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      ‘It just doesn’t let up’: Alabama state prisons rife with violence, inmates say

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      ‘It just doesn’t let up’: Alabama state prisons rife with violence, inmates say State’s corrections department says things are ‘under control’ after labor strike began in September over conditions, but images and interviews say otherwiseLast Friday, five days after Alabama prisoners launched a statewide labor strike, Republican governor Kay Ivey assured reporters that the head of the state’s beleaguered corrections department had things “well under control”.But images and interviews from inside the state’s prisons show a system in disarray, with deteriorating conditions, pervasive violence, multiple deaths and little oversight from staff.The strike started on 26 September after thousands of prisoners refused to leave their dorms and cell blocks for work in mess halls, factories and trash crews. Prison administrators said they had to cut back food rations from three meals a day to two, which prisoners saw as retaliation, but officials blamed on the fact that meals are generally prepared by the incarcerated workers themselves. Guards stopped letting people out for visiting, recreation or school. Cellphone footage shared with the Marshall Project shows trash piling up in walkways and dorms in some prisons.embedThen on Saturday – less than 24 hours after the governor’s declaration – prisoners recorded grainy cellphone footage of what appears to be a fatal stabbing in an Alabama lockup. The first of the two short clips, which prisoners said was filmed at Donaldson correctional facility in Bessemer, Alabama, shows one man apparently stabbing another in a common room as others watch from a few feet away. The second video shows a man sprawled out on the floor, struggling to lift his head up, while another prisoner leans over him as if to check whether he’s alive.The Alabama department of corrections did not dispute the authenticity of the videos, and confirmed that 30-year-old Denarieya Smith was killed on Saturday at Donaldson in an “inmate-on-inmate assault involving a weapon”, which officials are investigating. The department cited security concerns and refused to answer questions about whether the unit is understaffed. In the most recent numbers made public, the department of corrections was authorized by the legislature to have 3,326 employees in 2018. This summer, it had a little more than half that many, according to a staffing report from June.“We’re not going outside except for chow,” said one man who spoke to the Marshall Project from a medium-security facility and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation from prison officials. “There’s no visitation. There’s no trade school. No laundry. No ice. The officers have been working 16 hours a day since this started, but I noticed there’s less and less of them whenever we go to chow.”The man said he’d seen videos of fights and violence, including images of Smith’s killing. The county’s medical examiner confirmed that a second prisoner at Donaldson – 29-year-old Joseph Agee – had also been stabbed to death since the strike began. The medical examiner said both deaths are being investigated as homicides.“What we saw in that video is outrageous – but it’s been outrageous in DOC for so long, and it just doesn’t let up,” said Carla Crowder, executive director of the advocacy non-profit Alabama Appleseed. “It is not unusual to have multiple homicides or drug overdoses in a week, and videos circulating of sleeping guards and open-air drug use in the dorms. That is the new normal.”She added that the governor’s claims of control are “meaningless words, not grounded in reality”, she added.The Alabama prison system has been the target of a federal investigation for years, and in late 2020, the Department of Justice sued the state over concerns about overcrowding, violence and a high risk of death for incarcerated people. Despite the added scrutiny, prisoners and advocates said conditions have not improved. And as the case is not slated for trial until 2024, some hoped a collective action would spark legislative changes to sentencing and parole practices that could free people instead.Since the justice