News

In Jones v. Martinsburg, the Fourth Circuit remanded a case that the trial court had dismissed on qualified immunity grounds, beginning with this overview: “In 2013, Wayne Jones, a black man experiencing homelessness, was stopped by law enforcement in Martinsburg, West Virginia for walking alongside, rather than on, the sidewalk. By the end of this encounter, […]

Here is a YouTube link to the briefing – with colleagues Darrell Miller, Professor of Law and co-Director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, and Laura F. Edwards, Duke Professor of History.  

Today, the Center for Science and Justice joins the Policing Project at NYU Law, the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law,  the Innovative Policing Program at Georgetown Law School, the Criminal Justice Program, Vanderbilt University, and Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia School of Law in a new report: Changing the Law to […]

Race and injustice are central to the story of innocence and DNA exonerations in the U.S. Racial disparity is glaring in these DNA exonerees’ cases. Many more DNA exonerees were minorities than is typical even among average and already racially skewed populations of rape and murder convicts.  Among DNA exonerations a stunning 80 percent were […]

For weekend reading or re-reading: From Pew: 10 Things We Know About Race and Policing. And Seth Stoughton on 8 Things We Get Wrong About Policing.  With Geoffrey Alpert and Jeffrey Nobel on How to Actually Fix America’s Police. And Sen. Cory Booker on police reform. And – Charles H. Ramsey, Ronald L. Davis, Roberto […]

We grieve for George Floyd’s family and write to express our deep support for all who stand for justice in his case and in so many others.  We have a three-part mission at the Center for Science and Justice: to do work that addresses accuracy, risk, and needs in the justice system.  These heartbreaking current […]

The Minneapolis police department’s use of force policies are receiving national scrutiny after the death of George Floyd. The agency patrol guide is available online here.  Their policy begins in a way that Seth Stoughton and I have criticized, by relying on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment caselaw, which uses a very broad “reasonableness” […]

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