Life of the Law

It's official, and it's one more amazing step into the future at Life of the Law: we have a new Executive Director. Six years after Nancy Mullane, Tom Hilbink and Shannon Heffernan launched the first episode of Life of the Law, with stories about jury nullification and jailhouse lawyers, we welcome a new fearless leader. Tony Gannon, whom you have come to know as our talented behind-the-scenes Senior Producer brings his vision and exciting energy to LOTL as our new Executive Director.  This change will allow Nancy Mullane to focus on reporting, which, as many of you know, is what Nancy lives to do! To celebrate this moment for Tony and Nancy, we have chosen to publish one of Nancy's stories from our archives... "Release Day." In 1994, California voters passed thethree strikes lawwhich required anyone with two felony convictions to receive a sentence of 25 years to life for committing their third felony. Between the mid-1970s and 2006, the three strikes law and other harsh sentencing guidelines increased California's prison population by 750 percent. On November 6, 2012, Californians voted to change the three strikes law. That measure, known as Proposition 36 eliminated life sentences for non-violent crimes and allowed some of the prisoners sentenced under the three strikes law to petition for release for time served. Curtis Penn is one of those prisoners. Life of the Law executive producer Nancy Mullane chronicles the day Curtis was released from prison. Produced by: Nancy Mullane, Kaitlin Prest, Alisa Roth, Shannon Heffernan, Jillian Weinberger & Katie BarnettEdited by: Julia Barton Music by: Kyle Kaplin, Matthew Dahar and Todd MacDonald Special Thanks: Tom Hilbink Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When things go bad all you need to do is pick up the phone and CALL. Since the US Supreme Court allowed lawyers to advertise in the 1970s, practices like these have skyrocketed, with often shoddily-produced results. Are tacky lawyer ads trashing the profession or simply making it more easily accessible to those who might not otherwise know who to call when they need an attorney? We are rebroadcasting a long-time favorite episode from our archive as we slow down for the summer. We aim to publish some classic episodes until we return in the fall. Please do not hesitate to reach out in the meantime with suggestions or comments!Below please find producer Sean Cole's original write-up for Call NOW! I have always been so impressed by lawyer commercials on TV, and by impressed I mean…totally confused. I’m always like, “Who told you that disaster footage or wooden readings from cue cards or your cousin wearing a judge’s robe would be a great way to represent your law practice?” But then I stumbled into the engine room of lawyer advertising regulation. And learned about the silent era before these ads were even allowed. And the Big Bang after which they couldn’t be contained. And the subtle, possibly endless civil war in Lawyer Nation over how and even whether attorneys should advertise their services—whether lawyers have doomed themselves as a profession with all these swiveling gavels and toll-free numbers, or whether they’re reaching the aggrieved, attorney-less masses while exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech. If you want to know more, click on the audio above. Hammers await you. Flaming cars and talking cars and possibly aliens await you. Seriously, do not delay: CLICK NOW.   To donate, visit our website www.lifeofthelaw.org Send an email connect@lifeofthelaw.orgProduction Credits: Reporter/Producer: Sean Cole Producer: Kaitlin Prest Music: Kyle Kaplan, Todd MacDonald, Matthew Darr Additional Production: Shannon Heffernan, Ashleyanne Krigbaum Additional Music - Andrea Hendrickson Social Media Editor - Rachael Cain Executive Producer - Nancy Mullane Executive Director - Tony Gannon We are a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. © Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Where does one find a discussion of research on abduction for forced marriage amidst West and Central African conflicts? Where does one find research on how ‘yes means yes’ policies on university campuses have affected the college students intended to follow these new rules of consent? What about a conversation on the various strains of conservative thought? The Law and Society Association’s annual conference just came to an end, and we were happy to find the scholars and researchers engaging these questions and more. For the first time, Life of the Law set up a listening station where attendees could interface with the production team, listen to previous podcast episodes and engage in impromptu conversation. Life of the Law also co-presented the panel Building Partnerships, which was a discussion on the year-long process of producing our four-part Uganda series. The series was an international collaboration of journalists, researchers and legal scholars that worked together across time zones in order to tell the stories of people once held in captivity. Life of the Law facilitated two panels where attendees pitched potential ideas for stories based on their own work. We are grateful to everyone who stopped by our listening station to contribute ideas, make suggestions, listen to our podcast and even agree to impromptu interviews. The exchange of information that was based on years of research by LSA scholars, advocates, attorneys, sociologists and political scientists made for an incredible conference. For our next episode, we also had the opportunity to speak with former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas Wallace B. Jefferson and Professor of Law at the University of Houston Renee Knake. To donate, visit our website www.lifeofthelaw.org Send an email  connect@lifeofthelaw.org Production Credits: Executive Producer - Nancy Mullane Sr. Producer - Tony Gannon Associate Producer - Andrea Hendrickson Social Media Editor - Rachael Cain We are a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. © Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Immigration law is a mystery. Unless you’re an immigrant seeking relief under the law, or you’re an immigration law attorney, it’s an unknown. Then, earlier this year, Karla McKanders, a professor of immigration law at Vanderbilt Law School sent us an email. Her law students were producing their final reports on immigration and refugee law as audio stories, and would Life of the Law be interested in listening to, and possibly publishing their work as part of our New Voices series? Absolutely. Tony Gannon, our senior producer and I met with the class for a conference call workshop but they were well on their way to building their stories. Today, Life of the Law presents three of the stories produced by the students in Professor McKanders' immigration law class at Vanderbilt University Law School. A note - they were not asked to approach the project as journalists, but as law students, so some of their stories include their perspectives on immigration and refugee law. Many refugees leave their home country because of a well-founded fear they will be persecuted if they remain. As Joshua Minchin reports, how “well-founded fear” is defined and interpreted can make a profound difference for individuals seeking refuge in the United States. Our first story is Well Founded Fearby Joshua Minchin. So if a refugee appears in a US Immigration court with a claim of well founded fear, will they receive a fair neutral hearing by the court, or do judges bring their own bias to the bench in asylum hearings? Our second story is Wrong Judge, at the Wrong Time by Simina Grecu. Our final story… is from Rachael Pikulski. The US places an important role in helping refugees throughout the world by providing funding to the United Nations. But this year, the Trump Administration cut funding to the UN agency that provides services to refugees. Rachael Pikulski took a look at the impact of these cuts on one group of refugees, Palestinians. Production Credits: This episode of Life of the Law was produced by Joshua Minchin, Simina Grecu and Rachael Pikulski, students in Professor Karla McKanders' Immigration Law Class at Vanderbilt Law School. It was edited by Life of the Law’s Senior Producer, Tony Gannon and Associate Producer, Andrea Hendrickson, who also composed the music. Additional music by Alex Blank. Our Social Media Editor is Rachael Cain. We are a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. © Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How curious are you about your genetic makeup? There are hundreds of companies that provide direct-to-consumer tests that promise  your genealogy, deep ancestry and biogeographical ancestry. Other tests offer genetic information about your health and traits, with some promising your whole genome sequencing. But when you get the results, do you really know what you have? And do you know, without a doubt, who ultimately has access to your genetic information? This week, our team meets up in the studios of KQED in San Francisco to see if we can sort out the answers to the question - genetic testing - promise or peril? Join Life of the Law's team Osagie Obasogie, Tony Gannon, Nancy Mullane and guest, Lea Witkowsky who joined the Innovative Genomics Institute as a science policy analyst to look at the regulatory landscape as it relates to new genetic engineering technologies and the role of public perception in biotechnology development and adoption. Production Credits: This episode of Life of the Law was edited and produced by Nancy Mullane, Tony Gannon and Andrea Hendrickson. Our in-studio engineer was Katie McMurran. Our Social Media Editor is Rachael Cain. Thanks to our In-Studio team Lea Witkowsky, Policy Analyst with the Innovative Genomics Institute; Osagie Obasogie, Professor at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health; and Life of the Law's Associate Producer, Andrea Hendrickson. We’re a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. Special thanks to The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, and Marcy Darnovsky and Osagie Obasogie at The Center for Genetics and Society. © Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some two decades ago, filmmaker Andrew Nicols wrote and directed GATTACA a sci-fi movie that presented a future in which individuals and society were at risk from having gained access to, and control of, our genetic code. Today, 20 years after the movie's initial release, that future fiction, once considered distant and impossible, is, in many ways, now. More than 500 