutor’s decision to disclose or withhold exculpatory evidence in advance of a criminal trial. After laying out timing’s importance, the Article then explores its policy and design implications for criminal discovery reform. By consciously addressing timing, reformers across state and federal jurisdictions can better guarantee the defendant’s access to exculpatory evidence.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled last week that the Saskatchewan Public Service Essential Services Act (PSESA), which limited the ability of public sector employees who perform essential services to strike, violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At the same time, the court upheld an act that increased the level of required written support, and reduced the time period for receiving support, to certify a union.

In striking the PSESA, the court held that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 2(d), free association, protects a fundamental right to strike, and that the PSESA wasn’t saved by Section 1, the “reasonable limits” provision. The court wrote that the right to strike is “an indispensable component of” the right to bargain collectively, and “essential to realizing” the values of “human dignity, equality, liberty, and respect for the autonomy of the person and the enhancement of democracy.” The court also noted that “international obligations also mandate protecting the right to strike . . . .”

The court said that the breach of Section 2(d) wasn’t justified by Section 1, which “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in [the Charter] subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” The court wrote that the maintenance of essential public services is obviously “pressing and substantial,” but that the PSESA wasn’t sufficiently tailored. In particular, the court said that the PSESA allows too much given in defining “essential services” and the employees who perform them.

Two justices dissented, arguing that the political branches should have the flexibility to determine the scope of workers’ ability to strike.

The title of this post is the title of a paper by Melissa Hamilton, now available via SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

Evidence-based practices providing an empirical basis for predicting recidivism risk have become a primary focus across criminal justice decision points.  Criminal history measures are the most common and heavily weighted factors in risk assessment tools, yet is such substantial reliance fully justified?  The empirical and normative values placed on criminal history enjoy such commendation by criminal justice officials, practitioners, and the public that these practices are rarely questioned.  This paper fills the gap by introducing and exploring various issues from legal, scientific, and pragmatic perspectives.

As a general rule, a common assumption is that past behavior dictates an individual’s likely future conduct.  This axiom is often applied to criminal behavior, more specifically, in that prior offending is considered a primary driver to predict future recidivism.  Criminal justice officials have a long history of formally and informally incorporating risk judgments into a variety of criminal justice decisions, ranging from bail, sentencing, parole, supervisory conditions, and programming.  A more contemporary addendum represents empirically informed risk assessment practices that integrate actuarial tools and/or structured professional judgments.  Various criminal history measures pervade these newer evidence-based practices as well.

Instead of presuming the value and significance of prior crimes in judging future recidivism risk, this Article raises and critically analyzes certain unexpected consequences resulting from the significant reliance upon criminal history in risk assessment judgments.  Among the more novel issues addressed include: (1) creating a ratchet effect whereby the same criminal history event can be counted numerous times; (2) resulting in informal, three-strikes types of penalties; (3) counting nonadjudicated criminal behaviors and acquitted conduct; (4) proportionality of punishment; (5) disciplining hypothetical future crime; (6) punishing status; and (7) inadequately accounting for the age-crime curve. In the end, criminal history has a role to play in future risk judgments, but these issues represent unanticipated outcomes that deserve attention.

Ric Simmons (Ohio State University (OSU) – Michael E. Moritz College of Law) has posted The Missed Opportunities of Riley v. California (Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 12, No. 253, 2014) on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

In the landmark case of Riley v. California, the Supreme Court prohibited law enforcement officers from searching a defendant’s cell phone as part of a search incident to a lawful arrest. The unanimous decision was widely regarded as a major victory for defendant’s rights, but in fact the Court missed two significant opportunities when deciding this case. First, the Court failed to repair the critically flawed search incident to arrest doctrine, and second, the court failed to provide useful guidance for law enforcement officers faced with emerging technologies. Like the Court’s other search incident to arrest opinions, Riley’s rationale was confused and inconsistent. And like the Court’s other Fourth Amendment technology cases, Riley’s arguments focused too much on the technical details of a specific new technology and not enough on basic Fourth Amendment principles. As a result, the true legacy of Riley is likely to be further confusion both in rules and in underlying doctrine.

Thousands of people arrested in Connecticut for marijuana possession now have the right to get their convictions erased after the state Supreme Court ruled Monday that the violation had been downgraded to the same legal level as a parking ticket.

The 7-0 ruling came in the case of former Manchester and Bolton resident Nicholas Menditto, who had asked for his convictions to be overturned after the Legislature decriminalized possession of small amounts of pot in 2011.

“It’s a topic multiple states will have to be facing,” said Aaron Romano, Menditto’s attorney. “Because marijuana is being decriminalized across the United States, this issue needs to be addressed.”

Colorado, Washington state, Washington, D.C., and Alaska have legalized the recreational use of pot. Oregon’s law legalizing it takes effect in July. Connecticut and 22 other states allow marijuana for medicinal purposes, and 18 states have decriminalized possession of varying amounts.

Last year, Colorado’s second-highest court ruled that some people convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana can ask for those convictions to be thrown out under the state law that legalized recreational marijuana. Officials in the other states are grappling with the issue.

View Full Story from the Hartford Courant