department’s suit began, “the death toll has risen significantly”, said Diyawn Caldwell, founder of the advocacy group Both Sides of the Wall. “They’re understaffed. The officers are bringing in the drugs that are killing people. The conditions are barbaric. You have people that are committing suicide. No one is making parole. What else do we do?”The corrections department did not respond to questions this week about the extent of the work stoppage, about violence and deaths in the prisons or about Caldwell’s allegations.After months of planning, prisoners and outside advocates publicly issued a list of policy-focused demands last week. The list included a streamlined review process for medical furloughs, clearer parole guidelines, retroactive repeal of the state’s habitual offender law, an end to life-without-parole sentences and the creation of a statewide conviction integrity unit. Prisoners who spoke to the Marshall Project acknowledged that most of the demands were outside the purview of the corrections department and would instead require the legislature to act.“Maybe they have to start listening. I think they know something is wrong, but did they know we’re really tired of it? By stopping work now, we are sending this system that’s already in crisis into another crisis,” said K Shaun Traywick, an incarcerated activist who goes by “Swift Justice”.Prison strikes are not uncommon, and at least twice in recent years prisoners in Alabama have been at the forefront in launching work stoppages that spread to prisons in several states, garnering nationwide attention.Yet almost as soon as the strike began last week, people in prison said officials started retaliating, cutting back food to two paltry bagged meals a day. Pictures sent from inside show one meal made up of two hot dogs, two pieces of bread and a grapefruit. Another consisted of an unappetizing spread of coleslaw, prunes, two pieces of bread and baloney.“Meals have included slices of bread topped with some sort of sludge, uncooked hot dogs and minuscule portions of canned fruit,” a lawyer representing the prisoners wrote on the fifth day of the strike. In a court filing last week, attorney Clifford Hardy accused the corrections department of trying to starve prisoners into submission, citing as proof a memo circulated at Donaldson correctional facility “detailing that meal reductions would continue until the labor strike ended”.Prison officials have not yet responded to the allegations in court, but said in a press release that because mess hall workers had refused to come to work, the restricted feeding schedule was “logistically necessary to ensure that other critical services are being provided”.The same day the prisoners’ lawyer complained to the court, the governor held her press conference in Montgomery, calling the demands “just unreasonable” and offering assurances to the public that new prison construction would improve conditions.“Everything’s still operational,” she said. “There’s no disruption in essential services. We’ve still got our two prisons being built, so we can better provide safety for the inmates as well as the workers.”Prisoners and their advocates disputed the notion that the demands were unreasonable and scoffed at the governor’s assessment of the current state of Alabama’s lockups.It’s not clear how many prisoners are participating in the strike or how long the work stoppage might last. On Monday, the department told AL.com that some people had returned to work, but five prisons remained entirely shut down by the strike. Prisoners who spoke to the Marshall Project disputed the department’s characterization that the protest was winding down.Regardless, the collective action is attracting attention from people imprisoned in other states. In group chat messages shared with the Marshall Project, dozens of men in prisons in other southern states have begun talking about whether they could replicate Alabama’s work stoppage.“I wanna see Georgia do this,” said the man who spoke to the Marshall Project from a medium-security prison in Alabama. “I wanna see the whole south do this.”This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.TopicsAlabamaUS prisonsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      What’s Prison For? Concise diagnosis of a huge American problem