laboratories offer 2,000 genetic tests. Once limited to medical professionals, the FDA has approved direct-to-consumer genetic tests that can test for 5,000 variants. Instead of looking at simple chromosomes, we can pay for the sequencing almost all of our genetic material. For some parents-to-be, prenatal genetic screening allows couples to decide whether to complete a pregnancy to term, or with preimplantation genetic diagnosis, allows them to allows couples to decide whether to have an embryo found to have "disorders and mutations" implanted at all. Are we paying attention to the ways this information is, and could, alter the human race in ways once thought only possible in sci-fi novels and movies like GATTACA? While the general consensus in the scientific community seems to be to steer clear of research that affects hereditary genetic traits, the push to test that boundary seems inevitable. To consider these questions in 2018, The Center for Genetics and Society and the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society presented two screenings of GATTACA followed by panel discussions with the audiences in the Bay Area. This episode of Life of the Law was produced by Senior Producer, Tony Gannon and Associate Producer Andrea Hendrickson. Nancy Mullane is our Executive Producer. Our Social Media Editor is Rachael Cain. We sampled audio clips from the film GATTACA. All other music was composed by Andrea Hendrickson. Katie Murphy audio described portions of the film. We’re a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. © Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mothers, brothers, sons and daughters in cities across the country are suffering from the loss of a loved one to police use of fatal force. In 2017 The Washington Post reports police officers in the United States shot and killed 987 people. Sixty eight of them, men and women, some of them teenagers like Tony Robinson, were unarmed when they were shot and killed by police officers. The county with highest number of police shootings per capita in the country, is right here in Kern County in California. Last year, police in Los Angeles shot more than three times the number of people shot by police in New York City, even though NY has one-fourth as many officers. What is the law on the police use of lethal force? Is there a way, under the law, to prevent these deaths from happening in the future? This week, Life of the Law's team meets up in the studios of KQED in San Francisco to talk about our most recent episode, DEATH BY POLICE: A MOTHER'S (AUDIO) DIARY and officer use of fatal force. In-Studio Team: • Osagie Obasogie, Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and a Member of Life of the Law’s Advisory Board • Tony Gannon, Life of the Law’s Senior Producer • Troy Williams, Founder of the San Quentin Prison Report and RISE Coordinator at Chabot College. • And joining us from the studios of KQED in Sacramento, Lizzie Buchen, Legislative Advocate for the ACLU of California’s Center for Advocacy and Policy. Production Notes: IN-STUDIO: POLICE, RACE AND FATAL FORCE was produced by Tony Gannon and Andrea Hendrickson. Nancy Mullane is Executive Producer. Rachael Cain is our Social-Media Editor. Katie McMurran was our engineer at KQED in San Francisco. Katie Orr engineered from KQED studios in Sacramento. Special thanks to Lizzie Buchen, Legislative Advocate with the ACLU California’s Center for Advocacy and Policy and Troy Williams, Founder of the San Quentin Prison Report and RISE Coordinator at Chabot College for joining us In-Studio. Life of the Law is a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. Visit our website, Life of the Law.org and make a very much appreciated donation to help cover the costs of producing this feature episode. © Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Police officers throughout the U.S. shoot and kill unarmed people, in Sacramento, Detroit, New Orleans and in Madison. The Washington Post reports 987 people were shot and killed by police in 2017, sixty-eight of them were unarmed. There are marches and calls for investigations and in the end, justice is elusive. So when Life of the Law producer Zoe Sullivan said the mother of an unarmed bi-racial teenager who had been shot and killed by a police officer in Madison had been keeping an audio diary after her son's death, we listened. We hope you will too. Production Notes: DEATH BY POLICE - A MOTHER'S (AUDIO) DIARY was recorded by Andrea Irwin and produced by Zoe Sullivan. Tony Gannon is our Senior Producer. Nancy Mullane is Executive Producer. Music and production support by Andrea Hendrickson. Rachael Cain is our social-media editor. Life of the Law is a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. Visit our website, Life of the Law.org and make a very much appreciated donation to help cover the costs of producing this feature episode. © Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Life of the Law presents LIVE LAW... stories from people living with the rapid fire shifts that come with tech in the Bay Area, folks who are pushing back against the gentrification and alienation to try to make real life contact through music, journalism, murals, and filmmaking. LIVE LAW San Francisco: Initial Public Offering took place on Friday night, February 23rd at The Polish Club in San Francisco's Mission District. We recorded the night so we could share it with you -- stories by Fantastic Negrito, Marcus Thompson, Irene Tu, Riddhi Shah, Troy Williams and Sirron Norris. This episode was produced by Nancy Mullane and Tony Gannon. Engineered by Katie McMurran and Scott Steiner. Production by Andrea Hendrickson. Music is by Max McKellar and Rick Wilkerson. Our Social Media editor is Rachael Cain. We also want to thank the volunteers who made the night possible, Khalilah Nelson, Sandy Fish, Andrew Germond, Nayeli Maxson, Poppy Dere, Brittny Bottorff, Kay Carter, Baxter Bhansalli, Steve Schellenger, Corinne Smith, Scott Steiner, Carlos Gonzalez, Amy Mostafa, Paul Galvin, and Max McKellar.