There was a ton of interesting news this week, starting in Union County, where the “district attorney has dismissed cases against 39 people because Monroe police officers failed to provide case files and related work needed for prosecution,” according to this Charlotte Observer article. The article notes that last year, a judge fined the police department $10,000 for failing to provide discovery in a murder case. The interim police chief says that he is conducting an internal investigation and has changed case monitoring practices to avoid similar problems in the future. In other news: Justice Beasley running. Justice Cheri Beasley, appointed to the state supreme court when Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson retired, has announced that she will run to keep her seat, according to this short item in the News and Observer. The election will take place in November 2014. Death penalty in India rape and murder. The New York Times reports here that “four men convicted in last December’s horrific gang rape and murder [were] sentenced to death by hanging.” The facts of the case are terrible, and it has received extensive media attention. Interestingly, it sounds as though the capital punishment process in India bears a considerable resemblance to our own: there is a lengthy appeals process, hundreds of people on death row, and a 60/40 public opinion split about whether to have the death penalty at all. New report on life imprisonment. An alternative to the death penalty, of course, is imprisonment for life. And the Sentencing Project has [...]
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