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      What’s Prison For? Concise diagnosis of a huge American problem Bill Keller, once editor of the New York Times, now with the Marshall Project, shows how the US came to imprison so many of its citizens, disproportionately Black and brown, and how such a gross injustice might yet be addressedThe statistics are familiar but remain startling: America’s incarceration rate per 100,000 is “roughly twice that of Russia’s and Iran’s, four times that of Mexico’s, five times of England’s, six times Canada’s” and nine times that of Germany. In addition, “parole and probation regulate the lives of 4.5 million Americans” – more than twice as many as are confined in prison.We Are Proud Boys review: chilling exposé illuminates Republicans’ fascist turnRead moreThese numbers come at the beginning of Bill Keller’s smart, short new book, in which he tries to explain how America became so addicted to mass incarceration, and how we might finally reform a system which houses a disproportionally Black and brown population.Keller is a veteran journalist who won a Pulitzer for his first New York Times posting as a foreign correspondent, in Moscow as the Soviet Union collapsed. He went on to be executive editor and then a columnist, but in 30 years, criminal justice was never one of his specialties. That all changed when Neil Barsky, a journalist turned investor turned philanthropist, tapped Keller to be founding editor of The Marshall Project, an ambitious effort to produce great journalism about the “causes and consequences” of mass incarceration.Keller’s book highlights many of the best pieces by Marshall Project reporters, but he also uses plenty of his own reporting to illuminate this particularly dark side of American democracy.The “good news”: the incarcerated population has actually been in slow and steady decline, from a peak of 2.3 million in 2008 to 1.8 million in 2020, including an unprecedented drop of 14% spurred by early releases because of Covid.America’s unfortunate exceptionalism on this subject is actually a fairly recent development. From the 1920s through the 1970s, the rate of incarceration mostly held steady at around 110 out of every 100,000 Americans. But it is nearly 500 today.Liberals and conservatives were equally responsible. A Democratic House speaker, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, sharply overreacted to the crack cocaine overdose of Len Bias, a Boston Celtics draftee, pushing through the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, “which imposed mandatory sentences, asset forfeitures and outlandishly severe sanctions on crack cocaine” favored by Black ghetto residents, while white consumers of powdered cocaine faced much more lenient penalties.As Keller writes, “Rehabilitation was denigrated on the right as coddling”. But a Democratic Senate judiciary committee chairman, Joseph R Biden of Delaware, made everything much worse by championing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which not only spurred a prison-building boom but also eliminated Pell Grants for prisoners enrolled in college courses. President Biden has acknowledged his mistake.It was President Reagan who inserted the profit motive into the prison business, allowing the Corrections Corporation of America to pioneer “the idea of privately run, for-profit prisons”. As Keller explains, “Since the new prison owners were paid the same way as hotel proprietors, by occupancy, they had no incentive to prepare prisoners for release.” Private prisons now house about 7% of state inmates and 17% of federal.Keller makes an unintentional argument for sending more Republicans to jail, by pointing out that three of the more unlikely advocates of prison reform are Republican officials who ended up in prison.Patrick Nolan was the minority leader of the California assembly when, in 1993, he was indicted on charges of racketeering and extortion. He served 25 months in a federal prison near San Francisco. When he was paroled, he was recruited by Charles Colson, a famous Watergate felon from Nixon’s White House who found religion “shortly before serving seven months himself in a federal prison”.Colson campaigned for more humane treatment of prisoners. Nolan became director of a new Center for Criminal Justice Reform at the American Conservative Union Foundation. Meanwhile, Bernard Kerik, Rudy Giuliani’s police commissioner who then did three years in federal prison for tax fraud and other crimes, became an advocate for voting rights for ex-felons.It’s not all good news. By the end of Trump administration, Nolan had succumbed to a rightwing conspiracy theory that “billionaire George Soros was masterminding a ‘Trojan horse’ strategy to elect soft-on-crime prosecutors and bring down the entire criminal justice system”.Keller points to Norway and Germany as providing the best examples for systemic reform. While American prison guards rarely get more than a few weeks of training, Germans get two years of college courses in psychology, ethics and communication. American visitors to German jails are amazed to see unarmed guards “shooting baskets, playing chess, sharing lunch” and having conversations with prisoners.One reason Europe is so far ahead is its depoliticization of the criminal justice system: judges and district attorneys are appointed, not elected.A Fordham University professor, John Pfaff, has pointed out that in the US, during the 1990s and 2000s, “as violent crime and arrests for violent crime both declined, the number of felony cases in state courts” suddenly shot up. Because of political pressures, “tens of thousands more prosecutors” were hired, “even after the rising crime of the 1980s had stalled out”.A Question of Standing review: how the CIA undermined American authorityRead morePfaff attributed the racial inequality in numbers of prisoners to “an imbalance of political power – tough-on-crime prosecutors elected by suburban whites who see the community destruction of mass incarceration from a distance”.Keller reports the most effective ways to reduce the prison population are also the most obvious ones:
      Make low-level drug crimes “non-crimes”.
      Divert people into “mental health and addiction programs, or probation or community service”.
      “Abolish mandatory minimum sentences and encourage” judges to “apply the least severe punishment appropriate under the circumstances”.
      Give “compassionate release to old and infirm inmates” who don’t pose a real threat to the general population.
      The challenge is to get these common-sense ideas to prevail over the rhetoric of politicians who still rail against anyone who is “soft on crime” – the knee-jerk ideology which got us into this catastrophe in the first place.
      What’s Prison For? Punishment and Rehabilitation in the Age of Mass Incarceration is published in the US by Columbia Global Reports
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      ‘Slavery by any name is wrong’: the push to end unpaid labor in prisons

