The DOJ has asked for a one-month continuance the Texas voter ID case. The motion, which is opposed by the private plaintiffs in the case but supported by the state of Texas, asks for the extension for the following reason: “Because of the change in administration, the Department of Justice also experienced a transition in leadership. The United States requires additional time to brief the new leadership of the Department on this case and the issues to be addressed at that hearing before making any representations to the Court.”

Rick Hasan’s “Election Blog” expects that in both the North Carolina and Texas voting cases pending in the Supreme Court and  in the district court,  the DOJ will switch positions and side with the states – and against the voting rights plaintiffs.- that passed restrictive voting rules

The NDRC is a new project chaired by former Attorney General Eric Holder with a  goal of producing fairer maps in the 2021 redistricting process. The committee will coordinate party organizations on a multi-cycle, state-by-state redistricting strategy ahead of the 2020 Census.

“This redistricting process will be critical to the future of our democracy,” Holder said. “Those who control state governments draw the lines that shape Congress for the next decade. Fixing this redistricting problem will involve not just focusing on the lines, but focusing on the larger effort to win back governance. This is the path to ensuring Democrats have their rightful seats at the table in 2021.”

The NDRC will target races in every election cycle through 2020 – including gubernatorial, state legislative and ballot initiative campaigns where Democrats can produce fairer electoral maps in 2021. Holder highlighted these major focal points in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, including:

1. ELECTORAL – The NDRC will coordinate and support the critical state-based electoral work led by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and Democratic Governors Association to identify and invest in key down-ballot races with redistricting implications.

2. LEGAL – The NDRC ensures that ongoing infrastructure is in place and adequately resourced to guide a proactive legal strategy using data, technical, and map drawing resources.

3. BALLOT INITIATIVE – The NDRC will support state ballot reforms where this is the best strategy to produce fairer maps.

In 30 states, the police can collect DNA samples from arrestees to compare with national databases, without any finding of guilt. A recent report for the Pew Charitable Trust examines the practice, which on its face might seem to violate basic principles of “innocent until proven guilty.” The Supreme Court doesn’t think so: in 2013 it upheld the practice, saying taking samples at the time of arrest doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. “Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure.” (Maryland v. King, a 5-4 decision with the unusual dissenting group of Scalia, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan)

California Governor Jerry Brown’s new budget asks for $10.6 million to implement Propostion 57, the criminal; justice initiative approved on the ballot this past November.  Scott Kernan, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the governor’s new state budget lays out a primary framework for implementing the reforms in Prop 57, which seeks to reduce the state’s inmate population by giving parole officials greater latitude to offer early release to thousands of prisoners.

“We are in the preliminary stages,” said Kernan, whose agency expects to complete the new package of rules by the required October 2017 deadline. “Proposition 57 is a significant change for this department, and a significant change for the criminal justice system in California.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently voted to expand the  department’s Mental Evaluation Teams so they can respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The LA County Sheriff was the first SoCal law enforcement agency to create such teams, and with this new plan will add 25 staff members and  $4.7 million in funding in order to double the number of Mental Evaluation Teams from 10 to 23 and create a “triage help desk” for residents to call during a psychological crisis.

The teams pair deputies with mental health clinicians and respond to calls that require special handling of mentally ill people who are threatening others or being disruptive. The goal is to reduce the use of jail as a de facto mental health treatment facility and send those in need to psychological services rather than custody. Ideally law enforcement contact with individuals with mental illness will then result in connection with treatment rather than cycling in and out of the criminal justice system.

The Supreme Court issued a surprising stay of an Appeals Court order of  special elections in North Carolina  following a finding  that a number of NC state legislative districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. That three-judge court refused to halt the 2016 elections being held under those illegal lines, but ordered the NC legislature to  create a new districting plan to fix the constitutional problems for special elections to be held in 2017.

North Carolina asked the court to stay its own order pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. As that is pending, the state filed an emergency motion with Chief Justice Roberts asking for the Chief or the Court to stay the requirement for a special election, in essence pushing the matter to the 2018 elections and giving the new current legislature the freedom from a new round of redistricting and new elections. That is the request the Supreme Court has granted.

This order could be short-lived: the Court will consider whether to take up the underlying appeal in the case in the next two weeks.

NY Governor Cuomo’s new pardon program is essentially a work-around for the legislature’s failure to act in raising the age of adult criminal responsibility from 16 to 18. Only NY and North Carolina currently charge 16 to 18 year olds as adults. Cuomo announced the program in 2015, for former offenders who committed a nonviolent crime when they were 16 or 17 and have stayed conviction-free for at least 10 years. Anyone convicted of a sex crime does not qualify, and pardons can be withdrawn if the recipient is re-convicted. The first group of 101 pardons was announced this Dec. 30. The governor’s office estimates at least 10,000 people qualify for the program – so far they have received 260 applications.

This month the Supreme Court will hear Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, which centers on the question of what level of educational benefit schools are required to provide to children with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Endrew F. was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In public school though 4th grade, he had an IEP, but he didn’t make much progress and the IEP repeated the same goals from year to year, or gave up on them. In 5th grade, Drew’s parents withdrew him and enrolled him in a private school. The private school developed a behavior intervention plan that worked – since then, Drew has made significant academic progress.Drew’s parents then filed a complaint for reimbursement for the private school tuition with the school district. The District Court and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the parents, finding that  all the school district had to do for Drew was provide education and services that gave him a “merely more than de minimis” benefit – and that Douglas County had done that, even though Drew never met most of his educational goals. Drew and his parents are challenging this decision in the Supreme Court.

The filings and other more detailed case information are here.

Must reading for anyone interested in the criminal justice system (which should, of course, be everyone):the report on Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The report looked at pattern matching forensic disciplines such as bite mark matching, shoe print matching, blood spatter analysis, fingerprint matching and hair fiber analysis. It also looked at DNA testing when investigators find biological material from multiple sources. With the exception of single-source DNA testing, the report found serious deficiencies in all areas of forensics it studied.

As the Washington Post points out in analyzing the report, it is DNA testing that has exposed these other flaws in forensic science, by proving innocence in cases where other forensic “sciences” had argued for guilt. But DNA testing isn’t a panacea; the percentage of all cases in which DNA testing can conclusively prove or disprove guilt is  10 percent at most. The flaws in the system that DNA exposed in those 10 percent of cases logically must persist throughout the system, and likely at about the same rates. If we don’t correct the problems with other forensic disciplines that DNA testing has exposed in those 10 percent of cases, and that the report explores in depth, those problems will continue in the remaining 90 percent of cases.