Carissa Byrne Hessick
@CBHessick
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Criminal law professor at the University of North Carolina. Director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project ( @ppp_unc ). Author of "Punishment Without Trial."
Chapel Hill, NC
Joined March 2015
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Guys—it’s official. My book on plea bargaining will be published on October 12.
I am so, so excited! (Here's the link to pre-order: )
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Another example of how plea bargaining damages transparency—this time because of an unintended consequence of the PA clean slate law.
We are basically in a situation where if a person pleads guilty in exchange for dropping any charges, clerks are sealing the entire case file.
The conviction stays on their record but this makes it impossible for the public to see how police & prosecutors obtained the conviction
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Imagine someone saying that we couldn’t discuss counterterrorism policy on September 12, 2001.
And yet “we can’t talk about gun control today” is considered an acceptable response to mass shootings.
That should tell us a lot about the politics surrounding guns.
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When it comes to any other crime-related issue, the idea that we couldn’t discuss policy right when a tragedy happens would be seen as absolutely ridiculous.
Yet it’s a commonly employed political move by those who oppose gun control.
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), who represents Uvalde, tells
@CBSMornings
"I'm happy to debate policy, but not today" .. when asked about his prior votes on gun control policy
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Carissa Byrne Hessick Retweeted
I’m not proposing anything. I don’t know enough about guns. But I have a very hard time believing that there is NOTHING we can reasonably do to make it at least a LITTLE harder for bad or deranged people with guns to perpetrate mass shootings at an elementary school. FFS.
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Carissa Byrne Hessick Retweeted
"San Franciscans do not feel safe and secure" is the deck on this article
San Francisco has the same population as Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville, with a Republican mayor and a Republican governor, has had more than three times as many murders this year as San Francisco
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Carissa Byrne Hessick Retweeted
Fort Worth, Texas, has the same population as San Francisco and has 1.5x as many murders. Again, a Republican mayor and Republican governor.
Nobody ever writes about those places!
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Carissa Byrne Hessick Retweeted
“I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.”
- James Garfield 🇺🇸
#POTUS
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@Taniel
@MichaelLMorse
If Deberry's numbers hold, then she will have won her primary by an even larger margin than did Philly DA Larry Krasner in 2021
Given how much public attention has shifted to crime over the past year, the ability of a progressive incumbent to do even better in 2022 is noteworthy
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@Taniel
@MichaelLMorse
That the incumbents in Raleigh and Charlotte withstood progressive challenges is probably the most high-profile outcome from this election.
But the major win of progressive prosecutor Satana Deberry in Durham also deserves more attention.
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@Taniel
It might not seem like a big deal that incumbents are winning BUT this actually bucks the trend that
@MichaelLMorse
and I found in prosecutor elections.
When facing a primary challenger, incumbent prosecutors tend to win only about 50% of the time.
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Excellent coverage by
@Taniel
about the district attorney and sheriff races in
#NorthCarolina
I think he is right to highlight the important role that incumbency appears to have played in this year's primary elections
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Carissa Byrne Hessick Retweeted
Is There Actually a Gap in the Literature or Have I Just Not Read Enough: A Memoir
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Carissa Byrne Hessick Retweeted
Hoping to see lots of attention given to the idea of categorical clemency, where the president determines that an entire category of people or offenses deserve clemency, creating a rebuttable presumption. Thousands of people should be reunited with their families.
#ClemencyNow
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