Free Republic

A bill that would give people serving life without parole a second chance at freedom was brought back in the California Assembly Monday after a year of inactivity. Senate Bill 94, authored by State Senator Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), calls for a second look at Californians serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The bill would allow people convicted of life sentences a chance to lessen their time behind bars if they have been imprisoned since June 1990, or for 25 years. Cortese says this is a chance for those convicted so long ago to have a second...

July 18 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday upheld Mississippi's lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of certain felonies, saying the policy was not a cruel and unusual punishment....U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones, writing for the majority, said the U.S. Supreme Court had already in 1974 held states could enact laws disenfranchising felons....

First Lady Jill Biden went on ABC's The View to urge voters "to choose good over evil when you cast your ballots. On the one hand we have Republicans backing the evil forces of the marketplace as the best model for growth and prosperity. Take the issue of inflation. It's been my observation that all the prices put on goods and services are placed there by human beings. If we want lower prices we must get these human beings to put lower-price tags on the merchandise. Joe is doing that. He told the CEOs of Walmart and Target that if...

Democrats have been trying to destroy Donald Trump ever since he announced his candidacy for president back in 2015. They’ve framed him for Russian collusion, election interference, and even rape. They’ve impeached him twice. They’ve tried to bar him from the ballot. They still may succeed in convicting him of bogus crimes and even sending him to prison, all in the hope of making sure that he doesn’t walk back into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025. Yet even all this isn’t enough for some of these sinister authoritarians. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Racism) on Friday introduced a bill to...

The Sheetz convenience store chain has been hit with a lawsuit by federal officials who allege the company discriminated against minority job applicants. Sheetz Inc., which operates more than 700 stores in six states, discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job seekers by automatically weeding out applicants whom the company deemed to have failed a criminal background check, according to U.S. officials. President Joe Biden stopped by a Sheetz for snacks this week while campaigning in Pennsylvania. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit in Baltimore against Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Sheetz and two subsidary companies, alleging the chain's longstanding hiring...

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear restored voting rights to nonviolent felons in 2019, but a group of convicted criminals argued Thursday that relief does not prevent a First Amendment challenge to the commonwealth's re-enfranchisement procedure. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2018 against then-Governor Matt Bevin, a Republican, and claimed Kentucky's re-enfranchisement protocol for felons – involving a decision by the governor alone – violated the First Amendment because it gave the governor "unfettered discretion" over a criminal's voting rights. Beshear, a Democrat, took office shortly thereafter and signed an executive order to restore voting rights to all nonviolent felons who...

One of the big problems we have in this day and age are felons getting guns. Bad guys with firearms can do bad things. We all know this, even if we figure not everyone who has a gun illegally is going to kill or even shoot another person.The issue is that gun control is supposed to stop that.In Maine, there’s been a lot of talk about anti-Second Amendment regulations. Despite being a pretty blue state, it’s also one with a long history of opposing gun control. Recently, an effort to pass some failed there.Much of this push follows a mass...

A six-year-old girl in Gaston County, North Carolina, has been left with bullet fragments in her cheek after her neighbor, Robert Louis Singletary, opened fire on her and her parents over a stray basketball. Singletary allegedly became enraged and began firing at the children and parents, striking or grazing them with bullets. Kinsley White, the young girl injured in the shooting, was interviewed by local news station WSOC, where she asked, "Why did you shoot my daddy and me? Why did you shoot a kid's dad?" Singletary remains on the run, and police have described him as "armed and dangerous."...

Suspected felons have walked free in half of cases since Alvin Bragg took office, sparking fears that some of New York’s worst criminals still roam the streets, DailyMail.com can reveal. The proportion of cases in which the Manhattan DA’s office has not asked for felony suspects to be held on bail has more than doubled since 2018, according to its own data. It has sparked fears that more suspects will be released before trial, leaving them free to reoffend.

… Restoring the voting rights of former felons drew national attention after Florida lawmakers weakened a voter-approved constitutional amendment and after a new election police unit championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis arrested 20 former felons. Several of them said they were confused by the arrests because they had been allowed to register to vote. At least 14 states have introduced proposals this year focused on restoration of voting rights, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. An Oregon proposal would allow felons to vote while incarcerated. A Tennessee bill would automatically restore voting rights once a sentence is completed,...

