News & Commentary

We are in the eye of the storm at the State House. While many more bills may be added in the coming day or two, the calendars are not extremely busy thus far for the week. Click here for our civil liberties Advocacy Toolkit. But they nonetheless include a number of bills affecting civil liberties. Here is a summary of some of them:

With only one month remaining for RI school districts to implement comprehensive policies protecting transgender and gender non-conforming students, a recent public records inquiry by the ACLU of RI has found a handful of districts still have no policies in place or have implemented policies that miss the mark entirely.

This week is another busy one at the General Assembly with about a month of the session left. Here is a summary of some of the bills affecting civil liberties that are being considered in committee or on the floor this week, but note that more may be added to the calendars in the next day:

Dozens of medical professionals and organizations working to stem the opioid crisis in Rhode Island today called on the state Senate to reject legislation sponsored by the Attorney General that would impose up to a life sentence on individuals who provide an unlawful controlled substance to a person that results in that person’s death, regardless of culpability. 

This week is poised to be a busy one at the State House as the General Assembly considers a number of bills affecting civil liberties - some good, some bad. Here is a brief explanation of what to expect at the Capitol this week:

Four organizations have submitted a “friend of the court” brief in the RI Supreme Court in support of Governor Gina Raimondo’s appeal for the release of the grand jury records in the 38 Studios proceedings.  The organizations are the ACLU of RI, the RI Press Association, the New England First Amendment Coalition and Common Cause RI. The brief, submitted by ACLU cooperating attorneys and RWU Law School professors Jared A. Goldstein and Andrew Horwitz, argues that, in the case of 38 Studios, “the fundamental right of the people to know about the operations of their government” far outweighs any standards generally barring disclosure of grand jury proceedings.

The ACLU of RI, joined by four media organizations, today submitted a “friend of the court” brief to contest Superior Court Associate Justice Netti Vogel’s orders last month blocking the release of the juror list, and barring members of the public from contacting the jurors, in a completed, high-profile murder case. The brief, submitted by ACLU volunteer attorneys Thomas W. Lyons and Rhiannon Huffman, is on behalf of the ACLU; the New England First Amendment Coalition; the R.I. Press Association; Nexstar Media Group, which owns WPRI-TV; and Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns WJAR-TV. The brief supports a recent lawsuit filed by the Providence Journal, which was rebuffed in its effort to obtain the jury list after Jorge DePina was convicted of the second-degree murder of his daughter. The brief submitted today in support of the Journal cites numerous state and federal court decisions for the proposition that the public and the media have a First Amendment right to both interview willing jurors after a verdict and to obtain the list of jurors. In terms of the public interest in this information, the brief cites a study of news articles involving juror interviews, which found that            “post-verdict interviews serve valuable purposes: they can help ensure jury accountability; they can help the public understand, and therefore accept, trial outcomes; they can educate the public about the realities of jury service; and they can improve the justice system’s functioning by exposing mistakes, misunderstandings, and misconduct.” The brief concludes by arguing: “The Superior Court’s orders facially violate the Providence Journal’s freedoms of the press and of speech [and] … the freedom of speech of other Rhode Islanders who may wish to speak with the jurors about the jurors’ exercise of their citizenship duties.  This prevents all of us from confirming whether the jury acted as the conscience of the community in discharging those duties and whether the jurors were confident in their verdict.  The Superior Court’s orders are also overbroad in that they place no reasonable limits as to the time, place, or manner of their prohibitions against free speech.” In addition to the free speech and free press claims, the brief claims that the Court’s orders violated due process because the judge implemented them without any notice or opportunity to be heard.                                                                                        Yesterday, Judge Vogel partially revised her April 6th order by stating that “[m]embers of the media are not precluded from contacting the jurors.” However, the order did not address at all the denial of the media list to the Providence Journal, and did not make clear whether members of the public, as opposed to the media, were allowed to contact the jurors.            A hearing on the motion to overturn the orders is scheduled for May 14th at 2 PM before Superior Court Judge Maureen Keough. Full text of the brief is available here. STATEMENTS FROM PARTICIPANTS IN THE BRIEF:

The ACLU of Rhode Island has expressed strong opposition to recently proposed regulations that would restrict the types of advertising allowed at T.F. Green Airport. 

ACLU of RI executive director Steven Brown issued the following statement in response to a directive by RI Superior Court Judge Netti C. Vogel in a recently concluded high-profile murder case involving Jorge DePina.  The directive bars members of the general public, including the news media, from contacting jurors in the case and blocks the release of the juror list: