Latest news with #MarshallProject
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
There's a lot to learn about crime. Trump's orders are making it harder to get answers.
The Trump administration is quickly trying to reshape America's criminal justice system. Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi cancelled hundreds of Department of Justice grants centered on crime prevention to shift its focus toward illegal drug enforcement and the eradication of DEI policies. On April 28, the president signed executive orders to limit police reform and rescind consent decrees that hold police agencies accountable. And recent reporting details how the department's Office of Civil Rights is transitioning from enforcing civil rights laws to bringing cases against universities and cities passing liberal policies, leading hundreds of attorneys to resign in protest and effectively gutting the division. But all the news about what these directives are doing can distract from what exactly they're undoing by rapidly curtailing public access to information about crime and criminal justice. In the early days of the Trump presidency, government agencies began deleting web pages that promoted 'gender ideology' or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. As reported by the Journalist's Resource, pages about gender-based violence and structural racism were taken down and remain offline. The Bureau of Prisons removed from its website its Transgender Offender Manual, which outlined policies for interacting with transgender people who are incarcerated. Plus, an overview of definitions and data on hate crimes is no longer accessible on the National Institute of Justice's website, although some of the material exists on other Justice Department webpages. Though each change may be minor on its own, together, they interfere with the public's understanding of the causes of violence, successful crime prevention strategies and the workings of the criminal justice system. Ultimately, without access to this kind of information, it becomes harder to hold the government accountable for its policies around policing and incarceration. The information ecosystem wasn't perfect under the Biden administration, either. Around 2020, methodology changes and bureaucratic reshuffling led to significantly less reporting on deaths in custody, a problem that continued throughout Biden's presidency. In 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation finished switching systems for collecting crime data. The Marshall Project reported that 6,000 of 18,000 police agencies did not transition in time, leaving a gaping hole in a primary resource for national crime statistics. The Trump administration, however, has gone beyond bureaucratic hiccups by actively impeding access to public information. In March, the White House removed an advisory declaring gun violence a public health issue and listing statistics on shootings. According to Mother Jones, major layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have threatened the future of the dataset known as WISQARS, which tracks information on gun violence injuries and deaths and has become a critical resource for researchers. Data collection is often the first step toward addressing serious societal problems. Take the issue of 'wandering cops' who transfer between police agencies without their histories of abuse or misconduct following them. In 2022, the Biden administration created the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, a central place for police departments to search for information about federal law enforcement officers with criminal convictions and misconduct violations. Trump decommissioned the database on his first day in office. State and local agencies come to rely on tools like this to gain insights from other jurisdictions and compare the success of different programs, but that work is becoming increasingly challenging. Federal agencies are also removing research staff, cutting funding and eliminating grants that, over time, build a portfolio of knowledge around criminal justice issues. There are plenty of examples on the topic of gun violence alone. At the Department of Homeland Security, officials discontinued an advisory board that was developing evidence-based best practices to prevent school shootings. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the research team studying gun violence was decimated by layoffs, losing about three-quarters of its staff. As for the funding cuts at the Department of Justice at the end of April, the changes have far-reaching implications for researchers trying to better understand crime patterns and prevention strategies. An analysis of the list of canceled Justice Department grants published by Reuters shows that at least 44 grants worth more than $47 million were slated for research projects, including research on juvenile justice, violent extremism, elder abuse, policing strategies and reentry programs. The Justice Department also cut all funding to the Prison Rape Elimination Act Resource Center. Passed unanimously by Congress in 2003, PREA mandated data collection on incidents of sexual assault in prisons to identify paths to prevention. The act led the National Institute of Justice to fund the Culture of Prison Sexual Violence study, the largest ethnographic study of incarcerated people ever conducted, which resulted in a long list of recommendations for prisons and jails. The study found that more than 9% of incarcerated people were aware of a rape committed by a correctional staff member. Follow-up research projects are now in limbo due to the federal government's funding cuts. In a seeming contradiction, the Trump administration is hoping to streamline and encourage data collection on crime rates. The April 28 executive order on policing included a mandate to 'increase the investment in and collection, distribution, and uniformity of crime data across jurisdictions.' Project 2025—a conservative policy blueprint for the Trump presidency—wrote favorably of the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey, saying officials 'should prioritize and sufficiently fund it.' Trump has already implemented several Project 2025 recommendations for the Justice Department. For the data and information that is now shielded from public view, there are a number of organizations racing to restore access. The Project on Government Oversight has a searchable database of 160 investigative records taken offline in February that document alleged abuses by the Department of Homeland Security. Harvard University has compiled data on health equity and environmental justice and made the information available online. The Data Rescue Project is archiving millions of records on youth behaviors, education, COVID-19 and more. There's also the Wayback Machine, an easily accessible tool for finding older versions of web pages that have since been altered or removed from the internet. It offers users an option to archive websites as they exist today. Have you seen examples of how data and research on the criminal justice system are changing under the Trump administration or have data to share? Share them with Jill at jcastellano@ This story was produced by The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Cash-strapped jails are taking in immigrants to help Trump's agenda and fill their coffers
Donald Trump's administration is relying on the nation's vast correctional system to detain and deport immigrants — and cash-strapped local jails could see a massive windfall from federal contracts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is contracting with or operating 147 public and private detention facilities, according to data reviewed by The Marshall Project. That's an increase of 40 facilities from the end of Joe Biden's administration, and ICE is planning to spend another $45 billion on new contracts to ramp up Trump's aggressive anti-immigration agenda, according to federal requests for proposals reviewed by the nonprofit criminal justice news organization. 'It's a pain in the butt because this is a whole new ground that we are covering, but then, you know, when you are one of the poorest counties in the state of Missouri, I've got to figure out how to pay for law enforcement,' Ozark County Sheriff Cass Martin told the Marshall Project. The county received a $1.1 million contract with ICE, and the sheriff is putting the funds towards higher wages and hiring new recruits. 'Nobody wants to be in law enforcement. It's dying,' Martin said. House Republicans, meanwhile, are proposing more than $150 billion in new spending for immigration enforcement, with a goal of jailing more than 100,000 people in detention centers across the country. Federal facilities are running out of space to keep up with the president's demands for sweeping arrests. The administration is instead relying on sympathetic state and local law enforcement officials, eager to boost funding for their own agencies. More than 49,000 people are currently in ICE detention, according to nonpartisan data research group TRAC at Syracuse University. Nearly half of the people in custody do not have a criminal record. The vast majority of people in ICE detention — 90 percent — are jailed in privately run prisons. At least nine people have died while in ICE custody this year, including one death in a rural Missouri jail that the local coroner ruled a suicide. In 2024, ICE reported 11 deaths. In 2023, Brayan Garzon was detained by immigration authorities for three months before settling in St. Louis, Missouri. Earlier this year, he was arrested for theft and shoplifting and detained in the Phelps County Jail, which had just received a $21 million expansion that doubled the size of the facility to 400 beds. At the same time, Phelps County sheriff's office was reporting it was struggling to pay bills 'due to lack of funds,' and that an ICE agreement would generation an additional $3.6 million a year on top of the sheriff's typical budget of $5.5 million, according to the Marshall Project, citing county records. On April 7, Garzon was found near death in his cell with a blanket wrapped around his neck. He was pronounced dead the next day. Democratic lawmakers have argued that increased spending on detention doesn't address humanitarian concerns but merely puts more money into the president's demands to swiftly remove millions of immigrants from the country. At the start of the year, only two county jails in Ohio were jailing 120 immigrants in ICE detention. Now, the state has at least four times the capacity, with five more county jails offering up space for ICE detainees. 'We're talking about people who are awaiting a decision on a federal civil immigration matter,' according to Ohio Immigrant Alliance director Lynn Tramonte. 'Taking these people from their homes and communities, while they await a federal process that could take years, is unconscionable.' The expansion of immigration enforcement into local jails dovetails with the administration's push for state and local law enforcement officers to work with federal agents. So-called 287(g) agreements — named after a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act — effectively deputize local law enforcement to work with federal agencies to enforce federal law. ICE has signed 571 of those cooperative agreements covering 40 states as of May 18, according to ICE. The expansion of the 287(g) program 'further fuels Trump's mass deportation agenda by expanding the dragnet for putting people into the arrest to deportation pipeline,' according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. In New York, where three counties have signed 'detainer' agreements to hold immigrants in local jails while waiting to be picked up by federal agents, Democratic state lawmakers have repeatedly proposed legislation to ban the state from contracting with ICE. And in Wisconsin, Republican state lawmakers have proposed legislation to force local sheriffs to comply with ICE or risk losing federal funding altogether. The administration is meanwhile redirecting officers from several federal agencies — from agents focused on drug trafficking and illegal guns to agents in the law enforcement wing of the US Postal Service — to combat immigration instead, shifting roughly 2,000 officers into the Department of Homeland Security. Trump also signed executive orders last month directing federal agencies to target so-called 'sanctuary' states and cities that they allege are interfering or not complying with federal immigration law, with threats to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding. A coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general are now suing the administration, accusing the president of threatening to cut off unrelated funding for emergency services and infrastructure support to 'bully' them into supporting the president's agenda.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
Rural Missouri jails see windfall in Donald Trump's mass deportation effort
Ozark County Jail in Gainesville, Missouri, has negotiated a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to transport and temporarily hold detainees (Jesse Bogan/Marshall Project). On a recent morning, thick fog lingered over the hills and hollows of Ozark County, Missouri, limiting the view of Lick Creek. It and other waterways raged out of their banks in overnight flash flooding, only to recede with debris strewn about. County commissioners huddled inside the courthouse, one block from a muddy rodeo ring, discussing bridge inspections and the path forward. Some washed-out areas were only accessible by four-wheel drive. They'd put up more 'road closed' signs, the commissioners said, if only people would stop stealing them. Ozark County — estimated population 9,090 — is used to doing without. A mere nick in the Bible Belt, it doesn't even have a stoplight. What it does have is a 24-bed jail with a cattle trough baptismal pool in the recreational area. It also has an ambitious sheriff who sees his prayers answered in a new contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that could boost his $1.1 million annual budget. This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project – St. Louis, a nonprofit news team covering Missouri's criminal justice systems. Subscribe to their email list, and follow The Marshall Project on Instagram, Reddit and YouTube. 'It's a pain in the butt because this is a whole new ground that we are covering, but then, you know, when you are one of the poorest counties in the state of Missouri, I've got to figure out how to pay for law enforcement,' Sheriff Cass Martin told the Marshall Project – St. Louis. 