Word: davises
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As a public defender in Washington 20 years ago, Angela Davis defended a Jamaican immigrant against rape charges. The man had no criminal record and insisted on his innocence but was forced to stay in jail because he could not afford bail.
When Davis went to interview the man's accuser, she learned that the woman was deaf and unable to communicate with anyone except her mother. The prosecutor couldn't make a case without an unbiased third-party interpreter, so Davis asked him to release her client. He refused, declaring that...
The power, if not the arrogance, of prosecutors would grate on Davis throughout her 12 years at the D.C. Public Defender Service, three as its director. Now a law professor at American University, she has made a mission of exposing that power--on radio and TV and in a new...
Her beef is not so much with prosecutors breaking the rules, although plenty do. In 2003 the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity found that prosecutorial misconduct led to charges being dismissed, convictions reversed or sentences reduced in more than 2,000 cases since 1970. Davis' greater worry is all the...
When prosecutors pick which criminal charges to file, they need have only probable cause, or reasonable belief that the suspect committed the crimes charged. This low standard creates room to pile on the most severe charges possible to bully a defendant into a plea bargain. If a case ends up...