THE COALITION
  • Home
  • Past Shows
    • LIVE Broadcast
    • Gina Raimondo Political Hall O' Shame Inductee William Murray Cumberland Mayor 6/9/17
    • Alicia Ann Kelley - Environmental Activist
    • Rob Cote - Activist Extraordinaire
    • Bobby "The Rep" Nardolillo Candidate-US Senate
    • Arvin Vohra LP National Vice Chair 05/19/17
    • Emerge America Political Director A'shanti Gholar
    • Shannah Kurland \\ PrYSM: Community Safety Act
    • The Debate! Jared Moffat Regulate RI vs. MIchael Cerullo RI Center For Freedom & Prosperity
    • FIT: Meg Kerr\\RIPTA Riders-Pawtucket Soup Kitchen
    • Frank Carini -EcoRI.org
    • Attny's McElroy & Elmer: Invenergy!
    • Lynnette Labinger - ACLU / Donna Personeus Thayer St!
    • Jared Moffat Regulate RI
    • Jon Keith - Rhode Island Senate District 27
    • Homeless Bill of Rights Committee September 17, 2016
    • Republicans For Johnson\\\\Weld August 28, 2016
    • Rep Sherry Roberts: Quiet Strength\\Monique Chartier-Freedom & Prosperity\\Daryl Gould LP Candidate GA @ The Superman
    • Analee Berretto: Libertarian Candidate General Assembly Bristol / Portsmouth
    • Charles Wilson - National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers
    • Linda Lotridge Levin- Rhode Island Press Association
    • Pride Week! Thom Simmons LP Candidate US Congress / Mike Shipley Outright Libertarians
    • New England Livery: Uber & The Sharing Economy / Del BigTree Vaxxed The Movie
    • Alex Merced Libertarian For US Senate New York-Joanne Leppanen RIPAC Cannabis Tax Crisis
    • Steve Kerbel / Gary Johnson Libertarian Candidate
    • Phil West\\Bill Felkner CLEANRI.org The Ethics Bill 5/14/16
    • Darryl Perry: Libertarian Candidate for the Presidency of the United States
    • CoHost Blake Filippi \\Gary Sasse Represents John Kasich \\Joe Trillo Represents Donald Trump
    • John McAfee: Libertarian Warrior / Candidate for The Presidency of the United States
    • Austin Petersen: Libertarian Candidate for POTUS \\\\ Jame Kennedy TransportPVD
    • Prof Steven Forleo Rocks Corporate Academia
    • Blake Filippi Libertarian Lion
    • CLEAN RI Bill Felkner
    • Moira Walsh Candidate District 3/RIPTA Riders/Fung Fiasco!
    • State of Homelessness-Rhode Island
    • Emergency Medical Cannabis Summit!
    • Bob Lafleur: Rhode Island Independent Contractors
    • Bella Robinson-Coyote / Norma Jean Almodovar Sex Worker Rights Activist
    • StopTollsRI.com / Rep Pat Morgan
    • Michael G Riley Explains It All To You-Pension Crisis Redux
    • J. Kennedy/J. Harris The 6/10 Connector: Boulevard of Dreams?
    • Bella Robinson\\Maxine Doogan Decriminalize!
    • Dr. Beshara Doumani - Syria! 12/5/15
    • The Curious Case O' The Dancing Cop Moore v. Stewart: Presiding Judge Ford
    • RIPTA Riders Alliance/James Kennedy
    • Joan Chabot Candidate Senate District 11/Hillary Davis: RI ACLU
    • Jim Vickers-Manchester 65\\ Greenwich Cove Meadery October 24, 2015
    • Jim Vincent Providence NAACP October 10, 2015
    • Providence Apartment Association\\\\Monique Chartier December 3, 2015
    • John Miner Russ Moore Alex Merced August 26, 2015
    • Shannah Kurland September 19, 2015
    • Kate Nagle Michael Riley September 12, 2015
    • Providence Bankruptcy! 9/21/14 Riley/Harrop/Flanders The Experts Weigh In!
    • Bob Healey: The Cool Moose 10/12/14
    • The Coalition Episode 5
    • Podcast
    • The Coalition Condensed
  • Advertise
  • Civil Liberty News!
    • PO Taxpayer
    • Tony Jones
    • David Fisher
    • The Goldwater Institute
  • Fight the Stadium
  • YOU! Need To Join The ACLU
  • About Us
    • Hosts
    • In The News
    • Contact Us
    • Media Partners
    • Sponsors
  • LIVE Broadcast
  • Our Next Show
  • Coalition YouTube Page
  • The Coalition Podcast!

COURT TOMORROW IN CASE WHERE FEDS ARE SEEKING TO EXTRADITE A PERSON LIKELY TO BE TORTURED IF SENT BACK

7/31/2019

Comments

 
Picture
There will be a court hearing tomorrow, Thursday, August 1st, at 11am in U.S. District Court in Providence in an important immigrants’ rights case in which the federal government is claiming that a person who will likely be tortured if he is extradited back to his home country cannot rely on that fact to prevent his return to that country. The case will be heard at 11am before U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell, Jr.  U.S. District Court is located at 1 Exchange Terrace, Providence, RI 02903.

