When prisoners are looking to clear their names, they often turn to the same place: the Innocence Project. Across the country, branches of the project have helped exonerate 289 prisoners using post-conviction DNA testing. Thirteen of those cases were handled by the Northern California Innocence Project. I spoke with Linda Starr, legal director of the Northern California Innocence Project, in her office at Santa Clara University’s law school.
Maurice Caldwell's conviction was overturned, and after 20 years incarcerated, he walked out of custody the 28th of March 2011. Photo courtesy of: Paige Kaneb
It’s the early 90s. Young people are watching MTV, their parents Twin Peaks. Maurice Caldwell is 22 years old and lives in the Alemany projects in Bernal Heights, on the same streets where he grew up. He works in an industrial warehouse in Hayward and likes to hang out with his friends.
But, he admits today, he was also a troublemaker. “I wasn’t a choir boy,” says Caldwell. “I sold drugs, from time to time.” And, from time to time, he’d come in contact with police.
So when Caldwell was picked up by police and taken to the county jail on 850 Bryant Street in the morning hours one day in September 1990, he thought nothing of it. Until he learned that he was accused of murder.
Fyrfli
On Monday, we devoted an entire show to wrongful convictions–how they happen, and how they can be prevented. I’ll post each piece separately, but the audio above is the full half-hour.
gecko.juice
San Francisco Weekly reports that the city has suspended its medial marijuana dispensary permitting program:
Pending permits had been on hold since December, after a ruling in a state appeals court case halted similar permitting programs across California. That case was appealed to the state Supreme Court, and during the appeal, the city could resume processing permits, a spokesman for the City Attorney told SF Weekly last week.
But the city reversed its decision today. All medical cannabis dispensary permit applications are on hold indefinitely, according to Jim Soos, an assistant director of Policy and Planning with the city Department of Public Health, until the city can “receive assurance that it is in compliance with state and federal law.”
There’s speculation that the feds threatened San Francisco with a lawsuit.
Lukasz Lech
Last night, a show called “Weed Wars” premiered on the Discovery Channel, and it’s entirely based on the Bay Area medical marijuana trade. The premiere has interesting timing: earlier this week, a U.S. District judge in Oakland rejected a request from dispensaries to keep federal prosecutors from filing charges against them. It’s the latest in a series of events that have been challenging California marijuana advocates, kicked off by Melinda Haag, the U.S. Attorney for California’s Northern District, when she announced in early October that the Justice Department is targeting certain cannabis dispensaries for closure.
MELINDA HAAG: Last week we sent letters to landowners and lien holders of these stores, putting them on notice that marijuana is being sold and used on their property in close proximity to children and that the operations must cease.
KALW’s Ben Trefny asked reporter Steven Short to catch us up on the state of medical marijuana in California.
Ali Winston
Tear gas obscures the intersection of 14th & Broadway in Oakland on October 25, 2011.
Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg denied a request by the ACLU of Northern California and the National Lawyers’ Guild for a temporary restraining order preventing excessive use of force by the Oakland Police Department during crowd control situations.
The request for a restraining order stems from the joint ACLU-NLG lawsuit filed earlier this week alleging violations of OPD’s crowd control policies on October 25th and the evening of November 2-3 during clashes between police and Occupy Oakland protesters.
In denying the requested restraining order, Judge Seeborg says the Oakland Police Department’s peaceful clearing of the Occupy Oakland encampment in Frank Ogawa Plaza demonstrated no urgent need for restrictions on OPD’s crowd control response. Continue reading
Ali Winston
A protester reminds Oakland Police of the department's federal oversight on November 14, 2011
Occupy Oakland made a a peaceful return to Frank Ogawa Plaza last night following a march by several hundred from the Public Library on 14th and Madison to City Hall. Despite holding a packed General Assembly in the amphitheater, dozens of Oakland Police positioned throughout the plaza and the surrounding streets deterred any attempts to set up tents or permanently retake the plaza.
Dealing with Occupy Oakland over the past month and a half has been a costly affair for OPD. Aside from the $2.4 million in police overtime and mutual aid payments, the hundreds of excessive force complaints following the use of tear gas and less-lethal projectiles against demonstrators on October 25th and a lawsuit alleging violations of crowd control policy, the protests are draining manpower from street patrols. And Oakland’s violent year shows no sign of letting up. Continue reading
Either financial fraud is less common than it was five, ten, and twenty years ago, or it’s dropped in importance on the long list of priorities for federal prosecutors. That’s according to a report released this week by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. According to federal data, criminal prosecutions for financial fraud continue to drop, despite the mortgage and financial crises of the past several years. According to the report, “ during the first eleven months of FY 2011 the government reported 1,251 new prosecutions were filed. If this activity continues at the same pace, the annual total of prosecutions will be 1,365 for this fiscal year, down 28.6 percent from their numbers of just five years ago and less than half the level prevalent a decade ago.”
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