In 1994, Bryan David Range made a serious error. He co-signed on a form requesting food stamps. The form claimed that he and his wife of the time were not making quite as much as he was from his job mowing lawns. On August 8, 1995, he acknowledged the mistake as his responsibility, plead guilty in a plea deal to a misdemeanor, and paid a fine of $100, $288.29 in costs, and paid back $2,458 in restitution to the state. From the appeal: Range’s then-wife prepared an application for public assistance, which she and Range both signed.The application did not...

The people of California may get to decide whether prisoners convicted of felonies should be allowed to vote while incarcerated in state or federal prisons in California. The state's Constitution says those serving time in California for a felony conviction must be disqualified from voting until their sentence is complete. But Assemblyman Isaac Bryan — who represents a portion of Los Angeles in the California Assembly and chairs the body's Elections Committee — introduced an amendment Monday that would nix that requirement, allowing those prisoners to vote while incarcerated. "This measure would repeal that requirement regarding the disqualification of electors...

Some JetBlue pilots are outraged after the airline hired a violent felon to fly planes even as it refuses to hire people who haven’t taken the COVID vaccine, citing safety. Two pilots told The Daily Wire that JetBlue has hired John Perrys, who served nine years in prison for breaking into the home of a judge and attacking his daughter as she left the shower. Perrys was released from prison in 2014 and is on felony probation until 2044, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. “Apparently JetBlue won’t hire unvaccinated pilots, but they will hire violent convicted felons to...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Tens of thousands of people serving punishments for felony convictions in North Carolina but who aren’t behind bars can now register to vote and cast ballots this fall after an appeals court ruling. Expanding the scope of those able to register and vote began Wednesday, the State Board of Elections said — the day after local elections were held in more than a dozen localities. The change proceeds from litigation challenging a 1973 law that prevents someone convicted of a felony from having voting rights restored while they are still on probation, parole or post-release supervision. More...

Attorney General Merrick Garland's directive reverses a Trump administration decision that would have required thousands of convicts to return to their cells. ...In passing the CARES Act, the federal government's response to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress allowed the release last year of some prisoners based on their age, health and length of remaining sentence. William Barr, who was then the attorney general, acted to allow the release after five inmates died of Covid-related illnesses in Louisiana and Ohio. The department's Office of Legal Counsel said in January that federal law required many of those inmates to return....

PART 2 OF 3. The Hunter Biden Files Hunter Biden and his business partners were involved in discussions about possible deals in dozens of foreign countries, often corrupt backwaters, at times invoking official channels like ambassadors, emails reviewed by The Daily Wire show. While most attention has focused on Ukraine, where a gas company paid the now-president’s son tens of thousands of dollars a month while he was in deep crack addiction, and China, Hunter and his partners at a consultancy called Rosemont Seneca were eager to do business in a vast array of other places. The map below highlights...

District attorneys across the Big Apple last year declined to prosecute accused felons at nearly twice the rate of 2019 — letting more than 6,500 suspects off the hook, The Post has learned.Prosecutors dropped all charges in 16.9 percent of the 38,635 felony cases that were closed in New York City during 2020, according to data compiled by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Days after giving two weeks’ notice that he would resign his office amid a serial sexual harassment scandal, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is using the unprecedented lame-duck period to grant clemency and pardons to 10 felons — including three convicts tied to killings. Cuomo, a three-term Democrat forced to resign to avoid impeachment, said, “One of the foundational promises of New York state is that of equal justice, and equal compassion, for all under the law.” “Today I’m proud to help fulfill government’s unique responsibility to harness the power of redemption, encourage those who have made mistakes to engage in meaningful...

A federal appeals court rendered a decisive victory for Gov. Ron DeSantis and legislative Republicans last year in upholding Florida’s law requiring felons to pay all fines, fees, and restitution before they can win back the right to vote under 2018’s Amendment 4. But that ruling didn’t quite kill every challenge to the law, known as SB 7066. Novel claims asserting violation of the Nineteenth Amendment, which extended to women the right to vote, are still alive and headed for oral arguments on Thursday in Atlanta. "Neither the Supreme Court nor this court has ever addressed the appropriate legal standard...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Sen. Rand Paul wants to be part of the solution to problems in Louisville. “If it were simple, someone would have fixed it a long time ago, but I think being part of the solution is listening and I’ve always been willing to listen,” Paul said. Paul spent time with the Rotary Club of Louisville on Thursday talking about his work on crime and criminal justice, including his partnership with Christopher 2X. “Stick with the educational opportunities that the rotarians love to be a part of as it relates to getting us back on track,” Christopher 2X...