December 27, 2020--Due Process Institute has long advocated to restore Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated individuals. By removing the ban on Pell Grants, this law will provide more opportunities for education in prison and assist in the pursuit of higher education. Providing access to education is proven to reduce recidivism and helps to prepare incarcerated people for reentry into society.

This reform was achieved with a bipartisan coalition and we are proud to have been a part of this successful effort.

December 8, 2020--Due Process Institute joins a wide variety of organizations in a letter to Google urging more transparency regarding the use of so-called “geofence warrants,” which compel disclosure of all devices within a particular area, and so-called “keyword warrants,” which identify every Google user who searched for a specific word, phrase, or address. Law enforcement uses these warrants to collect swathes of digital location data as well as vast amounts of personal information about our private associations and activities. These broad and sweeping tactics allow law enforcement to circumvent Constitutional limits on surveillance.

As a leading recipient of geofence and keyword warrants, Google is uniquely situated to provide public oversight of these abusive practices. Google received a 75-fold increase in geofence warrant requests from 2017 to 2019. In this letter, we ask Google to further their commitment to privacy by publicly reporting these warrant requests more frequently and with more detail in order to assist privacy advocates in tracking the growth of these law enforcement requests. Identifying and measuring the extent to which law enforcement is relying on these abusive tactics is a crucial step in our fight to ensure privacy and protect constitutional rights.

November 24, 2020--Due Process Institute and our allies joined a letter to highlight the deeply problematic nature of the Intelligence Authorization Act in its current form. Sections of this bill establish social media and online threat surveillance but provide no clear definitions to shield us from the ensuing and sweeping data collection. These stipulations also offer no safeguards for the victims of baseless suspicion and will further stigmatize vulnerable communities. The insufficient regulations in the Intelligence Authorization Act ultimately open the door to future First and Fourth Amendment violations. We call for these sections to be removed, protections to be strengthened, and to expand independent amici in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

October 27, 2020--Due Process Institute joined a letter to Representative Anna Eshoo who has recently pushed for clarity around how federal agencies are using surveillance programs to collect information on countless Americans. She has specifically requested the Acting Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to investigate how federal agencies are using their surveillance powers to target Americans based on their race, ethnicity, and religion.

October 16, 2020--Due Process Institute partnered with the Innocence Project and Prof. Brandon Garrett of Duke Law School's Wilson Center for Science and Justice to urge the Committee responsible for drafting the Federal Rules of Evidence to turn their attention to the critical issue of ensuring scientific integrity in court proceedings. 

In a letter supported by a diverse array of academic institutions, legal advocates, and policy organizations, we urged the Committee to consider amending Rule 702 because courts frequently fail to exclude unreliable or insufficiently tested forensic techniques or to rein in exaggerated and misleading claims to experts. These failures are particularly consequential in court proceedings in which life and liberty are at stake. 

We thank our many allies for the support, advocacy, and expertise they provided in this effort: Academy for Justice at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law; American Civil Liberties Union; Black Public Defender Association; The Bronx Defenders; Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University; Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences; Computational Justice Lab at Claremont Graduate University; Fair and Just Prosecution; Federal Public and Community Defenders; Forensic Justice Project; Innocence Project; The Legal Aid Society; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia; Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School; Reason Foundation; Southern Center for Human Rights; and Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University School of Law. 

October 9, 2020--The bipartisan Kenneth P. Thompson Begin Again Act was introduced in the House with the support of a diversion coalition supporting the bill. The Begin Again Act expands the current federal expungement process to include any individual convicted of a first-time, simple possession charge. This bill is a commonsense reform that will ensure these individuals can acquire a true second chance and aligns with a growing body of research showing that expungement has positive benefits for our economy and public safety.

For more information about this bill, see Due Process Institute’s brand-new blog and our coalition letter to support the bill’s introduction. 

October 5, 2020--Due Process Institute joined Institute for Justice, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and DKT Liberty Project to file a brief with the Sixth Circuit urging it to reconsider a case considering how due process applies when a municipality seizes property through civil forfeiture. The defendants in this case, Wayne County and the City of Lincoln Park, have a proven history of seizing vehicles from thousands of people and retaining them for six month or longer without initiating civil forfeiture proceedings. We believe due process requires a hearing in cases of long-term vehicle seizures where prosecutors do not promptly apply for forfeiture of the property with local courts.

