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On Monday, the Democrats approved their 2024 platform, which includes no mention of the death penalty. This year’s platform marks the first time since 2004 the platform has not mentioned the death penalty (the 2008 and 2012 platforms called for making the punishment less arbitrary).

Public support for the death penalty has been gradually declining. A Gallup poll last year found that 65% of Democrats oppose the punishment.

The Democratic National Committee did not respond to an email asking if the party still supports abolishing the death penalty.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240823120531/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-scrub-death-penalty-campaign-platform_n_66c67a0de4b0b9c7b360296b

Archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/A5eQ9

Many of the voters Harris needs — especially younger ones — see mass incarceration as the defining racial justice and civil rights issue of our time. We teach at law schools, and we see students like these every day. When they told us — and boy, did they tell us — that President Joe Biden didn’t inspire them, one of the issues they cited most often was criminal justice.

Beyond politics, justice reform is the right thing to do. Although the marches that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 have diminished, the issues that sent so many to the streets haven’t gone away.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240823121051/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/22/kamala-harris-criminal-justice-reform-rural-incarceration/

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240823121015/https://www.texasobserver.org/eddie-canales-borderlands-visionary/

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240823121001/https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/21/oath-keepers-lawyer-pleads-guilty-obstruction-00175424

A breakdown in communication, a lack of training, inconsistent protocols and an ineffective records management system were some of the reasons that led to Houston police dropping more than 268,000 cases over nearly the past decade, a committee said Wednesday.

The cases, whose existence was made public earlier this year, were never submitted for investigation as officers assigned them an internal code that cited a lack of available personnel. Among these cases were more than 4,000 sexual assault cases and at least two homicides

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240823121112/https://apnews.com/article/houston-police-dropped-cases-sex-assault-b506807461c1e499e1d04928f2c80b26

Williams was sentenced to death for the killing of Felicia Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. No forensic evidence, such as DNA, hair or footprints, had ever linked him to the scene, though police did find Gayle’s purse and other belongings in Williams’ car. He also pawned a laptop belonging to her husband. Williams was convicted largely based on the testimony of a former girlfriend, Laura Asaro, and a jailhouse informant named Henry Cole.

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... prosecutors revealed additional testing done earlier in the week had found DNA consistent with Ed Magee, an investigator in the office at the time, on the knife handle. That meant the evidence had been mishandled at some point but also undermined Williams’ claim of innocence. The findings prompted prosecutors and attorneys for Williams to begin negotiations to settle the case.

The deal would have seen Williams enter an Alford plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a life sentence. In an Alford plea, the defendant does not admit guilt but accepts that there is evidence that could persuade a jury to convict.

“Literally, his only way to find innocence was that knife, and they botched it up so much that we can't even rely on the knife at this point,” said Nimrod Chapel, president of the Missouri state chapter of the NAACP and the board chair of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. “That's an impossible situation, to be trapped in jail for a crime you didn't commit.”

Bailey’s office objected to the deal in court, saying it did not agree to its terms. As the attorney general, he said he represents the state in all civil matters, including motions to vacate, and a judge cannot accept a deal when all parties do not agree.

Maybe more than in any other year, this DNC has urged its various constituencies to highlight their identities and the collective pain that animates them. Racism, forced birth, land theft. It has been an exhibition of what the Palestinian scholar Edward Said called “the permission to narrate,” and it is that permission that Palestinian Americans have been denied. They have heard their names mentioned fleetingly by a handful of speakers but have not been granted the right to speak their names themselves. Perhaps that is for fear of what else a Palestinian American speaker might name. I cannot say that fear is unwarranted.

Last summer I spent ten days traveling the lands under Israeli rule. What I saw was hauntingly familiar. For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel is a state where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person...

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Israel and its defenders often claim that it is the “only democracy in the Middle East.” But what I saw was an ethnocracy, where half the people are first-class citizens, and the other half are something less. And this is a system sponsored and endorsed by the United States of America. The endorsement is not contradictory. For most of its history, America too was an ethnocracy in democratic clothing. The ostensible triumph over that old system, which we call Jim Crow, is one of the most uplifting stories America tells itself, one that has been repeatedly invoked at the DNC. How odd I find it that a people, presently brutalized by a similar system, whose relatives are being erased by that system’s wanton violence, are also being erased from the stage.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240822055218/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/dnc-2024-palestine-israel

California lawmakers are abandoning an ambitious proposal to force Google to pay news companies for using their content, opting instead for a deal in which the tech giant has agreed to pay $122.5 million to support local media outlets and start an artificial intelligence program.

The first-in-the-nation agreement, announced today, promises $175 million for local journalism across California over the next five years, but represents a significant departure from the bill pushed by news publishers and media employee unions earlier this year.

Instead of Google and Meta being forced to negotiate usage fees with news outlets directly, Google would deposit $55 million over five years into a new fund administered by UC Berkeley to be distributed to local newsrooms — and the state would provide $70 million over five years. Google would also continue paying $10 million each year in existing grants to newsrooms.

The Legislature and the governor would still need to approve the state money each year; the source isn’t specified yet. Google would also contribute at least $17.5 million toward an artificial intelligence “accelerator” program, raising labor advocates’ anxieties about the threat of job losses.

Publishers who initially pushed for the proposal forcing Google to pay them said the deal was still a win.

... ... the Media Guild of the West, which represents newspaper reporters in Southern California, slammed the agreement and accused publishers and lawmakers of folding to Google’s threats.

“Google won, a monopoly won,” said Matt Pearce, the group’s president. “This is dramatically worse than what Australia and Canada got … I don’t know of any journalist that asked for this.”

The guild said it was particularly concerned the deal involved a program promoting artificial intelligence technology, which it saw as a concession to the tech industry that could result in a further loss of reporting jobs.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240822122300/https://laist.com/news/california-tried-to-make-google-pay-news-outlets-the-company-cut-a-deal-that-includes-funding-ai

Legislation that Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law this month bans physical punishment in private schools while reiterating a prohibition on the practice in public schools implemented 30 years ago.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240822113447/https://apnews.com/article/schools-corporal-punishment-paddling-discipline-54591cd8826079a2a6c22e083612abd9

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240822113428/https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/franklin-politics/a-white-supremacist-warned-me-to-comply-with-his-demands-or-else-now-hes-in-federal-custody

Chicago police are required to document every time they pull someone over. But a new investigation reveals the department is releasing vastly incomplete data to oversight agencies, even as the superintendent pledges reforms.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240822112611/https://boltsmag.org/chicago-police-secret-traffic-stops/