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Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
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3 Jun, 5 tweets, 2 min read
THREAD: A huge scandal is brewing in New York: Cuomo is on the verge of making the highest court in New York one of the most right-wing, pro-incarceration, anti-civil rights courts in modern U.S. history. Incredible that national media is not covering this. (1)
Read more about the alarming judicial nominations here. All happening at a time when New York cages Black people at rates 3-5 times South Africa at the height of Apartheid. (2)
Only a few people in the senate have spoken up against this right-wing power play. And @AndreaSCousins has said nothing publicly yet, even though one of the nominees tried to block her previous reforms by spreading false information. (3)
Find out how to get involved here (4)
Many people don't know how much power judges have, and so politicians like Cuomo and Trump can fill the courts with dangerous elites who have done almost nothing in their careers to help the most vulnerable people but instead have used their power to crush poor people. (end)

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More from @equalityAlec

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
4 Jun
Thread: The feds estimate that 4 percent of people in prisons and jails are sexually assaulted each year, the majority committed by officers. This means that 95,000 human beings are sexually assaulted. (1)
The 95,000 sexual assaults don't even count the far larger number of estimated beatings, taserings, strangulations, and other physical assaults by officers against people in their custody. (2)
And yet, many professors and journalists argue that "police reduce crime" even though they know they are not counting these serious assaults because the poice don't report them in the police data the "experts" quote. (3)
Read 6 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
1 Jun
A lot of non-lawyers I talk to are shocked that federal courts have made up something called "abstention," in which they simply decide to "abstain" from stopping ongoing violations of constitutional rights. What is the purpose of federal courts?
Many of these judges talk approvingly about "law enforcement" and "the rule of law," even as they refuse to enforce the most important law: the U.S. Constitution. Of course, like all doctrines, "abstention" is selectively applied in ways that hurt poor people and people of color.
It's incredible how unseriously many *serious* lawyers and judges take their work. Many are completely okay with a legal system in which violations of basic constitutional rights are the daily norm, in millions of people's cases. Almost everyone is just okay with it.
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
28 May
THREAD. The Sheriff has just fired 11 cops in the beating death of young Jaquaree Simmons. After attacking him, officers who beat him left him alone and naked to die on a cold jail floor, and other officers did nothing to help. His story is important. (1) abc13.com/harris-county-…
The Sheriff calls the cops "reprehensible," but it's been more than 3 months since the murder and family has been given almost no info. No cops have been charged b/c the system cages poor people for possessing plants right away but arrests cops only if politics demands it. (2)
When the system does eventually arrest cops it is only so that it can use a "bad apples" narrative and prosecution to avoid making systemic changes that reduce the size and power of the punishment bureaucracy. (3)
Read 7 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
28 May
THREAD: This is for students and new lawyers. Much of the history of US law is courts concocting doctrines to prevent themselves from doing justice. That's not normal, or inevitable, and you shouldn't accept it. It's part of a strategy. (1)
Legal elites in our society know that there is an enormous gap between the way the law is written on marble monuments and the way that the law is lived and experienced by the most vulnerable people. One of the roles of courts is to dress brutal state violence in fancy words. (2)
It therefore becomes important to powerful people that the legal system hide the gap between stated values and actual reality as much as possible, because a system that constantly fails to conform to its own basic values and principles would lose legitimacy. (3)
Read 6 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
26 May
THREAD: A homeless man who struggles with addiction and depends on recycling to survive has been sent to prison for *4 years* for damaging the Ferrari of a famous baseball player as he looked for shelter in the wealthy athlete's garage. A few observations: (1)
The man damaged the Ferrari when he broke the garage window with some rocks, "looking for shelter." The prosecutor was outraged, saying his behavior was "offensive" to other homeless people with mental illness and addiction who "commit no crimes." (2)fresnobee.com/news/local/cri…
The judge was "disturbed" because the homeless man had "asked for food and water" from another neighbor in the wealthy neighborhood. The judge punished him because he had a “lack of desire to conform to society.” (3)
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
25 May
**Alarming News** Governor Cuomo has just nominated one of the most dangerous possible people to the highest court in New York. The state senate could block the nomination, but people rarely pay attention to judges. Please share widely. (1)
The nominee is the DA in Nassau County, one of the most notoriously corrupt offices in the country. She has led that office through an unprecedented era of family separation, mass human caging, and racial injustice. (2)
Before running the Nassau DA, Singas was a notorious DA in Queens during a time when the Queens DA office has been documented to have been engaged in rampant patterns of corruption. Nominating this person to serve as a judge is astonishing. (3) accountabilityny.org/about/
Read 6 tweets

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