William Wayne Justice

William Wayne Justice PDF Author: Frank R. Kemerer
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292786417
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
In his forty years on the federal bench in Texas, William Wayne Justice has been a formidable force for change. His rulings have prompted significant institutional reforms in education, prisons, and racial relations, to name only a few areas of society in Texas and beyond that have been affected by Justice's work. For his labors, Judge Justice has received numerous awards, including the Outstanding Federal Trial Judge Award, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities of the American Bar Association, and the Morris Dees Justice Award from the University of Alabama School of Law. This paperback reprint of William Wayne Justice chronicles his judicial career and the decisions he reached. It includes a new epilogue that describes Justice's move to Austin as a judge on senior status yet with a full caseload, tracks the long-running institutional reform cases to their conclusion, and examines the legacy of this remarkable and controversial jurist.

William Wayne Justice

William Wayne Justice PDF Author: Frank R. Kemerer
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292786417
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Get Book Here

Book Description
In his forty years on the federal bench in Texas, William Wayne Justice has been a formidable force for change. His rulings have prompted significant institutional reforms in education, prisons, and racial relations, to name only a few areas of society in Texas and beyond that have been affected by Justice's work. For his labors, Judge Justice has received numerous awards, including the Outstanding Federal Trial Judge Award, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities of the American Bar Association, and the Morris Dees Justice Award from the University of Alabama School of Law. This paperback reprint of William Wayne Justice chronicles his judicial career and the decisions he reached. It includes a new epilogue that describes Justice's move to Austin as a judge on senior status yet with a full caseload, tracks the long-running institutional reform cases to their conclusion, and examines the legacy of this remarkable and controversial jurist.

The Meaning of Life

The Meaning of Life PDF Author: Marc Mauer
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 162097410X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
"I can think of no authors more qualified to research the complex impact of life sentences than Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis. They have the expertise to track down the information that all citizens need to know and the skills to translate that research into accessible and powerful prose." —Heather Ann Thompson, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Blood in the Water From the author of the classic Race to Incarcerate, a forceful and necessary argument for eliminating life sentences, including profiles of six people directly impacted by life sentences by formerly incarcerated author Kerry Myers Most Western democracies have few or no people serving life sentences, yet here in the United States more than 200,000 people are sentenced to such prison terms. Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis of The Sentencing Project argue that there is no practical or moral justification for a sentence longer than twenty years. Harsher sentences have been shown to have little effect on crime rates, since people "age out" of crime—meaning that we're spending a fortune on geriatric care for older prisoners who pose little threat to public safety. Extreme punishment for serious crime also has an inflationary effect on sentences across the spectrum, helping to account for severe mandatory minimums and other harsh punishments. A thoughtful and stirring call to action, The Meaning of Life also features moving profiles of a half dozen people affected by life sentences, written by former "lifer" and award-winning writer Kerry Myers. The book will tie in to a campaign spearheaded by The Sentencing Project and offers a much-needed road map to a more humane criminal justice system.

We Are Not Slaves

We Are Not Slaves PDF Author: Robert T. Chase
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469653583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543

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Book Description
Hank Lacayo Best Labor Themed Book, International Latino Book Awards Best Book Award, Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice, American Society of Criminology In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, intensifying the labor division that privileged some prisoners with the power to accelerate state-orchestrated brutality and the internal sex trade. Reformers' efforts had only made things worse--now it was up to the prisoners to fight for change. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Prisoners forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. Behind bars, a prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations publicized their deplorable conditions as "slaves of the state" and initiated a prison-made civil rights revolution and labor protest movement. These insurgents won epochal legal victories that declared conditions in many southern prisons to be cruel and unusual--but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.

The Trials of Eroy Brown

The Trials of Eroy Brown PDF Author: Michael Berryhill
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292726945
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In April 1981, two white Texas prison officials died at the hands of a black inmate at the Ellis prison farm near Huntsville. Warden Wallace Pack and farm manager Billy Moore were the highest-ranking Texas prison officials ever to die in the line of duty. The warden was drowned face down in a ditch. The farm manager was shot once in the head with the warden's gun. The man who admitted to killing them, a burglar and robber named Eroy Brown, surrendered meekly, claiming self-defense. In any other era of Texas prison history, Brown's fate would have seemed certain: execution. But in 1980, federal judge William Wayne Justice had issued a sweeping civil rights ruling in which he found that prison officials had systematically and often brutally violated the rights of Texas inmates. In the light of that landmark prison civil rights case, Ruiz v. Estelle, Brown had a chance of being believed. The Trials of Eroy Brown, the first book devoted to Brown's astonishing defense, is based on trial documents, exhibits, and journalistic accounts of Brown's three trials, which ended in his acquittal. Michael Berryhill presents Brown's story in his own words, set against the backdrop of the chilling plantation mentality of Texas prisons. Brown's attorneys—Craig Washington, Bill Habern, and Tim Sloan—undertook heroic strategies to defend him, even when the state refused to pay their fees. The Trials of Eroy Brown tells a landmark story of prison civil rights and the collapse of Jim Crow justice in Texas.