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      ‘Slavery by any name is wrong’: the push to end unpaid labor in prisonsA nationwide movement hopes to close the ‘slavery loophole’ that enables the exploitation of 800,000 prisoners in the US When prison reformer Johnny Perez was incarcerated he made sheets, underwear and pillowcases working for Corcraft, a manufacturing division of New York State Correctional Services that uses prisoners to manufacture products for state and local agencies. His pay ranged between 17 cents and 36 cents an hour.“We have a system that forces people to work and not only forces them to work but does not give them an adequate living wage,” said Perez. “Slavery by any name is wrong. Slavery in any shape or form is wrong.”Perez is now part of a nationwide movement that hopes to reform what some have called the “slavery loophole” that allows incarcerated people to be paid tiny sums for jobs that – if they refuse to do them – can have dire consequences.The 13th amendment of the US constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. But it contained an exception for “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.This exception clause has been used to exploit prisoners in the US as workers, paying them nothing to a few dollars a day to perform jobs ranging from prison services to manufacturing or working for private employers where the majority of their pay is deducted for room and board and other expenses by the jurisdictions where they are incarcerated.A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour. Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay. The report concluded that the labor conditions of US prisoners violate fundamental human rights to life and dignity.A campaign to amend the constitution at the federal level and end the exception of the 13th amendment is being promoted by the US representative Nikema Williams and the senator Jeff Merkley. The bill has 175 co-sponsors in the House, 170 Democrats and 5 Republicans, and 14 co-sponsors in the US Senate, but has yet to leave committee for a floor vote in either the House or Senate.In the meantime the #EndTheException coalition, consisting of more than 80 national organizations, including criminal justice reform, civil rights and labor groups, is leading efforts to pass the abolition amendment at the federal level and through ballot initiatives at the state level.In November voters will decide on whether to remove exception clauses from their state constitutions in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont. An abolition amendment passed in the California assembly, but failed to receive a Senate vote this year so that it could be on the ballot for voters this November.“The reality is that it is 2022 and in the United States, slavery is still legal,” said Bianca Tylek, founder and executive director of the non-profit Worth Rises. “These five states would join Colorado, Utah and Nebraska, states that have already ended the exception of their state’s constitutions. And so that would be exciting, that would bring that number to eight, with five out the eight being red states and I think that bodes well for where the campaign can go at the federal level.”It is time for change, said Johnny Perez. He emphasized that in prison, individuals aren’t provided adequate basic necessities such as food, toiletries, clothing and office supplies, and that the measly wages paid by these jobs don’t cover these extra expenses.Refusing a work assignment can also have adverse consequences, he said, ranging from being placed in solitary confinement to having any work issues placed on your record which affects parole and status within a prison that determines what privileges you receive. Workers in prison do not get any paid time off and are often forced to work even when sick unless an infirmary affirms they are not able to work.Despite having five years’ full-time experience manufacturing textiles while in prison, that experience isn’t included on Perez’s résumé; incarcerated people, rather than have educational programs available to better support them upon release, are forced to do arduous manual labor jobs and often aren’t able to find work in the same industry when they are released.“It’s still continuing to happen and it disproportionately impacts Black, brown and Indigenous people in this country,” said Perez. “So long as the exception clause exists, we will always have an underclass in this society that is going to be the dumping ground for our problems and our shortcomings.”This month the #EndTheException coalition launched the Except For Me digital campaign to raise awareness of the issues, ending with the delivery of a petition to Congress in support of the abolition amendment and an art installation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.“This exception is about people and it’s about people for whom the 13th amendment doesn’t apply,” added Tylek. “We really want people to see those people and see the people that society has successfully otherwise hidden away.”Among those featured in the campaign is Britt White, who worked at a Burger King franchise in Alabama while in community status until 2014; about 60% of her wages were taken by the state of Alabama to cover fees, room and board or restitution.“Prison itself is expensive,” said White. “I can only speak for the state of Alabama where I was incarcerated, so providing hygiene, trying to supplement the lack of nourishment is very expensive, and my family had their own bills and financial responsibilities they had to take care of. I still had more support than most people did and it was still very difficult to survive in prison because everything has a cost associated with it.”White explained there were medical fees associated with received medical care and sometimes the food provided was not fit for human consumption.“I just can’t emphasize enough the lack of agency that you have,” added White. “If we are going to allow people who are incarcerated to work jobs, we need to pay them a livable wage and we need to center their dignity. We don’t need to place them in positions where there are hostile environments where they can be retaliated against and lose their agency.”Her experience in the Alabama department of corrections drove her to work as an organizer in criminal justice reform to address the corruption and despair she witnessed and experienced in the prison system.“We cannot condemn people, and then say that you deserve to be put away or you can’t come back to society, you’re not trustworthy enough to live in the community with other people, but you are still good enough for us to make a profit. That is unforgivable,” White said. “And that is the part that is still very reminiscent of slavery that my ancestors went through is that they were not good enough to be viewed as 100% as human beings, but they weren’t substantial enough to make a profit off of. That is the exception that has to be ended in our communities.”TopicsUS prisonsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Revisited: The Division: New Orleans – part four – podcast