September 23, 2020--The United States House of Representatives passed the Effective Assistance of Counsel in the Digital Era Act earlier this week. The bill has now been sent to the Senate. Due Process Institute has led a coalition effort to urge leaders in the Senate to allow prompt consideration of this important bill. 

We would like to thank Americans for Prosperity, #cut50, Fair and Just Prosecution, Faith & Freedom Coalition, FAMM, Federal Public and Community Defenders, FreedomWorks, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for joining us in this effort. 

September 21, 2020--The United States House of Representatives passed the Effective Assistance of Counsel in the Digital Era Act, a bill that the Due Process Institute has been working to advance from the beginning. The bill will ensure that email communications between an individual in a federal prison and their attorney will receive the full protections of attorney-client privilege alongside all other forms of communication. It will now be sent to the Senate where we urge that chamber's leadership to promptly allow its consideration on the Senate floor. 

We would like to thank Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and Doug Collins for their leadership on this issue and our many bipartisan coalitions partners in this effort. 

"On behalf of everyone at Due Process Institute and Clause 40 Foundation, I want to express our profound sadness at the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Before she ascended to the High Court, she was a trailblazing civil rights lawyer and appellate court judge. After her elevation to the Supremes, Justice Ginsburg became the leading light of the liberal wing of the Court and an icon to generations of progressive lawyers and activists. 

The coming days and weeks before the presidential election will undoubtedly fuel partisan rancor to extreme levels as the nomination fight looms. But right now, in this moment, members of both parties should join the American people in mourning the loss of such a remarkable woman and jurist.

Requiescat in pace, Justice Ginsburg.”

September 14, 2020--Due Process Institute and a bipartisan group of leaders in Congress have been fighting for months to secure reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that establish reasonable safeguards without hindering our national security. Key provisions of FISA have now lacked Congressional authorization for six months and major concerns have been raised about the widespread misuse of these authorities. Together with allies from across the political spectrum, we sent a letter to House leadership urging them to not utilize an unconventional legislative vehicle for the extension of these authorities that would bar adequate consideration of these controversial and important issues.

September 9, 2020--Today Senators Lee (R-UT), Durbin (D-IL), and Coons (D-DE) introduced The Smarter Pretrial Detention for Drug Charges Act. We are proud to have served as a significant partner in that effort.

If passed, the bill will help fix a serious, structural problem in our federal criminal justice system.  Current law presumes that all federal drug offenders should be held in jail while awaiting trial—that is, before they are convicted of anything.  Today’s bill eliminates this presumption for federal nonviolent drug offenders—the second largest group of people in the federal system—restoring the presumption of innocence and abolishing this unfair and un-American presumption of incarceration.  

If passed, the bill will help to eliminate a leading cause of America’s overincarceration, since the current presumption of detention compels most people facing drug charges to sit in jail as they await their trial, forcing them to consider pleading guilty in order to try to obtain a speedier release. Its burdens fall disproportionately on people of color. Research also now shows that this law does little to protect public safety; all it does is impose a great cost on taxpayers to incarcerate people who should be free while awaiting the resolution of their case.  And it is especially harmful during a pandemic, when COVID-19 is ravaging our jails and prisons, exposing detainees, prison staff, and their families to a potentially deadly disease before their guilt or innocence has even been determined.  

Like the other bipartisan reform bills we have spearheaded, The Smarter Pretrial Detention for Drug Charges Act presents a simple, effective solution to important failures in our system. We worked hard to make this a reality and to ensure bipartisan support by Congressional leaders and an incredibly diverse array of endorsing organizations. Thanks to our many allies who continuously help prove that #BipartisanWorks:  #cut50, a program of Dream Corps, American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Black Public Defender Association, Drug Policy Alliance, Fair Trials, FAMM, Federal Public and Community Defenders, FreedomWorks, Innocence Project, Justice Action Network, Justice Roundtable, Leadership Conference, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, National Legal Aid and Defender Association, Prison Fellowship, R Street Institute, Right on Crime, The Sentencing Project, and Tzedek Association.

Read our press release in support of the bill here. Read Senator Durbin's press release here.