The case arises in the context of a habeas corpus petition filed by the Federal Public Defender on behalf of Cristian Aguasvivas, who is from the Dominican Republic. That country is seeking to extradite him for allegedly shooting to death a drug police officer. Aguasvivas claims he is innocent and the victim of rampant police corruption in that country that includes kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial killings. An immigration appeals board agreed, but the federal government is nonetheless still seeking to extradite him back there.
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project attorney Cody Wofsy will be arguing the case with the Federal Defender in support of Aguasvivas’s petition.

The ACLU’s brief and other information about the case can be found here:
http://www.riaclu.org/news/post/aclu-files-court-brief-opposing-extradition-of-man-likely-to-be-tortured-if

Comments

ACLU MOUNTS TWO-PRONGED ATTACK TO MAKE RECORDS OF POLICE MISCONDUCT PUBLIC

7/22/2019

Comments

 
Picture
​ACLU MOUNTS TWO-PRONGED ATTACK TO MAKE RECORDS OF POLICE MISCONDUCT PUBLIC

Dimitri Lyssikatos Live! On The Coalition April 2019
 
Calling it “one of the most damaging decisions affecting the public’s right to know that has been issued, and a significant obstacle to holding police departments accountable,” the ACLU of Rhode Island has launched a two-pronged attack on a 2017 Attorney General ruling that allows police to keep secret some of its reports of police misconduct. In simultaneous appeals to the Rhode Island Supreme Court and the Attorney General, ACLU of RI cooperating attorney James Cullen is asking for a reversal of that ruling.
 
In two major Access to Public Records Act (APRA) lawsuits filed in past years by the ACLU, the R.I. Supreme Court has ruled that the public is entitled to obtain final reports of investigations of police misconduct. Although both cases involved requests for reports involving citizen-generated complaints of misconduct, the court rulings did not propound any distinction between investigations prompted by civilians and those initiated by a police department itself. However, a 2017 APRA advisory opinion by the Attorney General’s office, Piskunov v. Town of Narragansett, approved such a distinction and held in that case that the Narragansett Police Department could withhold their final reports of misconduct investigations if they were initiated internally. Until that ruling, police departments had routinely provided those reports. That quickly changed.
 
Later that year, the ACLU filed an APRA lawsuit against the Pawtucket Police Department on behalf of Dimitri Lyssikatos, who was stymied from obtaining those internally-generated police misconduct final reports. Lyssikatos is a member of the Rhode Island Accountability Project, a non-partisan organization which promotes governmental accountability and maintains a publicly available database of police misconduct reports. However, Pawtucket police, relying on the Piskunov opinion, refused to turn over 57 separate internal investigatory findings, prompting the ACLU to sue. In March, however, RI Superior Court Judge Melissa Long sided with the police and held that additional hearings were necessary to determine whether those records had to be released under APRA.
 
In a court brief filed today, the ACLU has asked the R.I. Supreme Court to review and overturn that decision, stating that Long’s ruling “invites public bodies to use unnecessary procedural hurdles to block APRA requests [and]  imposes significant transaction costs that most applicants for the release of records cannot afford.”
 
Separately, Lyssikatos was denied access to similar records in April by the Woonsocket Police Department, which also relied on Piskunov in rejecting his request for misconduct reports. In response, ACLU attorney Cullen has filed with the Attorney General a formal appeal of that denial, asking that his office overturn its 2017 opinion. Calling the Woonsocket Police Department’s denial “a flagrant breach of Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act,” the appeal to the AG argues that it “highlights the faulty and problematic nature” of the 2017 opinion “which has become an increasingly-used tool by police departments to shield themselves from public accountability.”  The formal appeal to the Attorney General concludes:
 
“The Piskunov opinion has cast a pall over police department accountability and transparency and is being used to hinder the public’s right to know in significant ways. We request that your office take this opportunity to reconsider and reverse that pronouncement, and conclude that the text and intent of the APRA . . . compel the conclusion that internally-generated reports regarding alleged police misconduct, no less than citizen-generated reports, are public records.”
 
In seeking the records from both Pawtucket and Woonsocket, Lyssikatos agreed, to no avail, to allow personally-identifiable information from the reports to be redacted.
 
ACLU cooperating attorney Cullen said today: “There is no meaningful distinction between internal affairs reports generated as a result of citizen complaints and internal affairs reports generated without an underlying citizen complaint.  However initiated, these reports of investigations conducted by the internal affairs department shed light on one of the core functions of government – policing.”
 
Lyssikatos added: “The idea that internally generated investigations demand greater privacy than those initiated by the public only serves to foster the disconnect between the public and law enforcement. The Rhode Island Accountability Project was, and in some cases still is, receiving internally generated reports and feels strongly that their release is essential in maintaining a single standard of investigative integrity. As it stands now, all a law enforcement agency would have to do to withhold an investigation is beat the public to the initiation of the complaint.”

ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown stated: “The 2017 Attorney General opinion is one of the most damaging decisions affecting the public’s right to know that has been issued, and a significant obstacle to holding police departments accountable. We are hopeful that the new Attorney General’s promise of greater transparency will lead to a reversal of that unfortunate opinion.”
 
Earlier this year, Judge Long upheld thousands of questionable redactions made by the previous Attorney General in releasing records regarding the AG’s expenditure of “Google settlement” funds. Those redactions included the complete blacking out of a two-page memo describing the Attorney General’s purchase of ceremonial lapel pins for the office. After the ACLU appealed that ruling, Attorney General Neronha reexamined the records and released almost all of them in unredacted form.
 
More information on the cases mentioned above including copies of the filings, can be found here.


Comments

Byron Schlomach-The 1889 Institute Medicaid For All?                        The Record Of Medicaid Expansion In Colorado

7/18/2019

Comments

 
Picture
Comments

ACLU CHALLENGES CENTURY-OLD LAW DECLARING INMATES                       SERVING LIFE SENTENCES “CIVILLY DEAD”

7/3/2019

Comments

 
Picture
ACLU CHALLENGES CENTURY-OLD LAW DECLARING INMATES SERVING LIFE SENTENCES “CIVILLY DEAD”
 
Attorney Sonja Deyoe Joined The Coalition Talk Radio!

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of a 110-year-old statute that declares inmates serving life sentences at the ACI to be “dead in all respects” with respect to “all civil rights.” The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by ACLU cooperating attorneys Sonja Deyoe and Lynette Labinger, is on behalf of two ACI inmates who are barred from pursuing legal actions against the Department of Corrections in court because of the “civil death” law. According to the lawsuit, Rhode Island may be the only state in the country still enforcing a law like this, whose origins date back to ancient English common law.
 
As far back as 1976, a court struck down Missouri’s civil death statute, noting that “the concept of civil death has been condemned by virtually every court and commentator to study it over the last thirty years.” The court observed that such laws had been characterized even before then as “archaic,” “outmoded,” “an outdated and inscrutable common law precept,” and “a medieval fiction in a modern world.” In 1937, when 18 states still had civil death laws, a law review article called the concept “outworn.”
 
The lawsuit seeks a court order declaring the civil death law unconstitutional on a number of grounds, including as a violation of inmates’ First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
 
One of the plaintiffs, James Lombardi, is barred by the statute from suing the DOC after he cut himself in his cell on a footlocker that he claims the Department knew was hazardous. The other plaintiff, Joshua Davis, claims that a DOC nurse recklessly exposed him to blood-borne pathogens by administering insulin from a contaminated vial of medication, but the civil death statute bars him from bringing claims alleging medical negligence or other violations of his rights.
 
In 2015, the ACLU challenged the statute as it applied to bar inmates serving life sentences from marrying, but the court in that case said that a 1974 U.S. Supreme Court summary affirmance, without a written opinion, of a federal court decision upholding a New York statute that barred inmates sentenced to life imprisonment from marrying applied.
 
The key portion of the state law being challenged reads: “Every person imprisoned in the adult correctional institutions for life shall, with respect to all rights of property, to the bond of matrimony and to all civil rights and relations of any nature whatsoever, be deemed to be dead in all respects, as if his or her natural death had taken place at the time of conviction.”
 
ACLU attorney Deyoe said today: “Most of the individuals affected by this act receive life sentences with the possibility of parole and will subsequently be released back into society.  This law is a remnant of a byzantine era and works directly against any type of rehabilitation these offenders could receive which would better equip them when they eventually reenter society.  It removes from them all of their civil rights and constitutes a punishment in some respects far greater than is fathomable in an orderly society such as ours.  Under the Civil Death Act, those affected cannot file suit in state court for even the most grievous of crimes that are committed against them while in prison.  This would include crimes such as torture, rape, criminal neglect and denial of the most basic things such as food and water.”
 
ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown added: “Interpreted literally, the statute would allow prison officials to waterboard an inmate serving a life sentence, and leave the inmate with no legal recourse. The irony of the statute is that a person who is sentenced to life imprisonment – and thus legally dead – may be eligible for parole after 20 or 25 years, while a person who is instead sentenced to confinement for 99 years, and not eligible for parole for a longer period of time, retains their civil rights under the law. The statute is archaic, irrational and unjustifable.”
 
More information on the lawsuit, Lombardi and Davis v. Raimondo, can be found here:
http://www.riaclu.org/court-cases/case-details/lombardi-and-davis-v.-raimondo
 
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Sonja Deyoe: (401) 864-5877
Steven Brown: (401) 831-7171

Picture
Comments

    RSS Feed

    Ebates Coupons and Cash Back

    Archives

    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

Picture
Picture
Picture

Picture