Renewed War on Drugs, harsher charging policies, stepped-up criminalization of immigrants — in the current climate, joining the NACDL is more important than ever. Members of NACDL help to support the only national organization working at all levels of government to ensure that the voice of the defense bar is heard.
Take a stand for a fair, rational, and humane criminal legal system
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NACDL is committed to enhancing the capacity of the criminal defense bar to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights.
NACDL harnesses the unique perspectives of NACDL members to advocate for policy and practice improvements in the criminal legal system.
NACDL envisions a society where all individuals receive fair, rational, and humane treatment within the criminal legal system.
NACDL’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal legal system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.
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Police body-worn camera footage can be inconclusive at best and misleading at worst, and thus it is imperative that the defense community understand the key technical features of body-worn camera systems. For example, police body-worn cameras automatically save the 30 seconds of footage prior to the officer activating the camera. Moreover, other available data kept by camera systems could reveal which officers reviewed the footage and when, and who marked the video for deletion.
Holding Law Enforcement Accountable by Expediting the Review of Body-Camera Footage, Jail Calls, and Other Digital Discovery
This page contains materials and information related to policing, including interrogations, investigation tactics, procedure, and even a glossary of slang terms.
This month Matthew T. Mangino reviews Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable by Joanna Schwartz.
Nearly all major police departments across the country have body-worn camera programs, which means that defense lawyers, investigators, and paralegals will often need to pore through hours upon hours of video footage as they defend their clients. But body-worn camera footage can be inconclusive at best and misleading at worst.
From police drones to body cameras, this webinar guided the criminal defense bar through the functionality, technological limitations, and legal challenges of litigating police technology in criminal cases.
This webinar walked through the recommendations and talk about how to negotiate stronger body camera policies in your jurisdiction, the technical aspects of body cameras, and strategies and tactics for defending clients in body camera jurisdictions.
With protections in place, body cameras have the potential to better document encounters between police officers and citizens while mitigating competing concerns about their potential for misuse or abuse.
The panel addresses militarization, ethnic & racial dynamics of sentencing and their impact on criminal justice outcomes.
The panel examines the historical and systemic issues associated with crime and the response of police to those communities most affected by crime. The panel also addresses solutions policy makers and communities can make to solve these issues on the local, state and federal level.
NACDL released its report Policing Body Cameras: Policies and Practices to Safeguard the Rights of the Accused in March 2017, outlining NACDL’s position on the introduction and use of body cameras by law enforcement. This webinar walks through the recommendations and talks about how to negotiate stronger body camera policies in your jurisdiction, the technical aspects of body cameras, and strategies and tactics for defending clients in body camera jurisdictions.
Join NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project to hear about our new resources for tracking law enforcement misconduct. We've compiled our best practices for beginning or improving your processes of tracking police misconduct data. We’ll cover hidden places to look for data, how to create a feasible collection plan, and effective systems for organizing your data. We’ll show approaches from the advanced and involved to the low-tech and simple - so you can apply these methods with whatever resources you have.
Defenders start from the proposition that something went wrong with the police case.
But how do things go wrong?
Defense attorneys often point to “one big screw-up” or “one twisted cop” in telling the story of a client’s innocence to a jury. In reality, the best explanation of how things go wrong is usually an “organizational accident” – a lot of small errors that alone would not be enough to cause something to go wrong, but when put together can cause catastrophe.
Confession cases are some of the most difficult to defend; juries, judges prosecutors and even some criminal defense lawyers often believe that only guilty people confess to crimes. The Brendan Dassey case, shown in the Netflix Documentary "Making A Murderer" has highlighted the problem of coerced and false confessions. In the webinar we focus on both suppressing confessions and persuading juries that confessions are false.
Presented by Professor Devon W. Carbado, Associate Vice Chancellor of BruinX for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Race Matters II: The Impact of Race on Criminal Justice January 10-11, 2019 | Los Angeles, CA
