Source: theintercept.com 4/27/24 For years, the political establishment opportunistically railed against sex trafficking. Then came Pizzagate. Americans adore a moral panic. During the Red Scare, we believed that Soviet agents were everywhere, having secretly infiltrated all levels of society. In the 1950s, the U.S. government banned switchblades over unfounded fears that we were in the throes of “West Side Story”-style knife violence. The Satanic Panic convinced Americans of the 1980s that absurd claims of ritual abuse and sacrifice were somehow credible. Around the same time, there was “stranger danger” —…
Read MoreCategory: Commentary
Police Officers Cannot Violate The Fourth Amendment Law
Source: theopinionpages.com 4/25/24 It is a felony and a federal crime to impersonate someone else and intercept private communications intended for them, 18 U.S. Code § 2511. There is no exception for police, and no exception if written permission is obtained. Yet impersonating others online is the basis for police sting operations across the country. Law enforcement must be able to investigate criminal activity, but they cannot commit their own crimes while doing so. It is now customary for officers to violate Fourth Amendment law, and it is happening more…
Read MoreThe American Kennel Club’s pedophile problem
Source: Business Insider 4/24/24 [ACSOL is posting this to show pedophile hysteria in the media] The girl was 14 and attending a Dallas dog show. She and her family were talking to a prominent handler and longtime family friend, Adam Wilkerson, 31, when he asked her to help him get coffee for the group. Instead, he brought her to an empty hall closet and instructed her to touch his exposed penis. She began working as Wilkerson’s assistant a few months later. She’d been showing dogs since she was a toddler,…
Read MoreDoctors question use of ‘excited delirium’ to explain deaths of suspects in police custody
Source: abajournal.com 2/13/24 [ACSOL note: We are posting this since this concept could be used to excuse hatred towards registrants] In October 2023, three Tacoma, Washington, police officers went on trial for the 2020 death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who died after he was punched, put in a chokehold and tased during a confrontation with police. In December, a jury acquitted the officers of second-degree murder and manslaughter. One detail in the defense’s case may have influenced the jury: A paramedic at the scene testified that he believed…
Read MoreEditorial: Providing criminal defense is not a crime. So why do some demonize lawyers for it?
Source: latimes.com 2/13/24 Shortly after Claudine Gay stepped down as president of Harvard University last month, an interesting sidelight to her years as a university administrator emerged: As dean of the faculty of arts and sciences a few years earlier, Gay was involved in removing a law professor from his secondary role as the dean of a campus dormitory. The professor, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., had caused an uproar on campus in 2019 when he joined the legal defense team of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was accused of rape…
Read MoreHere’s Why Donald Trump Doesn’t Have to Register as a Sex Offender
Source: thedailybeast.com 1/30/24 [ACSOL’S NOTE: This article is posted to show the differences between civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. It is NOT posted to show preference for any political party, both of which pass laws against registrants and sex offenses. Please stop all political party attack comments.] You’d think someone found liable for sexual assault would be considered a danger to society, but unfortunately the law says otherwise. Being on the sex offender registry isn’t punishment, according to the Supreme Court of the United States. Which is to say,…
Read MoreDavid French: When the right ignores its sex scandals
Source: twincities.com 1/29/24 Let me share with you one of the worst and most important recent news stories that you’ve probably never heard about. Late last month, the Southern Baptist Convention settled a sex abuse lawsuit brought against a man named Paul Pressler for an undisclosed sum. The lawsuit was filed in 2017 and alleged that Pressler had raped a man named Duane Rollins for decades, with the rapes beginning when Rollins was only 14 years old. The story would be terrible enough if Pressler were simply an ordinary predator.…
Read MoreBan Government Involvement In Sex Trafficking
Source: public.substack.com 1/9/24 It sounds like a Hollywood movie. Government intelligence agencies, perhaps CIA and Mossad, use sex with dozens of teenage girls to blackmail some of the world’s most powerful people, including Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton. But it’s not a movie. It appears to be what New York investor Jeffrey Epstein did from the 1990s until 2018. One year later, he died in jail, either by suicide or murder. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this case. The truth is that we don’t have…
Read MoreEFF Asks Court to Uphold Federal Law That Protects Online Video Viewers’ Privacy and Free Expression
Source: eff.org 1/4/24 As millions of internet users watch videos online for news and entertainment, it is essential to uphold a federal privacy law that protects against the disclosure of everyone’s viewing history, EFF argued in court last month. For decades, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) has safeguarded people’s viewing habits by generally requiring services that offer videos to the public to get their customers’ written consent before disclosing that information to the government or a private party. Although Congress enacted the law in an era of physical media,…
Read MoreU.S. Probation System a “Quagmire” That Sets Defendants Up to Fail