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would men in prison say, if we just listened? This week, Life of the Law presents a new INSIDE SAN QUENTIN episode - conversations inside San Quentin produced exclusively by men incarcerated inside the prison. We have laptops and can watch just about any movie or series anytime we want. Prisoners have access to some tv and select movies approved by the prison, but not all movies and, up until recently, not Moonlight, winner of the 2017 Academy Award for Best Picture. One day after watching the movie on my laptop, I described it to a couple of men, scene by scene before the weekly meeting of the San Quentin Society of Professional Journalists. One of the men said he wanted to see the movie but didn’t think the prison would allow it inside. Why not ask. As it turns out, prison officials said they would allow a screening of Moonlight inside the prison if, one, the producers of the film, A24 Films consented to the screening knowing the men couldn’t pay, and two, one of the prison chapels was available for the screening. Spencer Lindenman of A24 Films sent a DVD. The San Quentin Catholic Chaplin said the chapel was available. A few days after more than a hundred inmates attended the screening,  four men who saw the movie for the first time, sat down in the prison’s media center to talk about the film. Inside San Quentin: Moonlight was produced by Shadeed Wallace Stepter. Production Notes: INSIDE SAN QUENTIN - MOONLIGHT was produced by Shaeed Wallace Stepter. We want to thank Rashaan Thomas, Emile DeWeaver and Mike Adams. Our senior producer is Tony Gannon. We had production support from Andrea Hendrickson. Our post production editor is Rachael Cain. Music in this episode was by David Jassy. Photographer Brian Asey took photos inside San Quentin of the conversation. Special thanks to Spencer Lindenman at A24 Films for sending the DVD of Moonlight, Lt. Sam Robinson for approving the screening, and Father Gregory Williams of the San Quentin Catholic Chapel. Subscribe to our newsletter to get a behind-the-scenes look at the production, photos, and notes by the producers. You can subscribe right here on our website, Life of the Law.org. We’re a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. We want to take moment to thank: for their recent donations… Kalli Catcott, Katie Burke, Patricia Pforte, Charles Magnuson, William English, Michael Yarbough and everyone who joined us at LIVE LAW in San Francisco…   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the past month, Life of the Law's team of journalists and scholars have published a three part series of feature investigative reports on Uganda, examining the long-term impact of the violence committed on the people of the East African nation by rebels with the Lord's Resistance Army or LRA. Beginning in the mid-1980's and for more than a decade, LRA rebels abducted 60,000 people from towns and villages in northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were then forced to fight, kill and loot. Young girls spent years in captive marriages, forced to bear the children of LRA commanders. This week, our production team, Life of the Law's Senior Producer, Tony Gannon; Professor Annie Bunting of York University in Toronto and Nancy Mullane, Life of the Law's Executive Producer and Editor on the series, met up IN-STUDIO with Osagie Obasogie, Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and a member of Life of the Law's Advisory Board, and Kim Seelinger,Director of the Sexual Violence Program at UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center to discuss the making of the series UGANDA, children in conflict zones, and what justice has come to represent, so many years after the crisis began. Life of the Law is a non-profit project of the Tides Center and we’re part of the Panoply Network of Podcasts from Slate. You can also find Life of the Law on PRX, Public Radio Exchange. Our series on Uganda is funded by the Law and Society Association, the Conjugal Slavery in War SSHRC Partnership and by you. Visit our website, Life of the Law.org and make a very much appreciated donation to help cover the costs of producing UGANDA.© Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For more than 20 years, rebels with the Lord's Resistance Army abducted 60,000 people from towns and villages in Northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were then forced to fight, kill, and loot. Young girls spent years in captive marriages, forced to bear the children of LRA commanders. Where were the local police and government troops? How was this allowed to happen to so many children over the course of so many years? Where was the international community? This week, Life of the Law reporter Gladys Oroma presents the third part of our special series following the lives of Beatrice Ocwee and Samuel Akena, two of the thousands of children who were abducted from their homes in northern Uganda and held captive by LRA rebels beginning in the 1980's through 2008. In Part 1: ABDUCTEDBeatrice and Samuel share their lives before they were captured by the LRA, the night they were abducted from their homes, and their march into captivity. In Part 2: ESCAPE no longer the children they were when they were abducted, years after they were abducted, Beatrice and Samuel share their terrifying attempts to escape, and their fear of the Ugandan troops. THIS WEEK, Life of the Law presents Part 3: JUSTICE as Beatrice and Samuel try to return home with the children and the trauma they now carry. Production Notes: UGANDA: PART 3 – JUSTICE was reported by Gladys Oroma and was produced in partnership with Teddy Atim, Researcher in Kampala, Uganda; Annie Bunting, Scholar at York University in Toronto and the Conjugal Slavery in War SSHRC Partnership at csiw-ectg.org; and Life of the Law’s Executive Producer, Nancy Mullane and Senior Producer, Tony Gannon. The series was edited by Nancy Mullane with sound design by Tony Gannon.  Our Post Production Editor is Rachael Cain. Special thanks to Ian Coss for his production assistance and Daphne Keevil Harrold for her editing and fact-checking and Rosebell Kagumire for her early production work on the series. Music Credits: Intro: Peace Talk by Oyeng Yeng End Credits: Lweyen Ki Kech - Yib Oyo Plus Music From AUDIO NETWORK in episode. Please see visit our site www.lifeofthelaw.org for suggested reading and viewing lists. Our series on Uganda is funded by the Law and Society Association, the Conjugal Slavery in War SSHRC Partnership and by you. Visit our website, Life of the Law.org and make a very much appreciated donation.© Copyright 2018 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For more than 20 years, rebels with the Lords Resistance Army abducted 60,000 people, from towns and villages in Northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were forced to fight, kill, loot and have sex with rebel commanders. Why didn't the government stop the abductions and the violence? Where was the international community? Who was upholding their right to protection under the law? This week, Life of the Law reporter Gladys Oroma presents Part 2 of our special series following the lives of two of the thousands of children who were abducted beginning in the mid 1980's and continuing through 2008. In the first episode of the series, PART 1: ABDUCTED, we met Samuel Akena and Beatrice Ocwee. We heard about their lives before they were kidnapped, their abductions and their long march to the LRA compound in South Sudan, and their years and conditions of captivity. This week reporter Gladys Oroma picks up our story with the parents of the abducted children who were working to secure the release of all the children, the efforts by regional and international leaders to negotiate peace, and ultimately, Beatrice and Samuel's attempts to escape captivity by the LRA. UGANDA: PART 2 - ESCAPE was reported by Gladys Oroma, and produced in partnership with Teddy Atim, Reseracher in Kampala, Uganda; Annie Bunting, Scholar at York University in Toronto and the "Conjugal Slavery in War SSHRC Partnership" at csiw-ectg.org; and Life of the Law's Senior Producer, Tony Gannon. Nancy Mullane edited the story. Our Post Production Editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today man named Dominic Ongwen is on trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands. The 42 year old Ugandan is charged with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Northern Uganda. Ongwen is the only commander with the rebel group, The Lord’s Resistance Army, who is on trial before the ICC, but he wasn’t alone in the commission of crimes against the people of Northern Uganda. From 1986 through 2017, over the course of more than 30 years, LRA rebels abducted tens of thousands of people, 20,000 of them children as young as five years old. This week at Life of the Law we begin our 4-part series on Uganda, telling the stories of the children who were abducted, their years in captivity, their eventual escape and the challenges they faced on their return home. Our reporter on the series is Gladys Oroma. Gladys lives in Gulu, Uganda, where the abductions began back in 1986. UGANDA: PART 1 – ABDUCTED was reported by Gladys Oroma, and produced in partnership with Teddy Atim, Reseracher in Kampala, Uganda; Annie Bunting, Scholar at York University in Toronto; and Life of the Law’s Senior Producer, Tony Gannon. We had additional support from Daphne Keevil Harrold, Ian Coss and Rachel Cassandra.  