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      The division begins to reinvestigate Kuantay Reeder’s case, discovering new evidence that could hold the key to his freedom. The Guardian’s US southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, interviews Harry Connick, the district attorney from 1973 to 2003, to ask how he felt about presiding over an administration accused of rights violations and disproportionately punishing the city’s poorest Black residents

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      This week we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes from the year so far. This episode was first broadcast on 9 May. The division spends six months reinvestigating Kuantay Reeder’s case. They find new evidence, and the Guardian’s US southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, accompanies the team to court to see whether Reeder’s conviction will be overturned. Also present are members of Mark Broxton’s family, including his mother, Mary Green, who see Reeder face to face for the first time since 1995. Oliver also visits Harry Connick, the district attorney from 1973 to 2003. Many people argue his policies – such as routine use of the habitual offender law – were one of the main reasons New Orleans became the incarceration capital of the world. Oliver questions Connick on the use of multi-billing and the issue of Brady violations – where evidence is withheld – during his tenure. In 2011 the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said a lack of training on Brady was pervasive. In many ways, Connick and the new district attorney, Jason Williams, couldn’t be much further apart. A lot of what Jason Williams is doing now is a direct response to the policies and the legacy of Connick. But there are some parallels between them. Connick was in power during the biggest crime wave New Orleans had ever seen. And when Williams took office, the crime rate was soaring too. Oliver and the producer Joshua Kelly pay a visit to Williams to ask how he is responding to the pressure of the rising crime rates and his upcoming trial for alleged tax evasion. If found guilty, there are question marks over the future of the civil-rights division. Read Oliver’s reporting on his six months with the division: Inside the division: how a small team of US prosecutors fight decades of shocking injustice Life in prison for stealing $20: how the Division is taking apart brutal criminal sentences The Visiting Room is an online project documenting interviews with over 100 inmates serving life without parole sentences at Angola prison. Kuantay Reeder was filmed as part of the project while he was incarcerated: More

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      Revisited: The Division: New Orleans – part two – podcast

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      In 1995, Kuantay Reeder is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit. He spends years doing hard labour in the fields of the prison, and trying to have his conviction overturned. By 2020, he has exhausted almost every legal avenue available to him. But 2020 is also the year that Jason Williams is elected to be the new district attorney of New Orleans. Will the creation of a new civil rights division in his office offer hope to Reeder?

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      This week we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes from the year so far. This episode was first broadcast on 7 May. In 1995, Kuantay Reeder is convicted of a murder he says he did not commit. He is sent to Angola prison in Louisiana, the site of a former plantation, where he is forced to spend years working in the fields, work Kuantay calls “modern-day slavery”. Prof Andrea Armstrong has been going to Angola for years, documenting its history and talking to prisoners about their lives there. She talks about prison labour programmes and the indignities faced by inmates. After fighting for years to have his conviction overturned, Reeder’s case has little legal hope left. But in 2020 New Orleans elects a new district attorney, Jason Williams, who promises to reckon with the city’s history of unfair prosecutions. Williams talks to the Guardian’s US southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, about his election victory and his reform pledges. Read Oliver’s reporting on his six months with the division: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/06/life-in-prison-for-stealing-20-how-the-division-is-taking-apart-brutal-criminal-sentences More

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      Revisited: The Division: New Orleans – part one – podcast

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      The Guardian’s US southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, spent six months following what happened when a progressive Black district attorney was elected in Louisiana, the heart of the deep south. He had promised sweeping reforms across New Orleans, including opening up a civil rights division to look over old cases. Kuantay Reeder has been in Louisiana’s ‘Angola’ prison since 1995 for a murder he says he didn’t commit. Would the division be able to help him?

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      This week we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes from the year so far. This episode was first broadcast on 6 May. It’s 2020. New Orleans. The most incarcerated city, in the most incarcerated US state. The city has elected a progressive Black district attorney, Jason Williams, who promises to change the system from within. One of the first things Williams does after he wins is to set up a new department in the district attorney’s office – the civil rights division – led by Emily Maw. A small team of lawyers and investigators is tasked with looking back through more than 1,000 old cases, examining whether each convicted person should still be in prison. Twenty-five years earlier, Kuantay Reeder says he was playing basketball when Mark, his childhood friend, was killed outside a food store. Kuantay was arrested and eventually found guilty of Mark’s murder, a crime Kuantay says he didn’t commit. He was prosecuted by the office of one of the city’s old DAs, Harry Connick, infamous for his hardline tactics. We hear from Prof Andrea Armstrong, a leading US expert on prison and jail conditions, and former city judge Calvin Johnson, who describes how Connick’s office was associated with frequent rights violations at the time Reeder was prosecuted. Read Oliver’s reporting on his six months with the division: Inside the division: how a small team of US prosecutors fight decades of shocking injustice Life in prison for stealing $20: how the Division is taking apart brutal criminal sentences More

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      The Guardian view on the death penalty: a long way to go | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on the death penalty: a long way to goEditorialThough capital punishment is in global decline, there are horrifying exceptions to the general trend Next month, Oklahoma will embark on a grim schedule: an execution nearly every month until the end of 2024. In September, it is due to execute Richard Glossip, whom many believe to be the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice. A five-year moratorium has come to an end with the failure of a lawsuit arguing that the use of lethal injections was unconstitutional.Oklahoma is not the only place that is enthusiastically resuming state-sanctioned killing after a pause. Myanmar’s rulers announced on Monday that they had executed four prisoners, including Phyo Zeya Thaw, a rapper and former MP, drawing international condemnation. This was the first time the death penalty had been used there for more than 30 years, said the UN. And on Tuesday it emerged that Tomohiro Kato has been executed in Japan for stabbing seven people to death in 2008.Recorded executions fell sharply in 2020 across the world due to the pandemic, but are now rebounding. Amnesty International says that it saw a 20% increase in 2021, including a sharp rise in Iran to 314 deaths. This year, Saudi Arabia executed 81 men on a single day in March, two of them for participation in violent anti-government protests. Singapore executed four people for drug offences after a two-year pause – including, despite an international outcry, Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a young man with an IQ of 69 who said that he was coerced into carrying a small amount of heroin. His case has helped to stir debate about capital punishment. In Myanmar, more than 100 other people have been handed death sentences since last year’s seizure of power by the army. The broad trend is towards the decline of capital punishment. Almost 160 years after Venezuela became the first country to abolish it, well over a hundred more have followed suit (including Papua New Guinea this January), and about 30 more have effectively abolished it, for example through formal moratoria. Despite the increase in 2021, the total number of deaths – 579 – was the second lowest that Amnesty International has recorded since 2010.But a huge black hole remains: the organisation believes that China executes thousands of prisoners a year, but the figure is a state secret, as in Vietnam and North Korea. And the overall fall in the documented use of the death penalty is accompanied by extreme and shocking cases in places that cling to it. The US is also a glaring example of the way that progress can be turned back: 50 years ago this summer, the supreme court struck down the death penalty. Four years later it restored it. More recently, the last administration dramatically resumed federal executions; more were carried out under Donald Trump than any other president in the past century. Though the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, imposed a moratorium, that could be undone by the next administration.There are many reasons to be disturbed by capital punishment. These include agonising deaths witnessed in the US, wrongful convictions, the blatant discrimination of criminal justice systems that results in the disproportionate killing of ethnic minority offenders, and the use of the death penalty for non-violent crimes and political offences. In Myanmar, relatives of the executed men were reportedly denied access to their bodies. But underlying all of this is the broader understanding that continues to spread through the world: that states have no right to take the lives of citizens.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.comTopicsCapital punishmentOpinionLaw (US)US politicsMyanmarSouth and central AsiaSingaporeAsia PacificeditorialsReuse this content More

