Founder & ED @PFJ_USA; relentless lawyer; sometimes @StanfordLaw, can drive a truck/trailer rig through places you shouldn't. Speaking in my personal capacity.
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Nov 21 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Immigration Reminder: anyone, regardless of citizenship, has the right to remain silent if approached by law enforcement.
And...
If ICE or the police arrive at a home, immigration lawyers consistently note it is safe and legal to keep the door closed and ask who they are and for ID.
Nov 17 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
A short thread on what refusal to comply can look like, with specifics, examples, and ideas for what the future may hold.
Actually IDK if it's gonna be short, but it's gonna be specific, so read on if you're curious.
When people think of protest, or actions against authoritarian governments, they often think of people in streets yelling stuff and holding signs. And that's important, protest is a powerful way to show where the people stand! But
Nov 2 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Just a reminder that $10 billion has been poured into this election, much of it in ads that line the pockets of media and social media companies. Changing the rules of campaign finance would also eliminate the financial incentive for media companies to drive us nuts every 4 years
Over a billion of this went to Pennsylvania alone. How much do Pennsylvania media companies benefit directly from both-sidesing elections and ensuring their state stays a key swing state?
Oct 10 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
It's the weekly video. For World Mental Health Day, let's talk about something you might not know---how health insurance providers may actually drive up mass incarceration.
Some context: here is the original law, from 2008, where the government tried to get insurers to provide the same level of coverage for mental and physical health. propublica.org/article/biden-…
Oct 9 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Here are some things you can feel good about:
1. Black men are now more likely to go to college than prison, a reversal from 10 years ago.
fwd.us/wp-content/upl…
There are 70% fewer women in CA prison now than there were in 2010
1. This is an awful tone to take, as a leader, when talking about government action to forcibly, sometimes violently, remove people from a place where they are seeking stability.
This tone is bad because it treats the circumstance of homelessness as if it were an overt, intentional action by the unhoused person. "No more excuses"? You think people saying "homelessness is not a crime, please don't treat it as such" are giving EXCUSES?
Jul 3 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The thing about the Trump immunity case is that yeah, to an extent it creates "King President" but tbh it much more creates "King SCOTUS." This is because what is an "official" act of the prez will of course be litigated and...
...who is waiting at the end of the road on all that litigation? King SCOTUS of course, who will get to decide what's official, what *evidence* is sufficiently tied to official acts to come in or not come in, and basically whether a case lives or dies.
And one more thing.
Jun 29 • 114 tweets • 17 min read
You may have heard the term “Project 2025” floating around, and you may even have cracked open the 900+ page document yourself, only to see a lot of kind of bland, policy-wonk text. So let me crack through the policy-speak and tell you WTF is in this document.
This is, um, a long thread. But if you want a lot of info about Project 2025, all in one place, you've come to the right place.
Apr 21 • 27 tweets • 7 min read
Oh brother. OK, so first someone with "Attorney for the State" in their bio asked me for...an example of there being a chasm between what the law allows and what justice would be. Which is a bit surprising to me, so I kinda ignored it. But you guys want it, here we go.
The person I'm quoting here informed me that the law is clearly written on paper, and any American can understand it, which...well...I wish that was the case, because then lawyers and courts wouldn't be as necessary (no more statutory interpretation!). BUT...
Nov 24, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This article is so good and so thorough and so sad
newrepublic.com/article/176854…
It's not just that college graduates bring vital services to a state like medical care and high-end tech work and innovation and development. It's also that it's hard to get valuable businesses to move to a state with horrible schools bc they will struggle to retain talent.
Sep 22, 2023 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
Hey folks! It's your weekly video from @PFJ_USA . This week we're talking about what happens when police interrogate kids...and the summary version is that the info that comes out of accused kids should probably not be used, because they falsely confess ALL. THE. TIME.
So basically, most people don't think they could ever falsely confess to a crime---in one study, 96% of people didn't think that could happen to them.
Hey hey hey everyone, it's that time again! Your weekly @PFJ_USA video on something gross about your criminal legal system.
This week: the "Brady" rule, or, why oh why do prosecutors have such a hard time handing over evidence of innocence?
So basically, when a person is accused of a crime, the rules of our court system say that prosecutors have to turn over "discovery," which is the evidence they have against the person.
Makes sense, right? If they think someone is guilty, they should be able to show why.
Aug 23, 2023 • 21 tweets • 5 min read
I promised you that every week I would tell you something you don't know (but should) about criminal courts. Today, let's talk about #debt.
What follows below are things I have learned from @FinesandFeesJC, @PSARATHYJONES, @JuvLaw1975 as well as deep research through @pfj_usa on this issue.
Aug 10, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
OK... here we go. Yesterday I did a poll asking if folks would want short video explainers about things. People did, so here you go. Juror restrictions are really racist. Let's talk about it.
I want to be really clear, there are 4 levels of problem here
1. Who even gets called to jury duty is influenced by lists of potential jurors being drawn from the DMV and voter rolls, restricting eligible people to people who engage with bureaucracy on this level
Aug 1, 2023 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
OK so…what if I told you that there is a thing that @PFJ_USA and public defenders can do together that gets cases *dismissed*...over 70% of the time. And 87% of the time, this same thing takes jail and prison sentences off the table.
Read on.
So, as you probably know if you follow me, the criminal legal system is full of…well, there’s a lot of noise in the machine. A huge number of cases are over-charged, meaning prosecutors laid the heaviest charges they could on a person instead of more accurate allegations.
Feb 22, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Many of you saw that video of police facing off with a school principal who wouldn't let them in.
But do you know how bad police encounters are for education? Very. Some facts:
In one key study, having an official interaction with police (through an arrest or simply a recorded police contact) decreased the odds of a child graduating from high school by more than 70%.
So, I know not many people out there are like PELL GRANTS FOR PEOPLE IN PRISON IS MY NUMBER ONE POLITICAL ISSUE.
I know, I know--it's kind of niche. But I think maybe you don't realize the magnitude of what this policy change is going to do. Quick stats:
So, once folks in prison are eligible for Pell Grants (starting this summer) employment rates in the states they return post-release are expected to increase by 10%. vera.org/downloads/publ…
Jan 10, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I'm going to bring this up again: broken windows policing, which arrests people for low-level things, takes exactly the wrong message from the "broken windows" idea. They got it really violently backwards. Threadette:
In fact, if there is any message to take from the idea of broken windows spurring more misconduct in run-down neighborhoods, it's this: the government should invest more in fixing up people's neighborhoods. Not as altruism. As safety. Want receipts? Read on.
Dec 29, 2022 • 36 tweets • 8 min read
Yesterday, I told @RobertGarcia I'd love to talk about how transit policy can be used to aid in the dismantling of American mass incarceration.
Today, I figured I might as well kick off the conversation here. With a thread. That you all can add to at will :)
There are SO MANY WAYS that transit intersects with the punishment system. One of the first things that comes to mind is transit as a locus of arrest.
Hey yes I am still using twitter to tell people things they might not know about American punishment. Like how we hear about the sudden and traumatic deaths in custody, and the death-penalty cases, but rarely about how incarceration follows people home to kill them slowly there.
Being imprisoned makes you sick. People who have had to live in prison have higher rates of hypertension, asthma, stress-related disease, mental health issues, etc. Mariame Kaba calls them "death-making institutions."
Oct 28, 2022 • 26 tweets • 4 min read
Just spent 40 minutes filming cops in Redwood City CA. Let me tell you what I saw.
My husband and I were coming home from a workout and saw two young men of color pulled over by San Mateo County Sheriffs.