Tony Gannon and Nancy Mullane co-edited the story. Our Senior Producer is Tony Gannon. Our Post Production Editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain. Music Credits: Ugandan Music courtesy of Gladys Oroma Awili Maa Lwongi Abedo i Camp  – Labot Mon Plus Music From AUDIO NETWORK Please go to our website www.lifeofthelaw.org for links to supporting background audio and suggested reading and viewing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Saturday night, Dec 5, 2015 more than 200 people filled the pews of the Catholic chapel inside San Quentin State Prison for a first-ever uncensored storytelling event behind the prison walls. Together, inmates and volunteers, officers and staff gathered to hear stories about the all-too-secret, often misunderstood community that sustains each of them inside and outside the prison walls. For two storytellers, Troy Williams and Watani Stiner, the night would be the first time they would return to San Quentin after being released a year earlier following decades as inmates. Like those in the audience for Live @ San Quentin, this special episode offers the chance to hear the voices and stories too often silenced by imprisonment. The special hour-long feature episode presents stories from Lawrence Pela, Watani Stiner, Azraal Ford, Aaron Taylor, Phil Melendez, and Emile Deweaver. Each of the photos below are links to the audio stories of the other wonderful stories shared at Live @ San Quentin -- stories from Kathleen Jackson, David Jassy, Raphaele Casale, Eric Durr and Troy Williams. Live @ San Quentin was a co-production of Life of the Law, the San Quentin News, the San Quentin Prison Report, the Society of Professional Journalists Northern California Chapter and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The event was funded in part by the Open Society Foundations, the Law and Society Association, the National Science Foundation and A Blade of Grass. In 2015, the Society of Professional Journalists welcomed reporters inside San Quentin to become members of the national organization, creating the San Quentin Satellite Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the first SPJ chapter of journalists in a US prison. See the photos of the day they received their membership cars, and read about the association in this Life of the Law blog post. Special thanks to San Quentin SPJ members Rahsaan Thomas, Greg Eskridge, Juan Haines, Louis A Scott, and Tommy Winfrey for their months of work co-producing the event.  Our appreciation to photographer Elisabeth Fall and to Tony Gannon for producing the video of the event, which is being shown on San Quentin Television on Christmas Day. Thanks also to Warden Ron Davis, Chief Deputy Warden Kelly Mitchell, Lt. Sam Robinson, Raphael Kasalee, Steve Emrick and Father George Williams of the San Quentin Catholic Chapel for their support in producing Live @ San Quentin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Traditions. We all have them. Some good and, well, some not so good. Think for a minute. When you were a kid, what were your holiday traditions? Do you still follow some of them today? Put up lights? Bake special cookies or visit relatives? What if the law makes it impossible to follow your traditions? More than two million Americans will spend the holidays locked up in a jail or prison. In the Bay Area, volunteers spend a few hours inside San Quentin State Prison's cell blocks singing holiday songs with the men. It's an annual tradition. What's it like to spend years of your adult life in prison over the holidays? From inside San Quentin State Prison, join Shadeed Wallace Stepter, Rahsaan Thomas, and Emile DeWeaver as they share memories of holidays when they were free, and how, over the years, they have created new traditions, to celebrate the holidays behind prison walls. Emile DeWeaver Secretary of the San Quentin Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and reporter for Prison Renaissance, and a contributing opinion writer for San Jose Mercury Newsand Easy Street Magazine. Rashaan Thomas Vice-Chair of the San Quentin Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and reporter with Prison Renaissance,The San Quentin News, and a contributing reporter for The Marshall Project. Shadeed Wallace-StepterChair of the San Quentin Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, a reporter with the San Quentin Prison Report, and a TEDX presenter. Listen to TRADITIONS Visit our website www.lifeofthelaw.org or listen to all 124 episodes on iTunes. And send us your thoughts on this episode to connect@lifeofthelaw.org. Production Notes:Inside San Quentin: Traditions — was produced by Shadeed Wallace-Stepter, Rashaan Thomas and Emile DeWeaver.  Life of the Law's Senior Producer is Tony Gannon. Our Post Production Editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain. Music in this episode was recorded by Life of the Law's Executive Producer, Nancy Mullane. The song  'Keep It On The Real' (Instrumental) by 3X Krazy is used in the introduction and end credits and is referenced by Emile DeWeaver. Rob Speight was our engineer at the studios of KQED in San Francisco. This episode of Life of the Law was funded in part by donations from our listeners, and by grants from theLaw and Society Association, and theNational Science Foundation. © Copyright 2017 Life of the Law. All rights reserved.