'And that's not easy, especially when you can't even get new recruits. Nobody wants to be in law enforcement. It's dying.' Ozark County is one of many places, big and small, that the Trump administration is depending on to pull off one of the largest mass deportations from the U.S. in recent history. An enormous ramp-up in detention capacity is underway. New contracts are being negotiated. Existing contracts with the federal government are being expanded. In the ICE contract's infancy, Ozark County is already reaping the benefits by raising wages and hiring for new positions in law enforcement. As of early May, tracking reports show ICE contracting with or operating 147 public and private detention facilities, including three in Missouri. That's up from 107 facilities reported in the final days of the Biden administration. On Feb. 24, Martin signed a contract for Ozark County, which isn't yet on the list. ICE plans to spend $45 billion on new contracts to hold and transport detainees and provide detainee services, according to a federal request for proposals. Counties like Ozark are getting a taste in federal dollars of what that expansion means. Sheriffs say the feds pay well, yet the detention and transportation contracts come with much more scrutiny and oversight than typical jail work, especially in Missouri, which doesn't have statewide jail standards. Still, ICE reported that eight detainees had died nationally while in custody this year, as of May 5, including one death in a rural Missouri jail that the local coroner ruled a suicide. In 2024, ICE reported 11 deaths. Some groups that advocate for ICE detainees are concerned that people from all over the world are increasingly being held in communities without well-established legal watchdogs and medical services. Contracting with local jails 'is the easiest way to get a (detention) facility up and running without any of the risk to the federal government,' said Romelia Graefrath, co-executive director of Mariposa Legal, a nonprofit in Indianapolis that fights for immigrant rights. 'The end result is people get hurt, and then that is a huge liability for these communities that are already suffering.' Martin said he applied for an ICE contract under the Biden administration when his department faced a budget crisis from falling revenue. 'We were really hurting,' he said. 'We were basically praying that next month will be better.' The ICE application lay dormant until Trump was elected, he said. 'The day after the inauguration, a federal inspector showed up here at the jail wanting to look at everything throughout the facility,' he said. The negotiated ICE contract will breathe new life into his department at a rate of $110 a night per detainee and $1.10 per mile when transporting detainees, Martin said. He said Ozark County was still working out medical care so it could be cleared to hold detainees longer than overnight. Meanwhile, it has three transport vans out on the road, sometimes driving hundreds of miles per day. He said they've made 525-mile runs from Ozark County to the federal building in St. Louis, down to the Greene County Jail in southwest Missouri, then back home. They've picked up detainees 325 miles away in Oklahoma and taken them to the tarmac at Kansas City International Airport. Sometimes detainees spend the night in the Ozark County Jail, on the way to Little Rock, Arkansas, for example, which is about a 3½-hour drive. 'We'll feed them, we'll house them, we'll take care of them, and then the next morning they'll go back out,' Martin said. 'We are just kind of a spot in the road.' Because of the ICE contract, Martin said, he's been able to attract more jail staff and raise the pay from about $13 to $18 an hour. In addition to mileage, he said ICE pays $18.50 an hour for drivers transporting detainees, as well as time and a half for overtime. Martin plucked one new employee who speaks Spanish from a local real estate office. She went through a short training program to be a transport officer. 'It definitely enlightened her a little bit,' Martin said. 'They are able to talk to her and tell her if something is going on.' The staffing bump was reflected in the public payroll. In February, the county paid five jail employees a total of $12,900 in earnings, which came to an average of $2,580 each. By March, it had 14 employees earning $54,193, including about $10,500 in overtime, or an average of $3,871 each. 'We'd like to add another pod to the jail and at some point help pay livable wages,' said Brian Wise, the county clerk. 'Around here, local law enforcement doesn't have tons of money. Without extra revenue, they can't function.' It's hard to gauge what local residents think. Just one attended a recent county commissioner meeting. Two years' worth of meeting minutes didn't mention the ICE contract in detail. Wise said he wanted to wait until federal money started coming in before listing projected revenue in the county's $7 million annual budget. Other elected local officials also see the contract as a boon. 'It's going to work out to be a great thing for us,' Ozark County Presiding Commissioner Terry Newton said. While cash-strapped jails see opportunity in ICE contracts, Brayan Garzón, a former street vendor in Bogotá, Colombia, saw opportunity in the United States. He left in 2023 and crossed the U.S. border into southern California. Garzón was then detained for three months before settling in St. Louis, where he held various odd jobs doing roofing and food deliveries, his family said. On May 27, 2024, Garzón was arrested for shoplifting in Missouri. Two weeks later, an immigration judge in San Diego, at a hearing Garzón wasn't present for, ordered him removed from the country, ICE officials said. In late March, St. Louis police arrested Garzón on a charge of using a stolen credit card at a smoke shop. He was arrested along with a friend from Colombia who was accused of stealing credit cards, a watch and more than $25,000 in jewelry while cleaning hotel rooms for a temp agency, according to court records. ICE took both into custody. Garzón ended up being held 100 miles southwest of St. Louis in the Phelps County Jail. On March 27, a medical intake screening of Garzón at the jail noted that he had anxiety and a history of a heart murmur. He denied having suicidal thoughts. A routine mental health referral was made, according to an ICE report. Two days later, Garzón had severe head pain, body aches and sweating. A tuberculosis test came back positive. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 at a local hospital's emergency room after being taken there by the jail staff. He was returned to the jail a day later, on March 30, with normal vitals. But a few days later, he was treated for vomiting. His mental health appointment was rescheduled because of 'mental health clinic time and staff' and his COVID-19 diagnosis. Around 9:50 p.m. on April 7, Garzón was found near death in his cell with a blanket wrapped around his neck. He was pronounced dead the following day, after being flown to a hospital in the St. Louis area for a higher level of care, ICE said in its report. Garzón was in his cell alone prior to his suicide, according to Phelps County Coroner Ernie Coverdell. Garzón had given a letter to his jailers written in Spanish, requesting to speak to his mother by telephone. Coverdell said surveillance footage showed Garzón praying before entering a bottom bunk, hidden by a draped blanket. When a jailer found him unresponsive about 20 minutes later, Coverdell said Garzón looked like he was asleep, but with bedding around his neck. Emergency responders and doctors kept his heart beating for several days after he was declared clinically dead, Coverdell said. With his family's permission, Garzón's heart and several organs were donated to people in need. 'He saved more than one life,' Coverdell said. Garzón, one of six siblings, was 27. His mother, Adriana, said in Spanish that she'd spoken to her son several times by phone from the jail. He'd complained about the food and being sick, but she was blindsided by his suicide. 'My son had more will to live than to die,' she said. 'He was a very happy person.' She struggled to comprehend how he fell through the cracks of a country rich in resources and modern technology. 'How is it possible that my son could do this?' she said. 'He's a human being. They should have been watching.' The Phelps County Jail has a long history of holding detainees for the federal government. In an effort to hold more, the facility just underwent a $21 million expansion that doubled the size of the jail to 400 beds. A few weeks prior to Garzón's arrival, Phelps County Sheriff Michael Kirn's department was struggling to pay January and February invoices 'due to lack of funds,' according to county commission meeting minutes. Kirn told commissioners that it was imperative to get the ICE agreement in place because he expected it to generate an additional $3.6 million a year on top of the sheriff's typical budget of $5.5 million. Kirn declined to comment about the death because it was under investigation by state and federal authorities. He said no policies or procedures have been changed or added since Garzón's death. The county's existing contract with the U.S. Marshals — who track down dangerous fugitives and enforce federal law — was expanded to include ICE detainees, Kirn said. He declined to share the rate. 'The feds are a little funny about stuff, and I don't want to cause ripples,' he said. He said they were hovering at about 300 out of 400 beds filled, half of them with federal detainees. 'We had to slow down,' he said. 'It's not the amount of people; it's the paperwork.' ICE officials didn't respond to a request for comment. An April press release about Garzón's death stated that the agency 'remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.' Garzón's death seemed to weigh on Martin, the sheriff in Ozark County. 'He was so young,' Martin said. He wondered if there were any red flags leading up to the incident. And how did ICE respond? Martin said if a jail resident is in a mental crisis in Ozark County, they rush them to the hospital for an emergency hold. That hadn't been an issue with any of the ICE detainees they'd been transporting, he said. 'These guys are a little bit easier to deal with than our local inmates on most points,' he said. 'They are, 'Thank you, thank you for this. Thank you for food.' They are appreciative of what we've got.' Martin said he doesn't know all the ins and outs of why ICE detainees are in custody, but he wants to do a professional job. 'It's not like going to the stockyard up here and watching cattle run through the chute. They are human beings,' Martin said. 'My thing is, I promise that I can give them a safe place to put their head at night. I will feed them, and I will make sure that they are taken care of. And from there, wherever they are going, I hope everything turns out well for them.'
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
These states have investigated miscarriages and stillbirths as crimes
In late March, police in southern Georgia arrested a 24-year-old woman who had a miscarriage after a witness reported seeing her place the fetal remains in a dumpster. The coroner in Tift County determined it was a 19-week fetus from a naturally occurring miscarriage, but some legal experts consider the arrest a bellwether for the criminal suspicion that surrounds pregnancy loss in many states in post-Roe America. The Marshall Project previously examined how the way a person handles a pregnancy loss—and where it occurs—can mean the difference between a private medical issue and a criminal charge. Nationally, federal data shows that about 20% of pregnancies end in a loss, but only a small number are investigated as crimes. In several states, a positive drug test after a pregnancy loss can result in criminal charges for the mother, and even prison time. Prosecutions related to pregnancy appear to have increased since the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, according to Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for the legal rights of pregnant people. In the first year after the Dobbs decision—from June 2022 to June 2023—there were at least 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions, researchers for the group found. Here are some states where miscarriages and stillbirths have been investigated by the criminal legal system in recent years: Alabama Arkansas California Georgia Ohio Oklahoma South Carolina Alabama has a broad "chemical endangerment of a child" law allowing prosecutors to charge someone for drug use during any part of a pregnancy, whether the mother delivers a stillborn fetus or a healthy newborn. The Marshall Project's 2022 investigation with found that more than 20 women had been prosecuted after a miscarriage or stillbirth in Alabama. Some of the harshest sentences resulted in cases where a fetus was stillborn and the woman went to trial. The Pregnancy Justice report examining nationwide prosecutions related to conduct associated with pregnancy, pregnancy loss or birth in the first year after the Dobbs ruling found that nearly half of the cases came from Alabama. Arkansas is among several states that still make it a crime to "conceal" a birth or stillbirth. Such laws date back to the 17th century, and were intended to shame and accuse women of crimes if they were pregnant and unmarried. In 2015, Annie Bynum walked into a hospital with a plastic bag containing the remains of her stillborn fetus and ended up going to jail—and eventually prison. She was accused under the concealment law. A jury originally convicted and sentenced Bynum to six years in prison. Later, an appeals court ruled that the jury shouldn't have been allowed to hear evidence that Bynum ingested medications to induce labor before the stillbirth or had previously had abortions—because the charge was that she had concealed the pregnancy, not tried to end it. While pregnant, Bynum had planned to quietly let a friend adopt the baby, and she eventually pleaded guilty to a legal violation for the attempted adoption. In 2022, the state passed a law banning investigations and prosecutions of pregnancy loss. But prior to that law, at least two California women had already served time in jail and prison for stillbirths that prosecutors had alleged were related to drug use. Adora Perez had served nearly four years of an 11-year sentence before a judge ruled her plea agreement—to a charge of voluntary manslaughter of a fetus—was unlawful, and overturned her conviction in 2022. That only happened after the case of then-26-year-old Chelsea Becker garnered international outrage. Becker was charged with "murder of a human fetus" in 2019, but the case was dismissed in 2021 and led to Perez's case getting a second look. Anger about the prosecutions of both women led to the change in state law, to avoid punishing "people who suffer the loss of their pregnancy." At least one woman who had a miscarriage has been arrested under a state law that makes it a crime to conceal a dead body, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. On March 20, police in Tifton, Georgia, issued a press release announcing that a dead fetus had been found in a dumpster at an apartment complex, after an ambulance was called for a woman who was found bleeding and unconscious. The next day, the Tifton Police Department announced it had arrested the woman who miscarried that fetus, accusing her of one count of concealing the death of another person and one count of abandonment of a dead body. It's unclear whether prosecutors in Tifton will pursue the criminal charges despite the coroner's ruling that the miscarriage was naturally occurring. Ohio's abuse of a corpse law allows a fairly broad interpretation, if applied to fetal remains: "No person, except as authorized by law, shall treat a human corpse in a way that would outrage reasonable community sensibilities." In 2023 in Warren, Ohio, Brittany Watts was arrested and charged with abuse of a corpse after experiencing a miscarriage at home in her toilet. She had been to a hospital prior to her miscarriage but left when she felt she was getting inadequate treatment, according to news reports. When she went back to the hospital after her miscarriage, a nurse called police and reported that Watts had given birth at home and did not want the baby—an assertion Watts' lawyer denied. A grand jury declined to move forward with the criminal case in 2024. Earlier this year, Watts filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging medical professionals conspired with a police officer to fabricate criminal charges