It is neither legally possible nor socially desirable to have a publicly "transparent" investigation of something as sensitive as a juvenile death investigation, especially when that death was a suicide. The loudest voices on this absolutely know better
A "transparent" investigation would presumably require releasing:
-thousands of Mikayla Miller's *deeply* personal communications, incl many w/her gf during a breakup
-names of juveniles interviewed (and already exonerated w/hard evidence)
-name of person who found her body
Also: the autopsy report can never be made public pursuant to MA law under any circumstances.
Pretty much everyone promoting the "lynching" narrative doesn't know the first thing about how a death investigation is conducted and who these rules protect, & it truly shows
Would you want everyone able to read everything you'd texted/emailed in the days before your death? How about when you were 16?
Have true-crime shows/podcasts actually cooked our brains this badly?
Nothing else to say on this until the actual investigation has concluded and findings announced, but in the meantime the next time you're inclined to spread rumors & misinfo about this or any other tragedy pls take that time to let an LGBTQ+ kid know that you love them instead
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Most misdemeanors in Massachusetts can be decriminalized simply by asking that they not be treated as crimes, or even just at the whim of the judge.
It's my opening bid in most minor criminal cases--bc why wouldn't it be--and every time it works it feels like actual magic.
To name only one benefit: the difference between a criminal drug conviction and a civil drug infraction can be life-changing for US citizens, and life-*saving* for non-citizens for whom even the smallest possession case means mandatory denial of residency and deportation
This 26-yr-old statute is far from perfect. It still excludes offenses relating to sex work, operating under the influence, etc from decriminalization--and decriminalization itself is just a band-aid against so many things which shouldn't be arrestable offenses in the first place
like so many #immigrationlaw rulings before it, today's #SCOTUS decision on the "stop-time" rule in deportation proceedings (1) can't be described to someone not already familiar in fewer than 3 paragraphs, (2) will make you lol if you think about it too much, (3) will save lives
All you really need to know about this extremely-specifically-important ruling is that it gives possibly tens of thousands of families a chance to stay together in the US who wouldn't have had that chance before. That's it. That's why it matters.
So that's the good news! The bad is that the same bad law still requires applicants to show that qualifying family members (but not themselves) will suffer "exceptional & extremely unusual hardship" upon deportation--eg, substantially beyond what other close families would suffer
A lot going on rn but N.B.: these extremely damning 25-yr-old BPD records were released at pretty much the exact point at which we knew the #DerekChauvinTrial verdict was imminent
Justice Stevens wrote one of the most important (and immigrant-friendly) decisions in the history of crimmigration law at the age of 90, and for whatever others problems I might have with #SCOTUS as an institution that just absolutely rules
Padilla was clearly more than just an ordinary case for Stevens, and it shows in the degree of care and concern in his public statements on how the court continued to interpret it 5 years later
Samuel Maverick was one of the first slave-owners in MA, and it's past time #EastBoston disowned him. I've been proposing for yrs that we re-dedicate the square to a different Maverick: the youngest victim of the Boston Massacre.