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The polls got it wrong. What matters in the end, on election day, is who has the right to vote and who goes to the polls to cast their ballot. Due to strict voter ID laws, not all Americans are allowed to vote on election day. In fact, some 21 million are prevented from voting simply because they don't have the required ID or paperwork when they go to the polls. The Government Accounting Office reports that can shift the election outcome in some states by 2-3 percentage points. In our most recent episode GOVERNMENT GHOST reporter Megan Marrelli told the story of one American who could not cast a ballot or vote for much of his adult life because he did not have a birth certificate to get a government issued photo ID. This week on Life of the Law, our team meets IN-STUDIO with Wendy Weiser, Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law to talk about the battle now taking place in state legislatures and in the courts to further restrict who can vote. According to a report in the NY Times, "In Georgia, which ended a program in September (2017) that had canceled or marked for purging roughly 35,000 registered voters, two-thirds of them African Americans. That purge was based on a data-matching program that had flagged registrations for errors as niggling as a missing apostrophe or missed hyphen." Wendy Weiser joins Life of the Law's Advisory Board Members Osagie Obasogie, Professor at UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Jessica McKellar, Software Engineer and author; Tony Gannon, Life of the Law's Senior Producer and Nancy Mullane, Life of the Law's Executive Producer. Production Notes:In-Studio: The Battle over your Right to Vote -- was produced by Nancy Mullane and Tony Gannon. Special thanks to Wendy Weiser, Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and our Advisory Board Members Osagie Obasogie and Jessica McKellar. Our Post Production Editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain. Music in this episode was by Ian Coss. Katie McMurran was our engineer at the studios of KQED in San Francisco. We had engineering support from Ivan Kuraev at Argot Studios in New York City. This episode of Life of the Law was funded in part by grants from theLaw and Society Association, and theNational Science Foundation. © Copyright 2017 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Suggested Reading and Viewing: ACLU – Oppose Voter ID Legislation Fact Sheet US Government Accountability Office -Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws 2014 (Reissued 2015) Brennan Center for Justice  – New Voting Restrictions in America Brennan Center or Justice – Research on Voter ID Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2017 has been a terrible year for tens of thousands of people. Fires in northern California and record-setting torrential hurricanes and floods in Texas and Puerto Rico have meant that families have lost their homes and in many cases all of their belongings, including documentation and identification -- Social Security cards, drivers licenses and birth certificates. What happens when you lose your identification?  As it turns out it's not always as easy as you might think getting  government issued ID reinstated."The thing is, why do they make it so hard when you lose everything, to get it back? Do you have any answers to that?" - Dennis Rickett Today, millions of Americans live in the shadows, without any form of government issued photo identification. They can't get social security and many can't vote. A US Government Accounting Office study found that strict voter ID laws around the country have reduced voter turnout by 2-3 percentage points, which, according to the GAO can translate "into tens of thousands of votes lost in a single state."Reporter Megan Marrelli tells the story of Dennis Rickett (in photo below) and his life without  a photo ID. We call our story Government Ghost.  Production Notes:Government Ghost was reported by Megan Marrelli and edited by Nancy Mullane with sound design by Ian Coss. Our Senior Producer is Tony Gannon. Our Post Production Editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain. Music in this episode was by Ian Coss. Jim Bennett was our engineer at the studios of KQED in San Francisco. We had engineering support from Rami Azer at Encounter Studios in Toronto. Special thanks to Dennis Rickett and his partner, Samuel "Chip" Delaney for sharing their story with all of us at Life of the Law.  This episode of Life of the Law was funded in part by grants from theLaw and Society Association, and theNational Science Foundation. © Copyright 2017 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Suggested Reading and Viewing: ACLU - Oppose Voter ID Legislation Fact Sheet US Government Accountability Office -Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws 2014 (Reissued 2015) Brennan Center for Justice  - New Voting Restrictions in America Brennan Center or Justice - Research on Voter ID  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"As incompetent and bumbling as the Trump Administration has been in so many areas, they have been brutally ruthless on immigration." -- Jose Chito Vela, Immigration Attorney and Candidate for Texas State Legislature It’s been a year since the Presidential election of 2016 and the night the world turned upside down and inside out. Polls showed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ahead by a solid margin. But by the end of the night, the networks had declared Donald Trump the next President