Source: prisonlegalnews.org 11/15/23 An article published in Reason on January 26, 2023, cited numerous problems in probation systems nationwide, describing them as a “quagmire.” For the article, the magazine, a publication of the Libertarian California-based Reason Foundation, profiled Jennifer Schroeder, who was handed a drug charge in Minnesota and ended up placed on probation for 40 years. There she joined over three million Americans who were on probation at the end of 2020, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. That’s over half the total number of people under…
Read More3 Myths About Hiring People with Criminal Records
Source: hbr.org 12/13/2023 Summary. Research suggests that generalized fears about hiring people with a criminal history — such as fear they’ll commit another crime — are tough to square with the facts. An expansion of what’s often called “second-chance” or…Employers are desperate to recruit hundreds of thousands of workers who seemingly have vanished from the workforce. People with criminal histories represent a large pool of labor that could fill the gap. So why aren’t more managers hiring them? We consistently hear of several fears: Fear the person will commit…
Read MoreReport: “Mass Supervision” Driving Mass Incarceration
Source: prisonlegalnews.org 11/15/23 A May 2023 report by Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) counts nearly 3.7 million Americans on probation or parole – nearly twice the nation’s total imprisoned population. This “mass supervision” brings the total number under control of the nation’s criminal justice system to about 5.5 million people – over 2,100 of every 100,000 citizens aged 18 and over. While touted as alternatives to incarceration, probation and parole do not operate apart from it – in fact, they often end up driving it. Violations of probation and parole accounted…
Read MoreThe government is launching a review of the porn industry – here’s what that means
Source: cosmopolitan.com 12/8/23 The porn industry is to be scrutinised as part of a government review that hopes to tackle abuse, exploitation, and the harmful impact of pornography, it has been announced. From human trafficking to illegal pornography and questions around age limitations when it comes to accessing to graphic content, efforts into how to tackle the dangers associated with the online sex industry has been something women’s charities have long been calling for. The Pornography Review, which has been announced by the government on 1 December, follows the passing…
Read MoreThe Disturbing True Story Behind the Movie “May December”
Source: menshealth.com 12/3/23 Todd Haynes’ new film May December stars Julianne Moore and Charles Melton as a married couple with a complicated history (to say the least), and Natalie Portman as an actress who inserts themselves into their lives while preparing to perform in a movie about the beginning of their relationship. The detail which makes this marriage so unusual, and which drives much of the deeply unsettling dynamics throughout the film, is the fact that Moore’s character Gracie met her now-husband, Joe, when she was 36 and he was…
Read MorePedophile panic and coming political violence. What the Paul Pelosi case revealed
Source: LA Times on Yahoo.com 11/24/23 A unicorn costume, a hammer and a belief that pedophiles are using public schools to destroy democracy: The trial of David DePape for attacking Paul Pelosi was strange and disturbing. But take away the costume and the hammer, and the reasoning for DePape’s vicious attack is alarmingly mainstream — pedophile panic. By that, I mean the outrageous effort not just by hate-mongering conspiracy theorists to frame LGBTQ+ individuals as deviant and dangerous, lumping them in with criminals who sexually abuse children. But also a…
Read MoreThis Rape Victim Wants To End the Sex Offender Registry
Source: reason.com 12/2023 issue, Women Against Registry (W.A.R.) “A lot of people on the registry are on there for consensual behavior, things I think many people agree shouldn’t be crimes,” says Meaghan Ybos, the president of Women Against Registry. When Meaghan Ybos was raped in 2003, it was the sort of assault you see more often in cinematic crime fiction than in reality. A stranger, wearing a ski mask, broke into her home, held a knife to her throat, and forced himself on her. Twenty years later, Ybos is president…
Read MoreGuilty by association: When parole and probation rules disrupt support systems
Source: prisonpolicy.org 11/8/23 Requiring people on supervision to avoid others with criminal legal system contact can actually hinder their success in the community. We found that it’s common for probation and parole agencies to impose these “association” restrictions, tearing apart critical social networks and threatening to lock people up for harmless — and even helpful — interactions. For the 3.7 million people on parole or probation in the United States, the very people who can best support their success are often unable to help because of supervision conditions that prohibit…
Read MoreLA: The Case of the Do-Nothing Judge: Suppose a judge decides not to decide. For five years.
Source: themarshallproject.org 2/15/2016 For the past 45 years Wilbert Jones has sworn to anyone who would hear him that he did not kidnap and rape a woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1971, crimes for which he is serving a life sentence. But only in the past five years or so have his attorneys and investigators been able to find compelling evidence that might support his claim of innocence. And it has been more than five years, from July 29, 2011 until today, that a Louisiana “commissioner,” acting as a…
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