Tejas Narechania quoted by ABC10, June 8, 2017
“Companies might, instead of selling things outright, they’ll only license them to you, or they’ll make you sign contracts with the purchases that limit what you can do in the resale market,” he said.
Privacy vs. Security: Experts debate merits of each in tech-rich world
Catherine Crump and John Yoo quoted in Government Technology, June 7, 2017
“The problem with that is you cannot build a backdoor that works only for the U.S. government, good guys or other people with good motives,” Crump argued. “If you build it for them, encryption will be weakened for everyone.”
“It’s possible that a consequence of more encryption might actually be more security for our country. I just don’t see why Apple gets to decide that for the United States,” Yoo said. “I think if that is really a consequence of increasing encryption, then our government, who we elect and send to Washington, should make that call.”
Ending the stigma and prosecution of self-administered abortions
Jill Adams and Farah Diaz-Tello quoted by Truthout, June 7, 2017
Adams: “Courts reviewing such prosecutions have generally sided with people who end their own pregnancies. But even though abortion itself is legal, and the US Supreme Court has never authorized arrest for abortion, those who end their own pregnancies may risk unjustified arrest and imprisonment under laws that limit abortion provision to licensed health care workers and that criminalize self-induced abortion.”
Diaz-Tello: “Pregnant women who have lost or ended a pregnancy are treated differently from other people in nearly every medical context. In no other medical context is someone threatened with jail for administering their own medical care. In no medical context would it be acceptable for someone to be subjected to a bedside interrogation with no attorney present as it happened in several of these cases.”
Sonoma County drops juvenile justice fees
Stephanie Campos-Bui quoted by The Press Democrat, June 6, 2017
Sonoma County is “moving in the right direction with a good group of counties now who have all decided to look at this issue and decided it’s not worth it given the impact on families,” said one of the researchers, Stephanie Campos-Bui, who is pushing state lawmakers to support the bill.
California voted to speed executions. Not so fast, justices say.
Erwin Chemerinsky writes for The Sacramento Bee, June 6, 2017
The delays in imposing the death penalty are not a result of the bad faith of lawyers or judges. Speeding up executions without providing qualified lawyers and without dealing with the problems in the courts is a recipe for unjustly imposing the death penalty.
Court to hear challenge to speed up California executions
Elisabeth Semel quoted by Associated Press, June 6, 2017
With a backlog of 380 death penalty appeals, there’s concern judges would be overwhelmed trying to speed through appeals, said Elisabeth Semel. … “There’s an enormous ripple effect to that,” said Semel, who directs the school’s death penalty clinic. “The attention the justices can pay to each individual case is significantly diminished. When you’re talking about life and death, that’s important.”
California Supreme Court weighs proposition 66 lawsuit
Elisabeth Semel quoted by Capital Public Radio, June 6, 2017
“Because of the insistence under this initiative that cases be decided on what can only be called a about many other important cases.”
Death penalty in California: State Supreme Court holds high-stakes hearing Tuesday
Elisabeth Semel quoted by The Mercury News, June 5, 2017
Today, Semel said, the average appeal spans 15 years. To resolve the cases three times as quickly, she said, will likely mean more mistakes as each case receives less attention and offenders are represented by attorneys with limited experience in capital cases. “Where is the critical mass of lawyers going to come from to do this work in an expedited time frame, and who is going to pay for it?” she asked.
She was desperate. She tried to end her own pregnancy. She was thrown in jail.
Jill Adams quoted by Mother Jones, May/June 2017
“In the new political reality of 2017,” Adams says, “we could foresee an emboldened anti-choice movement that places women who end their own pregnancies in the bull’s-eye.”
A Muslim-American activist’s speech raises ire even before it’s delivered
Fred Smith Jr. quoted by The New York Times, May 26, 2017
“There are a few people who have been very effective in branding the left at shutting down free speech, but the moment they are confronted with leftist speech they don’t like, they are equally outraged and poised to suppress that speech,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the answer for either side.”