Race in the Criminal Justice System — Video from 9th Cir.

African Americans and other people of color are overrepresented in our nation's prisons compared with their numbers in the general population. A large number of factors are involved, including police practices, prosecution, and sentencing.

This year's Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference (a meeting of judges and court staff) included a 90-minute panel on the issue (Aug. 15, 2012). The panel, What Color is Justice: Racial Disparities in the Criminal Process, is available on YouTube.



The moderator, who introduces the topic, is former district judge Nancy Gertner, who now teaches at Harvard Law School. The other speakers are:

• Judge Ruben Castillo (D. N. Ill.), who was the first Hispanic judge on the Federal Sentencing Commission
• Prof. Sonja Starr, Univ. of Michigan School of Law, and
• Prof. Bryan Stephenson who teaches at NYU and also serves at the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which he founded.

For more on this topic, see Bryan Stephenson's TED Talk, We Need to Talk About an Injustice (March 2012) and material cited in our guide, Race in the Criminal Justice System.

Skype Deposition and Confrontation Clause

An interesting post:

Few cases have the intersection of the Confrontation Clause, witness unavailability, chain of custody, and Skype. Williams v State is one such unpublished opinion from the Indiana Court of Appeals. . . .

Skyping with the Confrontation Clause, Bow Tie Law's Blog, Nov. 19, 2012.

Law & Order Success Rates

Here's a fun item for fans of the original Law & Order series: David Haglund, Katie Kilkenny, & Holly Allen, Which Law & Order Characters Did Their Jobs Best? The Answer in Five Graphs, Slate, Nov. 14, 2012.

Haven't you always wondered who got a higher percentage of convictions, Jack McCoy or Ben Stone?