Page 52 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

Denying Access to Justice During a Carceral Crisis
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Brett Dignam1
Enthusiasm for punishment has given America an unprecedented and uncomfortable position as the quintessential carceral state . As some states find themselves spending more tax dollars on incarceration than higher education2 and new studies reveal the dire psychiatric consequences of holding tens of thousands of people in extreme social isolation,3 talk of reform is building . Proponents of reform advocate a shift to strategies aimed at alternatives to incarceration, as well as reducing the use of long mandatory minimum sentences and providing opportunities to those leaving our prisons in an effort to stem the tide of recidivism . But the U .S . continues to incarcerate at a higher rate than any other country . For the more than 1 .5 million people who remain in U .S . prisons,4 access to justice is often an illusion .
Prisoners seek access to the justice system for two basic things – relief from an unconstitutional conviction and relief from unconstitutional conditions of confinement . Federal courts have long been the ultimate arbiter of the federal constitutional rights of prisoners, particularly those convicted of state crimes and held in state prisons . We now know that innocent people are convicted and can spend decades in prison .5 Those cases have prompted increased scrutiny of police investigation and prosecutorial practices . Historically, federal habeas corpus hearings have been an important forum where evidence of misconduct by state police and prosecutors has been developed, particularly in death penalty cases .6 Federal courts have also frequently examined the constitutionality of prison conditions, including rape and deliberate indifference to serious medical needs, and have issued both injunctive relief and monetary awards for unconstitutional conditions .7
However, two broad statutes, passed during a single week in April 1996, erected formidable barriers to prisoners’ access to federal courts . First, on April 24th, in reaction to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) .8 Though targeted at streamlining federal mechanisms used to challenge the death penalty, the statute’s expansive reach extends to all criminal cases . Significant
1 Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School.
2 academy of arTs and sciences, Public research uniVersiTies: changes in sTaTe funding 9-11 (2015), https://www.amacad. org/multimedia/pdfs/publications/researchpapersmonographs/PublicResearchuniv_ChangesInStateFunding.pdf.
3 See, e.g., Bruce A. Arrigo & Jennifer Leslie Bullock, The Psychological Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prisoners in Supermax Units, 15 inT’l J. offender TheraPy & comParaTiVe criminology 6 (2008).
4 bureau of JusTice sTaTisTics, correcTional PoPulaTions in The uniTed sTaTes, 2014 5 (revised Jan. 21, 2016), available at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus14.pdf. Another more than 700,000 people are housed in the nation’s jails. Id.
5 As of May 7, 2016, the National Registry of Exonerations had identified 1,781 exonerations since 1989. The vast majority of these have been non-DNA cases. See National Registry of Exonerations, Exonerations By Year: DNA and Non-DNA, u. mich. l. sch., http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/Exoneration-by-Year.aspx (last visited May 7, 2016).
6 28 u.S.C. § 2254 authorizes federal courts to review the constitutionality of state convictions.
7 42 u.S.C. § 1983 gives federal courts jurisdiction over these claims.
8 Pub. L. No. 104-32, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996).
Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice