Criminal Justice

Don’t Shoot the Dogs

by John W. Whitehead March 22, 2019

“In too much of policing today, officer safety has become the highest priority. It trumps the rights and safety of suspects. It trumps the rights and safety of bystanders. It’s so important, in fact, that an officer’s subjective fear of a minor wound from a dog bite is enough to justify using potentially lethal force, ...

Jackboots in the Morning

by John W. Whitehead January 31, 2019

“This is jackboots in the morning. This is an American nightmare that they would arrest somebody like this.”—Judge Andrew Napolitano The American Police State does not discriminate. Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again—rest assured, these same practices ...

Deadly Policing in New York City

by Matthew Harwood December 1, 2018

I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street by Matt Taibbi (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2017); 336 pages. On the first day of law school, Yale Professor Stephen L. Carter walks into his contracts class with a message: “Every law is violent.” He then proceeds to tell his students that they should be willing to ...

Free Speech Is Your Right, But It Could Get You Killed

by John W. Whitehead November 29, 2018

“The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”— Justice William J. Brennan, City of Houston v. Hill What the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk ...

The Day the Justice Department Accused Me of Jury Tampering

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 4, 2018

In the summer of 1975, I returned to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, to begin the practice of law with my father, who had been a lawyer in Laredo since the end of World War II. I had just graduated from law school at the University of Texas and had just secured my law license from the state of ...

The Latest Debacle Proves the Need for a Sweeping FBI Investigation

by James Bovard September 1, 2018

The reputation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation took another pummeling in June, when the Department of Justice Inspector General released a damning report on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s squirrely email server. Americans learned that the FBI had done backflips to exonerate Clinton and that a top FBI official had openly promised to “stop” Donald Trump from ...

Warrior Cops Endanger Our Lives and Freedoms

by John W. Whitehead August 28, 2018

“There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”—Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century I have known a lot of good cops, I have defended a lot of good cops, and I have been fortunate ...

The Bundy Ranch Case Explains Westerners’ Distrust of Washington

by James Bovard April 1, 2018

The Justice Department was caught in January in another high-profile travesty of due process. On December 20, federal judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and others after prosecutors were caught withholding massive amounts of evidence undermining federal charges. Two weeks later, she dismissed all charges against Bundy and his sons. Navarro ...

Nervous About Traffic Stops? I Am.

by John W. Whitehead November 30, 2017

“Quit resisting.”—Cops yell at compliant young man who was thrown to the ground, beaten, arrested and hospitalized for severe injuries to his face and arm, allegedly in retaliation for “resisting arrest” by driving to a safe, well-lit area before submitting to a traffic stop for a broken tail light We’ve all been there before. You’re driving along and ...

What Country Is This?

by John W. Whitehead September 7, 2017

“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being choked out by ...

Anything Goes When You’re a Cop in America

by John W. Whitehead August 9, 2017

There is one criminal justice system for citizens—especially black and brown ones—and another for police in the United States. —Redditt Hudson, former St. Louis police officer President Trump needs to be reminded that no one is above the law, especially the police. Unfortunately, Trump and Jeff Sessions, head of the Justice Department (much like their predecessors) appear ...

Shot Down Like Dogs in the Street

by John W. Whitehead August 3, 2017

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned. —William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in a constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed ...