Beyond Ex Con

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Happy Holidays! We hope you are staying safe and masked up! December is finally here, please help us in our year-end fundraising efforts. We are diligently working to put our plans in place for 2020.

We have had a progressive and prosperous 2021!

Help us with your donation today!

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Assembly Bill 1076 reduces the additional consequences that can follow Californians for decades after they come into contact with the criminal justice system.

Criminal records can affect someone's ability to obtain housing or employment.

This bill makes retroactive a 2018 State Law automating the expungement (the sealing of criminal records) for eligible individuals.

This is what reform looks like. Thank you, Governor Newsom, for signing this into law, and thank you, Attorney Bonta, for championing this legislation.

Just passed the public safety committee! First step towards making it law! Next step: passing the appropriations committee! Thanks for your calls!

LA County Reentry week is April 26 - April 30! People who have experienced incarceration are 5 times more likely to find themselves unemployed compared to those without contact with the criminal justice system.

Creating opportunities for these men and women to rejoin our communities and contribute to our neighborhoods is a huge priority. Our Reimagine funds will help organizations like CRCD hire and train more individuals impacted by the criminal justice system to provide services across the District.

IT'S TIME to get folks free who've been overly incarcerated for no reason other than their skin color.

The County Board of Supervisors will be voting on support for to .

please show support if you have a couple minutes:

➡️ Submit written public comment before or during the meeting
➡️ Give live public comment during the April 20th meeting at 9 am
➡️ Amplify on social media!

Quick & easy directions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bKPDl06BVLf7KC7d44d00kboUiFpRFEiTLi_eKB7zdo/edit

In landmark victory, Gene McCallum is FREE after a life sentence for stealing $2 in loose change! - https://mailchi.mp/7f30a324933f/gene-mccallum-is-free-after-a-life-sentence-for-stealing-2-in-loose-change

Calling all community-based, mission-driven organizations in ! Become a Program Partner to expand youth access to programming including environmental education, youth sports, STEAM activities, arts & cultural programming, community service and more. 📲💻 Attend a virtual information session to learn how you can partner with us for no rental fees and reduced facility use fees for your organization. Visit parks.lacounty.gov/partner to learn more & register!

Quanah Innis celebrated one year free from alcohol and drugs. He has over 300 arrests in his background. But God changed his life. That night the Shawnee Police Department sent a few of their officers to present Quanah with his 1-year coin. This is a community at its finest!

They Spent 24 Years Behind Bars. Then the Case Fell Apart. A judge threw out the murder convictions of three New York men on Friday and admonished prosecutors for withholding evidence that cast serious doubt on their guilt.

Wrongly Convicted Man Graduates From College After 5 Years on Death Row Ryan Matthews from Texas was just 17-years old when he was accused of a crime he didn't commit. He later spent 5 years on death row, but was later exonerated and released. Now at 39-years old, he is

A man wrongfully convicted of murder sues a rental car company for not providing a receipt that supported his alibi

Judge ends shooting case against Breonna Taylor's boyfriend A judge in Kentucky has signed an order permanently closing a criminal case against Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, who shot a police officer during the deadly raid that killed Taylor. Prosecutors…

Why Not Let People Have Cellphones in Prison? Here’s how incarcerated people really use contraband phones.

Convictions overturned for three men in 1996 killings A judge released George Bell, Gary Johnson, and Rohan Bolt on their own recognizance while prosecutors reexamine the case.

(Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing the right to counsel, wouldn’t be decided until 1963.) Police claimed the boy confessed to killing Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 8, admitting he wanted to have s*x with Betty. They rushed him to trial.

After a two-hour trial and a 10-minute jury deliberation, Stinney was convicted of murder on April 24 and sentenced to die by electrocution, according to a book by Mark R. Jones. At the time, 14 was the age of criminal responsibility. His lawyer, a local political figure, chose not to appeal.

Terry Talley Is A Free Man After Spending 40 Years In A Georgia Prison For A Crime He Didn't Commit Thanks to the Georgia Innocence Project, Terry Talley was acquitted of r**e charges after spending 40 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

I Impact Millions Of People Daily 💋

Alex Trebek’s Wardrobe Is Donated to Formerly Incarcerated Men The gift, which will also benefit formerly homeless men, was in keeping with an appeal that the host of “Jeopardy!” had made when he asked viewers to “build a gentler, kinder society.”

Be the change that you seek.
We got out 501c3 status....finally.
Here we GROW again....

Researchers at Harvard completed one of the most thorough examinations of a criminal justice system ever. Guess what they found?

Spoiler alert: it starts with an S and ends with “ystemic racism.” https://bit.ly/3m9ymjg

A Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism It wasn’t Black-on-Black crime. Violent video games and rap songs had nothing to do with it; nor did poverty, education, two-parent homes or the international “bootstraps” shortage. When a judge tasked researchers with explaining why Massachusetts’ Black and Latinx incarceration was so high,...

Lawyers for nearly 50 men incarcerated at San Quentin sue over 'botched transfer,' demand release As of Monday, San Quentin had about 3,100 people in custody and San Francisco Asst. Public Defender Danica Rodarmel said she wanted that number to drop to at least 1,550. To date, 26 people at San Quentin have died of coronavirus.

Save the date and don't forget to register here: https://ficpfm2020.com/register

The state is providing half the money to aid former inmates with finding housing, jobs, health care, transportation and treatment.

The other half is coming from various foundations and philanthropies.

California allocates $30 million to aid parolees released due to pandemic California has launched a $30 million program to provide thousands of parolees with community services after they complete their prison sentences or are released months early because of the coronav…

This came from the LA Times. If you would like to follow the many California bills currently trying to chip away at the inherent racism of the criminal justice system, you can find details about many of them here:

LA Times Editorial: Attack racism in California’s criminal proceedings

By THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

AUG. 27, 2020 3 AM

The nation has far to go to make its justice system truly just, a point that has been driven home by continuing protests against not just police killings of Black Americans but the racism built into the structure of U.S. society and law. Several key bills pending before the California Legislature would push the state in the right direction ­ if lawmakers are able to approve them and send them to the governor’s desk despite a coronavirus -related halt to proceedings.

Assembly Bill 3070, by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), addresses discrimination in jury selection, a problem that on paper does not exist, yet one that in practice is all too real.

No prosecutor (or judge or defense lawyer, for that matter) may legally strike a prospective juror because of race. Yet race comes into play anyway, for example when a prosecutor removes a prospective juror for living in a high-crime neighborhood, being a repeat crime victim and therefore being “desensitized to violence.”

That example is one of many cited in a report by the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic that studied prosecutors’ stated reasons for keeping people off juries.

Other cited examples include a prospective juror who said he had been falsely accused and had spent four months in jail, leading to the prosecutor’s assertion that the juror would have a lot of sympathy for the defendant. A prosecutor rejected another would-be juror because she said the criminal justice system unfairly leads to disproportionate arrests of people of color. Prosecutors struck one juror for a hairstyle deemed incompatible with being part of a “cohesive group,” another for wearing dollar-sign diamond earrings, another for “extraordinarily long fingernails,” another for wearing dreadlocks, which the prosecutor said were “somewhat associated with a Reggae culture” that “promotes drug use.” Each of these prospective jurors was Black.

On average, people of color are disproportionately burdened by poverty and as a result live in less-choice neighborhoods with higher crime rates. Greater police presence in those communities, coupled with implicit bias among some officers, prosecutors and judges, makes them disproportionately likely to be falsely arrested and to have a more jaundiced (and perhaps more realistic) view of the criminal justice system.

One corrective measure is to ensure that their perspectives are included on juries ­ yet too often they are excluded precisely for possessing the experiences and outlooks that should make them an indispensable part of the system. That’s because they are subject to peremptory challenge ­ exclusion from the jury for reasons the prosecutor need not explain.

In a landmark 1986 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court disallowed peremptory challenges to prospective jurors based on their race (the ruling has since expanded to include gender and s*xual orientation). But the decision in Batson vs. Kentucky leaves much of the burden of showing discrimination on the defendant, and permits prosecutors a great deal of leeway to argue that they had a nonracial motivation for excluding the juror ­ such as being from a rough neighborhood or wearing the “wrong” hairstyle, clothing or jewelry.

Weber’s bill would allow criminal defendants in California courts to ask the reasons for a prosecutor’s peremptory challenge. It would then be up to the judge to examine whether the explanations justify exclusion for reasons unrelated to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, s*xual orientation or national origin. It’s the right move, even if it makes peremptory challenges more like challenges for cause. Jurors should not be excluded absent good cause in any event.

AB 2542 by Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) is a companion bill directed at the other end of criminal proceedings ­ after conviction, when evidence arises of racism that affected the pretrial, trial or sentencing phases. Current law ­ like Batson, established in the 1980s by the U.S. Supreme Court ­ requires defendants who are challenging racial bias in their prosecution to demonstrate that the bias was intentional.

That’s a high burden that sweeps away what our society has slowly come to recognize: that for racism to do its damage to individual defendants and to the integrity of our system of justice, it need not be blatant or explicit. Bias remains real and toxic even, and perhaps especially, when it is unconscious and implicit.

The California Racial Justice Act would prohibit the state from seeking a conviction or imposing a sentence on the basis of race, regardless of intent, and would allow a defendant already convicted or sentenced to seek a new trial upon producing persuasive evidence that proceedings were tainted by such bias.

Lawmakers still have time to advance other crucial criminal justice reforms as well. AB 3234 by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) would strengthen California’s diversion programs by allowing the judge, rather than the prosecutor, final say in whether to direct a defendant away from criminal proceedings to a treatment program or other alternative. SB 776 by Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) would enhance recent laws requiring public disclosure of police records. AB 1185 by Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) would permit county boards of supervisors to create the type of sheriff oversight commission we have in Los Angeles County. Each of these bills would make incremental but important improvements that would shore up the “justice” in the state’s criminal justice system.