Criminal Law

“Forty years after my family fought for the right for me to hug my mother in prison, children are still being denied the same human connection,” writes Chesa Boudin, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center.

“When we deny adequate legal representation to individuals trying to correct proven errors or systemic bias, we undermine trust in the law itself,” writes Andrea Crider, staff attorney and lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law’s Criminal Law & Justice Center.

“California no longer has a death chamber,” said Elisabeth Semel, a UC Berkeley law professor and founding director of the law school’s Death Penalty Clinic, which provides legal representation for condemned prisoners. “It has been 20 years since the last execution. There are a host of logistical and legal issues that the state will have to confront administratively and in the courts before executions can resume.”

UC Berkeley School of Law Lecturer Andrea Crider called the bill unnecessary. “From my understanding, the people who have been touting this legislation are largely conservative district attorneys, and they have used what I would describe as ‘extreme outlier cases’,” Crider said.

“For years, California courts ran an unconstitutional shadow detention system.” writes Chesa Boudin, executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center at Berkeley Law. “The mechanics were straightforward: Set bail at an amount the defendant cannot pay and the result is the same as ordering detention outright.”

“In California, there are no laws that criminalize homelessness. But with policies such as the one Oakland has instituted, unhoused people are losing protections,” said Laura Riley, assistant dean of Clinical Education at Berkeley Law and a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Homelessness & Poverty.

“The Supreme Court recognized in Roper v. Simmons, juvenile cognition means they are not as deterrable or as responsible as adults. With crime historically low today, it makes no sense to run the experiment again,” UC Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon said.

Maiya Zwerling, clinical supervisor at Berkeley Law’s Policy Advocacy Clinic (PAC) joins KPFA’s Law & Disorder to discuss PAC’s report No Time To Wait: A Case for Releasing Elders from California’s Women’s Prisons.

“Federal grand jurors are showing that they will use their power wisely,” write Criminal Law and Justice Center Executive Director Chesa Boudin and UC Davis Professor Eric S. Fish. “We should embrace this trend and give them the procedural protections they need to serve as true checks on government power.”