Outside the Beltway

Cruel punishment is not unusual.

The 9th Circuit says it is, at least under some circumstances.

Politics and justice are in tension.

A thorough review of the fairness of the process will be conducted.

Dissenters to a denied emergency appeal argue it is.

A too-long discourse on how courts should function.

A stroll down memory lane.

California Governor Gavin Newsome may have put the issue front and center for 2020.

The replacement of Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh is already having a significant impact.

The Supreme Court issued a ruling that places new limits on civil asset forfeiture by state and local government.

The Supreme Court appears ready to impose at least some limits on civil asset forfeiture at the state level.

We may finally get a ruling applying the Excessive Fine Clause to the states and limiting the ability of police to confiscate property.

My former home state executes more people per capita than any other state in the union. It has not gotten much better at it.

The President would like to copy Singapore’s zero-tolerance policy. The US Constitution stands in his way.

The most novel argument yet against capital punishment.

Chief Justice Roberts is sounding the alarm over deep cuts to the public defender program.

Today, the Supreme Court decided that mandatory life sentences for juveniles violate the 8th Amendment.

We’re literally choosing locking up drug offenders over investing in our children.

Prisons can be so overcrowded as to constitute cruel and inhuman punishment.

The state has an 8th Amendment duty to protect those it incarcerates from brutality, a duty which it quite often fails to carry out because of indifference and the hiring of “corrections officers” who are often of incredibly low intellectual caliber and moral character.

Rape is the de facto sentence for prisoners placed in many of our prisons and penitentiaries.

Many of the things that happened at Abu Ghraib routinely take place in our domestic penitentiary system.