against her. Criminal charges related to drug use while pregnant—in cases of pregnancy loss or infants born healthy—have become increasingly common in recent years in Oklahoma. Kathryn Green gave birth to a stillborn baby in Enid, Oklahoma, in 2017. She was struggling with meth addiction at the time and scared. She cleaned her stillborn son's body, wrapped him in a blanket and put him in a box. Police later found the remains in the trash and arrested her. Prosecutors initially charged her with second-degree murder, alleging that the stillbirth happened because of "meth toxicity." But medical tests later showed otherwise: Green's stillborn son had an infection that had caused his death, records show. In 2022, Green decided to enter an Alford plea—a guilty plea in which the defendant maintains innocence. At her sentencing hearing, a judge said he wasn't convinced that prosecutors had proven Green willfully and knowingly harmed her baby by using methamphetamine while pregnant, but he was bothered by her "lack of maternal instinct." South Carolina was the first state to prosecute a woman for a stillbirth allegedly due to drug use. In 2001, Regina McKnight was sentenced to 12 years in prison for giving birth to a stillborn baby who tested positive for cocaine. McKnight served eight years before the state Supreme Court overturned her conviction, in part because her trial lawyer didn't present witnesses to challenge prosecutors' claim that her drug use definitively caused the stillbirth. The state charged at least 200 women between 2006 and 2021 with unlawful neglect of a child or homicide by child abuse for alleged perinatal drug use. In March 2023, a college student in Orangeburg, South Carolina, named Amari Marsh went from miscarrying a fetus in her bathroom to being investigated for a homicide. She told investigators she didn't realize she was pregnant until she went to an ER with severe pain. She left the hospital and miscarried later in a toilet at home (which medical experts say is common). Her boyfriend at the time called 911. Police became suspicious that she may have sought to end the pregnancy or not called 911 fast enough, records show. She was jailed and accused of homicide by child abuse—before the fetus was autopsied. An autopsy showed later that the fetus died of natural causes due to an infection that Marsh was unaware of, her lawyer said. In South Carolina, police can arrest someone on a criminal complaint without approval from local prosecutors (called solicitors). After a grand jury reviewed all of the evidence in the case, the charges against Marsh were dismissed. This story was produced by The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's new director of federal prison system led a troubled state agency
William 'Billy' Marshall, the relatively unknown head of the West Virginia corrections department, has been selected to lead the troubled federal Bureau of Prisons, a Trump administration choice that took advocates for federal prison staff and incarcerated people aback Friday. President Trump made the announcement Thursday night on his Truth Social platform. 'Billy is a Strong Advocate for LAW AND ORDER,' Trump wrote. 'He understands the struggles of our prisons better than anyone, and will help fix our broken Criminal Justice System.' Marshall inherits an agency that has been understaffed and plagued by scandal for years. The bureau has recently faced congressional scrutiny, and its union leaders are unhappy about the president's recent order to end collective bargaining for federal workers. In a written statement to the Marshall Project and The Times Friday, Marshall thanked Trump for 'this tremendous opportunity.' 'It's been an honor and a privilege to serve the state of West Virginia,' he said, adding that he's 'excited to take that West Virginia pride to the next level.' After decades in law enforcement, Marshall took the helm in January 2023 of the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which includes all of the state's prisons, jails and juvenile lockups. Prior to that, he was assistant commissioner for the division and the head of the juvenile corrections division. He also spent 25 years in the state police and worked as a criminal investigation director for what is now called the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security. It's unclear whether that experience will translate well to a system as large as the federal Bureau of Prisons. The West Virginia corrections department incarcerates about 10,000 people on a typical day, while the federal system houses more than 150,000. Sen. Jim Justice ( — who, as West Virginia's governor, appointed Marshall to lead the state's prison system — praised Marshall's selection in a Facebook post. 'I was proud to put Billy in charge of our Department of Corrections in West Virginia and we were able to turn it around after decades of decay. I have full confidence in him & know he will do a great job,' Justice wrote. West Virginia's prisons and jails have a fraught history. When Marshall took over, the state's prisons were in the midst of a staffing crisis so severe that the governor had declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard to act as correctional officers. Marshall worked with the Legislature on a package to increase starting salaries and to raise pay and offer one-time bonuses for current correctional officers. The state's regional jails have come under scrutiny for squalid conditions, excessive use of force and record numbers of deaths. They were the target of several civil rights suits, including one filed in 2022 that alleged the jail had broken toilets infested with maggots, 70 people sharing a single shower, and people being forced to sleep on 'cold, wet floors in the winter without heat.' In response to such allegations, Marshall said 'inmates made up claims of inhumane treatment and told relatives to spread them,' a local television news station reported at the time. A judge sanctioned state corrections officials for intentionally destroying evidence in that suit, writing that he 'will not turn a blind eye to the Defendants' blatant arrogance and flippant response to their legal obligations.' Marshall himself did not destroy evidence, the judge found, but as head of the agency, 'he still bears responsibility for any and all continuing video that is lost.' Two agency staffers were later fired as a result. Lydia Milnes, an attorney who has sued West Virginia's corrections department several times, expressed worries about Marshall's appointment. 'I'm concerned that he comes from a past where the culture is to use force to gain control as opposed to considering less violent alternatives,' she said. 'He has continued to foster a culture of using excessive force.' A separate suit, which the corrections department settled in 2022, alleged widespread failures of the jails' medical and mental health care. Just this week, attorneys for people locked up in the jails accused Marshall and other state officials of dragging their feet on implementing the reforms they had agreed on and withholding critical information. ••• Much like its smaller counterpart in West Virginia, the Bureau of Prisons has dealt with severe problems, including staffing shortages, preventable deaths and overuse of solitary confinement in recent years. An investigation by the Marshall Project in 2022 disclosed pervasive violence and abuse at a high-security unit in the Thomson federal penitentiary in Illinois. After congressional inquiries and another death at the unit, the bureau closed it in 2023. Another facility, FCI Dublin in California, was dubbed the 'rape club' because of numerous sexual abuse scandals. The facility, roughly 20 miles east of Oakland, shut down last year after more than a half dozen correctional officers and the former warden were convicted of sexually abusing women incarcerated there. Read more: California women's prison rocked by 'rape club' abuse scandals to be closed The bureau also faces massive infrastructure challenges. A report from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General found needed maintenance at every bureau facility, including leaky roofs and buildings that were in such poor shape that the bureau determined they needed to be partially or fully closed. As of early 2024, the prison system estimated major repairs would cost $3 billion. The bureau has also struggled to hire staff, and labor leaders say that problem is likely to get worse because of Trump's executive order ending collective bargaining for agency employees. That has increased discontent among staff members, who were already upset about cuts to recruitment and retention bonuses that had bolstered officer pay at some of the agency's hardest-to-staff facilities. Adding to the pressure, as of February, the Bureau of Prisons was holding hundreds of immigrant detainees as part of Trump's mass deportation efforts, a move that agency observers fear will exacerbate the prison system's challenges. The agency has been largely rudderless since Trump fired the prior director, Colette Peters, in January. Shortly after, at least six top bureau officials resigned, including then-acting director Bill Lothrop. Brandy Moore White, president of the national union for federal prison workers, said she's 'cautiously optimistic' about Marshall's appointment, though she wasn't familiar with him. 'Somebody leading the ship is better than everybody pointing fingers,' she said. To some federal prison workers, news of Marshall's appointment came as a shock, and they describe it as confirmation that the White House appears to have little interest in working with federal employees. 'We were beyond surprised and a little bit disappointed that the announcement came through a social media post,' said John Kostelnik, the California-based Western regional vice president for the correctional workers union. 'Our agency officials, the high-ups — they had no clue.' Kostelnik said he and other union leaders have learned few details about Marshall, beyond the basics of his resume. Still, Kostelnik said he's optimistic it will be a fruitful relationship and that the union is ready to 'work hand-in-hand' with the new director. Josh Lepird, the union's South Central regional vice president, echoed that hope, but added a hint of caution: 'I'm hopeful he's here to work with us, but I don't know,' he said. 'With the current administration's actions, it could be that he's here to privatize us.' On Friday morning, typically outspoken advocacy organizations offered measured responses to Marshall's appointment. Shanna Rifkin, deputy general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, or FAMM — a nonprofit that works to improve the justice system and prison conditions — said Marshall's lack of federal experience didn't necessarily pose a problem and that the organization looked forward to working with him. 'I think it's good he has experience running a prison system and hope that he'll be open to learning about the federal system from people in the advocacy community and impacted populations and their loved ones,' Rifkin said. David Fathi, director of the ACLU's National Prisons Project, called the federal prison system a 'deeply troubled agency in urgent need of reform' and said he hoped the new director would tackle the 'many systemic problems that have been identified by courts, the Inspector General, and Bureau staff.' This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
