Each Friday, we’ll bring you updates on the latest civil liberties news from Maine and the nation. 

Sentencing Reform  

According to this news story, Eric Holder is interested in sentencing reform to help reduce over-incarceration. In the story he says, “Too many people in jail for too long for not necessarily good reasons…the war on drugs is 30/40 years old, there have been a lot of unintended consequences and…there’s been kind of a decimation of certain communities, in particular communities of color.” The story reports that two senators are working on a bill that would lower mandatory minimums from some drug crimes and give judges the discretion to issue sentences below mandatory minimums.

Need more proof that the U.S. incarcerates too many people? California may release 1,000 prisoners before their sentences are up in an effort to ease overcrowding. Read more here.

NSA Reading International Message Content

The NSA is said to be reading the content of Americans’ e-mails and text messages directed to foreign individuals or even messages about foreigners under surveillance. You can read more details in this article. ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer says in the article, “dragnet surveillance will be poisonous to the freedoms of inquiry and associations…[Americans] will hesitate before visiting controversial web sites, discussing controversial topics or investigating politically sensitive questions…Individually, these hesitations might appear to be inconsequential, but the accumulation of them over time will change citizens’ relationship to one another and to the government.”

Death Penalty Report

Florida executed a person with paranoid schizophrenia Monday night. Read more here.

An Ohio task force will examine death penalty policies there. This article cites a 2007 report that found that, “inmates whose victims were white were nearly four times more likely to receive a death sentence than those whose victims were black.” The article also cites a 2000 study at Colubmia Law School that “showed that among the 68% of capital sentences that are marred by serious, reversible error, the most common mistakes arise from incompetent lawyering.”