Criminal Law/Criminal Legal Issues

Utah resident Weldon Angelos sold three eight-ounce bags of marijuana to a police informant. He had a gun, but it wasn't used or even taken out during the drug sale. His conviction for possession of a firearm in a drug transaction meant that he was sentenced to the federal mandatory minimum of 55 years.

The BJS released a report this summer (July, 2006) on trends among state prosecution offices. The state prosecution system cost the country close to $5 billion in 2005, to process close to 10 million criminal cases. These offices cleared about 2.5 million felony cases and about 7.5 million misdemeanor cases,

On October 2, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that the state’s parole board must follow Nevada's open meeting law. After the ruling, the Nevada Parole Board canceled all hearings, leading the Nevada Supreme Court to issue a stay on their own ruling at the end of the month. The stay permits the Parole Board to continue hearings without having to comply with Nevada's open meeting law.

This July, the state of Montana launched its new statewide public defender system, opening a headquarters in Butte and eleven regional offices across the state.

The 2005 Montana legislature designed the new system in response to a successful 2002 lawsuit filed by the ACLU (the suit was put on hold in 2004 so the legislature could overhaul the system).

Western Prison Project’s Associate Director David Rogers had the opportunity to interview Ajamu Baraka, director of the U.S. Human Rights Network. Founded in 2003, the network is a collaborative movement of groups working to advance the belief and practice of human rights in the United States. Originally made up of sixty groups and individuals, the Network now has close to 200 members, including organizations, attorneys, organizers, policy makers, researchers, and scholars –- and is still growing*. Mr. Baraka described to us the work of the network and the power and utility of using a “human rights” approach to deal with the problems of our criminal justice systems.