of the United States. Now, one year later, the Trump Presidency is in turmoil. On Monday, October 30, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairperson was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on charges of tax evasion, submitting false statements, and illegally laundering more than 18 million dollars. The most serious charge of money laundering carries a possible prison sentence of up to 20 years. It was also reported on Monday, that George Papadopoulos, one of Trump’s campaign advisers, had plead guilty back in July to lying to the FBI about his contact with a Russian professor who had ties to the Russian Government. The charges in Washington are disturbing, but President Trump continues to hold the highest office in the land, with the power to enforce his campaign promise to rid the US of undocumented immigrants. On September 5, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced an end to the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, but said they would give Congress six months to try and save the policy. In our most recent episode, Life UnDACAmented, we presented an update on our January 2016 story about a young man who came to the US as a child and had taken his fight for DACA status to the immigration courts.  You a find the audio on itunes, or on our websitelifeofthelaw.org. This week, our team goes IN-STUDIO with Jose "Chito" Vela, the young  man's immigration attorney and now candidate for the Texas State Legislature, to talk about immigration, DACA, and life in America one year into the Trump Presidency. Joining Chito Vela are Life of the Law's team Brittny Bottorff, Attorney with the Mayor Law Group and Chair of our Advisory Board; Tony Gannon, Life of the Law’s Senior Producer; Nancy Mullane, Life of the Law’s Executive Producer and host; and Osagie Obasogie Professsor at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. Production Notes: Brutally Ruthless was produced by Tony Gannon. Our Post Production Editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain. Music in this episode was by Ian Coss. Katie McMurran was our engineer at the studios of KQED in San Francisco. David Alvarez was our engineer at the studios of KUT in Austin. This episode of Life of the Law was funded in part by grants from the Law and Society Association, and theNational Science Foundation. © Copyright 2017 Life of the Law. All rights reserved.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nearly two years ago on January 26, 2016, Life of the Law presented Un-DACA-mented, a report on the Obama Administration's DACA Program, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The program, begun in 2012 offered undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, a chance to defer deportation. Life of the Law producer Jonathan Hirsch traveled to Texas where he met Luis Morales, a young man who came to the US from Mexico with his family when he was eight years old. In 2015, with the help of his family and Jose "Chito" Vela, a local immigration attorney, Luis was sorting out DACA requirements and regulations, immigration enforcement and shifting American politics. Our story left off with Luis hoping Immigration authorities would favorably rule on a review of his case and grant him a DACA permit. Since we shared Luis's story, his immigration status and the DACA program have been in jeopardy. Throughout 2016, while campaigning for president, Donald Trump threatened to end the DACA program on his first day in office. On September 5, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Justice Department was ending the DACA program, but would give Congress six months to try and save the policy. Sessions also announced the Trump administration would not accept any new DACA applications, but would allow those already in the DACA program to apply for a two-year renewal if they applied by Thursday, October 5. Unless Congress acts to save the DACA program, the last permit will expire on March 5, 2020. This week on Life of the Law... we share Luis's story and at the end of the episode, talk to his attorney and his mother, to find out what has happened since we first met Luis two years ago. Production Notes: Life Un-DACAmented 2017 was reported by Jonathan Hirsch, with additional reporting by Nancy Mullane. This story was edited by Annie Avilés. Our post production editors are Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Rachael Cain and our Senior Producer is Tony Gannon.  Music in this episode was from Blue Dot Sessions and Ian Coss. Katie McMurran was our engineer at the studios of KQED in San Francisco. This episode of Life of the Law was funded in part by grants from theLaw and Society Association, and theNational Science Foundation. Justworks was a sponsor of this episode of Life of the Law. Our listeners receive a free month when they join. Go to Justworks.com/podcast. Supplemental Reading: Current US Citizenship and Immigration Service Page announcing the end of DACA: https://www.uscis.gov/archive/consideration-deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-daca Original United We Dream website announcing DACA https://unitedwedream.org/about/projects/deferred-action/ © Copyright 2017 Life of the Law. All rights reserved.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices