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The Marshall Project
Opening Statement
May 23, 2022
Edited by Andrew Cohen
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Pick of the News

Border war. A lone federal judge on Friday refused the Biden administration’s efforts to stop enforcing a public health law that has kept asylum-seekers and other migrants from crossing into the U.S. The law, known as Title 42, was triggered to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The Washington Post Related: More than 12,000 migrant children reentered the U.S. as unaccompanied minors in 2021 after being rebuffed at the border. CBS News More: But tens of thousands of people remain in limbo at the Mexico border, waiting and hoping that the public health restrictions will ease. The New York Times

The Southern Baptist Convention has its own sexual abuse scandal. Leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination ignored reports of sexual assault and resisted reforms for two decades, a new report concludes. High-ranking Southern Baptist staff members maintained a list of hundreds of ministers accused of sexual misconduct but did nothing to hold them accountable. USA Today A 2007 proposal to keep track of sexual offenders within the church was rejected. Executives feared legal liability for the assaults. The New York Times

“The coroner was crying. A coroner.” The family of Katherine Massey, one of the victims of the Buffalo massacre, lament the fateful decisions that day that put their beloved kin in the line of fire. Of the gunman they say: An “18-year-old piss pot.” Time More: Calling on the gun shopkeepers who sold the Buffalo shooter his firearms. “If he had bought the gun from me and mowed down those poor people, I would not be able to go to work,” says one. The New Yorker Related: At the South Carolina church that saw its own racist massacre in June 2015, the Buffalo shooting brings back terrible memories. The Washington Post

Election deniers are running for attorney general posts in four battleground states. They all want to be their state’s top law enforcement official. They all support baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. NBC News Related: Rudy Giuliani reportedly spent hours answering questions from members of the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot and insurrection. He was under oath and there is a transcript. The New York Times More evidence that Ginni Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Virginia. The Washington Post

The “homeless industrial complex.” Los Angeles police in riot gear swept through a homeless encampment at Echo Park Lake in March 2021. Over 180 people were arrested. More than a dozen journalists were detained. Police and city officials praised the operation as a progresssive step toward giving the homeless “interim housing” that would keep them safer. One year later, by any measure, it’s clear the operation is a colossal failure. Eighty-five people rounded up that day in March are missing. At least seven have died. Only 13 have found permanent housing. And now there’s a fence around the park. The New Republic

N/S/E/W

Call it a contest of “culture warriors.” A Republican primary fight for district attorney in Tarrant County, Texas, pits a Trump-endorsed former judge and a state legislator who opposed no-fault divorce and has been pressing for anti-transgender measures in the state. Bolts

Michigan election official Jocelyn Benson says that former President Donald Trump suggested she be arrested for treason and executed because she refused to overturn results that showed that Joe Biden won the state’s election for president in 2020. NBC News

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert isn’t a fan of criminal justice reform. A longtime Republican, she’s running this time as a “no party preference” candidate in heavily-Democratic California. Los Angeles Times

In Boston, Massachusetts, Mayor Michelle Wu faces new questions about police transparency and accountability after she says she hasn’t been able to read an unredacted internal affairs report on Patrick Rose, the former police union president who pleaded guilty last month to child molestation. Boston Globe

Daniel Taylor, who spent two decades in prison for a double murder he did not commit, will receive a $14 million settlement from officials in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago Tribune

Commentary

What Justice Alito refuses to acknowledge as he guts Roe v. Wade. “There is room for the Mississippi legislature’s hosannas to every organ a fetus grows but not a word for those of us who must actively give of ourselves to make them.” New York Magazine More: Contests for governor and state attorney general in Michigan will help determine the extent to which women have abortion rights there or not. The New Republic

The ties that bind the Buffalo shooter and the Capitol rioters. A form of the racist “replacement theory” was at the heart of both events. Slate More: If the Buffalo shooter’s “actions are linked to American history and current culture, then we must ask about the roles people play in creating or maintaining a culture of anti-Black racism.” The Atlantic

Congress fails again. The latest iteration of the Violence Against Women Act won’t solve the issue of violence against women. It will just perpetuate overcriminalization. Inquest

A “care first, jails last” approach. Los Angeles County must invest more in mental health evaluations to achieve the visionary justice reforms it seeks. Los Angeles Times

You can’t fix what you can’t see. Oklahoma’s criminal justice reform continues to be hampered by the lack of quality jail data. The Oklahoman

Etc.

Will Gary Mohr be the next federal prisons chief? The former director of the Ohio prison system, a corrections veteran who once was a managing director of CoreCivic, is reportedly on the short list to replace disgraced BOP director Michael Carvajal. The Associated Press

Good news for researchers trying to expose security flaws. The Justice Department says it won’t pursue hacking charges against “good faith” efforts under the ambiguously-drafted Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The Washington Post

“Like being held as a POW at Guantanamo.” Isolated detention, but no new charges, for the federal prisoner who is suspected of murdering Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger in a West Virginia penitentiary in 2018. Boston Globe

The Just Home Project. The MacArthur Foundation and the Urban Institute are funding an initiative designed to try to break cycles of homelessness and incarceration. Bloomberg

Good intentions gone bad. Jarrod Shanahan’s new book. “Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage,” helps readers understand how jail became one of the most notorious in the country. The Nation

Opening Statement curates timely articles on criminal justice and immigration; these links are not endorsements of specific articles or points of view.

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