Not Letting Felons Vote Damages Democracy for All Citizens

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat— Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—argues that disenfranchising felons, as most American states do in some way, does substantial harm to everyone in our democracy. Sarat praises a recent decision by a federal district court in Florida striking down a state law requiring people with serious criminal convictions to pay court fines and fees before they can register to vote, but he cautions that but much more needs to be done to ensure that those who commit serious crimes can exercise one of the essential rights of citizenship.

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State ex rel. Yurish v. Honorable Laura Faircloth

Docket: 19-1160

Opinion Date: May 28, 2020

Judge: Walker

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

The Supreme Court denied Petitioners' requested writ seeking to prohibit the circuit court from enforcing an order disqualifying Petitioners' joint counsel from representing Petitioners, holding that the circuit court did not clearly err when it applied Rule 44(c) of the West Virginia Rules of Criminal Procedure to disqualify Christian Riddell from representing Petitioners, jointly, at this stage of the proceedings. Petitioners June Yurish, Kristin Douty, and Christina Lester, were each charged with failure to report. All three charges arose from the same set of facts. Christian Riddell appeared in court as counsel for each petitioner. The State moved to disqualify Riddell from appearing in Petitioners' cases, arguing that the joint representation created a current conflict among Petitioners' interests and threatened future conflicts that would jeopardize the integrity of the proceedings. The circuit court granted the State's motion. The Supreme Court denied Petitioners' requested writ, holding that the Petitioners did not show that the circuit court's order disqualifying Riddell from jointly representing them in their criminal cases was either a clear error of law or a flagrant abuse of the circuit court's discretion.