Category Archives/Archivos de la categoría: Articles

Editorial published in The New York Times on March 4, 2013

Last week, President Obama pardoned 17 people who had been convicted of felonies. An Na Peng, a Chinese citizen living in Hawaii, is the first person convicted of an immigration crime to be pardoned in many years. With the pardon, she can now become an […]

Editorial published  in The New York Times on January 1, 2013

When the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, it said there were two social purposes for imposing capital punishment for the most egregious crimes: deterrence and retribution. In recent months, these justifications for a cruel and uncivilized punishment have been seriously undermined by […]

By Adam Gopnik

Here’s another problem: a growing number of American prisons are now contracted out as for-profit businesses to for-profit companies. The companies are paid by the state, and their profit depends on spending as little as possible on the prisoners and the prisons. It’s hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and […]

By David Zapp

So said a famous judge in the U.S.  Whose experience? Your experience. My experience. The more experience the more you can predict legal outcomes. Take for example the legal requirement in a narcotics importation conspiracy that the government must prove that the defendant know—not just believe—that the drugs were going to the U.S. […]

Is it worthwhile filing motions you know you are going to lose?

David Zapp: If you find yourself against an adversary that knows he is going to have to go fifteen rounds with you before he wins, he may want to strike a deal. Even if he knows he could beat you up, he does not […]

By David Zapp

There once was a case where a defense lawyer was incredibly aggressive, and impressively aggressive. He filed every conceivable motion available to him and he would always ask permission to file a motion to exceed the page limit letting the judge know he had plenty to say. Every motion was […]

By Adam Gopnik (Edited) January 30, 2012

Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S.— more than were in Stalin’s gulags.

“Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard, Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,” [Bob] Dylan sings, and while it isn’t strictly true, it contains a truth: the […]

The New York Times editorial, published January 5, 2013

Barack Obama has rarely exercised presidential clemency to grant pardons and restore the civil rights of convicted criminals, a power that Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and other presidents used with dedication to correct injustices in the legal system.

Mr. Obama has pardoned only 22 people, fewer than […]

Published December 8, 2012 in

The New York Times

Federal sentencing law has been indefensibly harsh for a generation, but in theory it has contained a safety valve called compassionate release. The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act gives federal courts the power to reduce sentences of federal prisoners for “extraordinary and compelling reasons,” like a terminal illness.

In practice, […]

Article published in The New York Times on January 4, 2013

By Simon Romero

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Some world leaders live in palaces. Some enjoy perks like having a discreet butler, a fleet of yachts or a wine cellar with vintage Champagnes. Then

there is José Mujica, the former guerrilla who is Uruguay’s president. He lives in a […]

“Last month, HSBC admitted in court pleadings that it had allowed big Mexican and Colombian drug cartels to launder at least $881 million. . . . Those were some of the transgressions uncovered during a two-year investigation led by the Justice and Treasury Departments and acknowledged by HSBC in a settlement, known as a deferred […]

Bail — better to have loved and lost

United States v. Briggs, No. 12-2988-Cr (2d Cir. October 5, 2012)

Antonio Briggs, charged in a large, multi-defendant drug conspiracy, was ordered detained in September of 2010, and remains in jail today. In this appeal, he claimed that this lengthy pretrial detention deprived him of due process.

The circuit, although […]