Of Courtiers and Princes

Of Courtiers and Princes PDF Author: Todd C. Peppers
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813944600
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
Praise for In Chambers: "This new collection of essays, including some by former clerks, takes readers inside justices’ chambers for a look at clerkship life.... [T]he best parts of the book are the behind-the-scenes descriptions of life at the court."— Associated Press "An excellent book... It’s interesting for many different reasons, not the least of which as a reminder of how much of a bastion of elitism the Court has always been."— Atlantic Monthly In his earlier books, In Chambers and Of Courtiers and Kings, Todd C. Peppers provided an insider’s view of the Supreme Court from the perspective of the clerks who worked closely with some of its most important justices. With Of Courtiers and Princes, he concludes the trilogy by examining the understudied yet equally fascinating role of lower court clerks—encompassing pioneering women and minorities. Drawing on contributions from former law clerks and judicial scholars—including an essay by Ruth Bader Ginsburg—the book provides an inside look at the professional and personal bonds that form between lower court judges and their clerks. While the individual essays often focus on a single judge and his or her corps of law clerks, including their selection process, contributions, and even influence, the book as a whole provides a macro-level view of the law clerk’s role in the rapidly changing world of lower federal and state courts, thereby offering an unusual yet crucial perspective on the inner workings of our judicial system.

John Hill for the State of Texas

John Hill for the State of Texas PDF Author: John L. Hill
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781603440721
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
During his distinguished career, John L. Hill Jr. served as secretary of state, attorney general, and chief justice of the state supreme court—the only person to hold all three state offices. Hill's office played a significant role in vastly expanding Texas consumer protections, waging war against wholesale rate increases by AT&T/Southwestern Bell; and resolving the disposition of Howard Hughes's fabled estate to bring tens of millions of dollars into Texas coffers. Before Hill's death in July 2007, Ernie Stromberger, journalist and Hill's longtime friend, worked with him to craft this first-person narrative.

Bill of Wrongs

Bill of Wrongs PDF Author: Molly Ivins
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588366588
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Throughout her long career of “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted,” the cause closest to Molly Ivins’s heart was working to protect the freedoms we all value. Sadly, today we’re living in a time when dissent is equated with giving aid to terrorists, when any of us can be held in prison without even knowing the charges against us, and when our constitutional rights are being interpreted by a president who calls himself “The Decider.” Ivins got the idea for Bill of Wrongs while touring America to honor her promise to speak out, gratis, at least once a month in defense of free speech. In her travels Ivins met ordinary people going to extraordinary measures to safeguard our most precious liberties, and when she first started writing this book, she intended it to be a joyous celebration of those heroes. But during the Bush years, the project’s focus changed. Ivins became concerned about threats to our cherished freedoms–among them the Patriot Act and the weakening of habeas corpus–and she observed with anger how dissent in the defense of liberties was being characterized as treason by the Bush administration and its enablers. From illegal wiretaps, the unlawful imprisonment of American citizens, and the undermining of freedom of the press to the creeping influence of religious extremism on our national agenda and the erosion of the checks and balances that prevent a president from seizing unitary powers, Ivins and her longtime collaborator, Lou Dubose, co-author of Shrub and Bushwacked, describe the attack on America’s vital constitutional guarantees. With devastating humor and keen eyes for deceit and hypocrisy, they show how severe these incursions have become, and they ask us all to take an active role in protecting the Bill of Rights. In life and on the printed page, Molly Ivins was too cool to offer a posthumous valedictory (or even to take a victory lap for her many triumphs over inane, vainglorious, and addlepated politicos). But in Bill of Wrongs, her final and perhaps greatest book, the irrepressible Molly Ivins really does have the last word.

Lone Star Tarnished

Lone Star Tarnished PDF Author: Cal Jillson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317666941
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Texas pride, like everything else in the state, is larger than life. So, too, perhaps, are the state’s challenges. Lone Star Tarnished, 2nd edition approaches public policy in the nation’s most populous "red state" from historical, comparative, and critical perspectives. The historical perspective provides the scope for asking how various policy domains have developed in Texas history, regularly reaching back to the state’s founding and with substantial data for the period 1950 to the present. In each chapter, Cal Jillson compares Texas public policy choices and results with those of other states and the United States in general. Finally, the critical perspective allows us to question the balance of benefits and costs attendant to what is often referred to as "the Texas way" or "the Texas model." Jillson delves deeply into seven substantive policy chapters, covering the most important policy areas in which state governments are active. The second edition includes completely rewritten first and second chapters, as well as updates throughout the book and revised figures and tables. Through Jillson's lively and lucid prose, students are well equipped to analyze how Texas has done and is doing compared to selected states and the national average over time and today. Readers will also come away with the necessary tools to assess the many claims of Texas’s exceptionalism.

Incarceration and the Law, Cases and Materials

Incarceration and the Law, Cases and Materials PDF Author: Margo Schlanger
Publisher: West Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781683287964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1071

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Book Description
In the age of American mass incarceration, a complex legal regime governs prison conditions and presents a host of controversial questions at the intersection of constitutional liberty, statutory interpretation, administrative regulation, and public policy. This is a completely overhauled, re-titled, and much-expanded version of the leading casebook about incarceration. It addresses both pretrial and post-conviction incarceration, presenting Supreme Court and leading lower court case law, statutes, litigation materials, professional standards, academic commentary, and prisoner writing. Topics include conditions of confinement, civil liberties, particular prisoner populations and relevant legal issues (race and national origin discrimination, the particular issues/law governing treatment of incarcerated women, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities). Litigated remedies (injunctive litigation, damages, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and criminal prosecution of prison staff), are also covered in detail, as is non-litigation oversight. The casebook is supplemented by an open-access website that offers additional resources and sources for further reading.

Fiber Evidence and the Wayne Williams Trial

Fiber Evidence and the Wayne Williams Trial PDF Author: Harold A. Deadman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Evidence, Criminal
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description