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      Supreme court guts lifeline for prisoners who claim wrongful convictions

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      Supreme court guts lifeline for prisoners who claim wrongful convictionsDecision bars federal courts from hearing new evidence not presented in a state court as a result of ineffective legal counsel The US supreme court on Monday gutted constitutional protections that for years have provided a federal lifeline to innocent prisoners facing prolonged incarceration or even execution following wrongful convictions stemming from poor legal counsel given to them by the states.In a 6 to 3 ruling, the newly-dominant rightwing majority of the nation’s highest court barred federal courts from hearing new evidence that was not previously presented in a state court as a result of the defendant’s ineffective legal representation.The decision means that prisoners will no longer have recourse to federal judges even when they claim they were wrongfully convicted because their lawyers failed to conduct their cases properly.The decision eviscerated the supreme court’s own precedent in a move that the three liberal justices called “illogical” and “perverse”. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the decision, warning it would leave “many people … to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel”.The ruling in Shinn v Ramirez was written by Clarence Thomas, the rightwing justice who has come to the fore as a result of the court’s sharp shift to the right following Donald Trump’s three appointments. He was supported by all five other conservative justices, including the chief justice, John Roberts.In his opinion, Thomas presented the case as one of states’ rights. He said that federal courts should not be allowed to override the states’ “core power to enforce criminal law”.That continues to be the case, the majority ruled, even where defendants are given bad legal advice by counsel provided for them by the very same states that are condemning them to long prison sentences or even execution.In future, they will have no recourse to a federal court to try and reverse their wrongful conviction.The case before the justices arose after state officials in Arizona petitioned the supreme court to prevent two of the state’s death row inmates – one with a strong case of proclaimed innocence, the other with a history of family abuse – from seeking relief in federal court from capital punishment.The state argued that the condemned men should not be allowed to present new evidence to a federal judge when they had failed to do so previously in state court.Lawyers for the condemned men pointed out that they had only failed to present the evidence in state court because the legal counsel they had been assigned by the state was woefully inadequate.If they were blocked from petitioning a federal court, the men would in effect be sent to the death chamber simply because incompetent lawyers had missed a filing deadline or failed to uncover a glaring truth.Monday’s majority ruling prompted an outpouring of angry and anguished criticism from innocence rights groups and death penalty experts.The Innocence Project said that overturning wrongful convictions was never easy, and that “today’s supreme court decision makes it that much harder to secure justice for wrongly-convicted people”.Thomas’s opinion also overturns previous supreme court rulings, in an abrogation of the court’s own adherence to the principle of stare decisis – that is, being faithful to precedent. In 2012 the supreme court ruled in Martinez v Ryan that prisoners could have access to federal court in cases where they had suffered from ineffective legal counsel in the state courts.“The supreme court seems hell-bent on disrespecting precedent and rolling back rights,” said Janai Nelson, president of LDF, America’s first civil and human rights law organization.In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor decried the ruling. “This decision is perverse. It is illogical,” she wrote.Sotomayor argued that under the court’s own precedent, prisoners cannot be held accountable – and effectively punished – for “their attorneys’ failures to present claims in state court”.She concluded that as a result of the majority decision from the nine-member supreme court bench, the Sixth Amendment to the US constitution’s guarantee that criminal defendants have the right to effective legal counsel at trial “is now an empty one”.In future, she said, prisoners who have had poor legal assistance would have no relief. “The responsibility for this devastating outcome lies not with Congress, but with this court.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS prisonsLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More