Quick hits: Are media outlets ready for an 'extinction-level event'? A new National Park; the best rural water

Photo by Yosh Ginsu, Unsplash

Are media outlets ready to rethink and reinvent themselves to survive? That's a big question with so many possible answers. In her commentary for The New Yorker, Clare Malone recounts the rise and fall of U.S. news outlets and asks, "Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?" Malone writes, "Even as outlets have tried to complement news coverage with other offerings, they've faced a fresh dilemma: news subscriptions —the great hope of media — are now directly competing with entertainment ones."

Wikipedia map

America's National Parks are a source of national unity alongside land and historic preservation. The Amache National Historic Site officially opened as the newest national park this year. Amache is in southeastern Colorado, one mile outside of Granada. "It was one of 10 incarceration sites used to detain thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II," reports Lauren Penington of The Denver Post. The park is meant to remind us of past injustices and provide a place of reflection and healing for our country's past mistakes.

With all the twists and turns life can throw at us, sometimes words of wisdom can give us peace and reassurance that this, too, shall pass. Progressive Farmer's "Faith" section reaches out this week with quotes to ponder and embrace, such as this one from Martin Luther King Jr.: "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

Kobu photo, Unsplash

Water, water everywhere, and the best sips are in Columbus, Wisconsin. "Many people know Wisconsin for its milk or beer, but did you know that the state is also home to some of America's best-tasting water? Earlier this year, Columbus Utilities in Columbus, a small city northeast of Madison, won the gold medal at the National Rural Water Association's 25th Annual Great American Water Taste Test," reports Claire Reid of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The taste test and awards ceremony took place at the NRWA's annual Rural Water Rally in Washington, D.C."

As younger Americans weigh the costs versus benefits of a college degree, some opt to work for companies that offer great-paying jobs that don't need a degree. "Walmart is giving bigger bonuses and adding stock awards to their annual pay packages, pushing the total compensation for the best ones to more than $400,000 a year," reports Sarah Nassauer of The Wall Street Journal. "The retail giant has thousands of store managers who act as midlevel executives. Each can often oversee a store with 350 workers and $100 million in annual revenue. Many start as clerks and climb the ranks without college degrees."

Case backlogs are a major source of criminal trial delays.
(Tingey Law Firm photo, Unsplash)

The case backlog in U.S. courts increased during the pandemic years, but the shortage of attorneys and judges pre-dates Covid-19. "The pandemic worsened problems that already had caused state and local court delays, legal experts say. The hurdles include insufficient funding, judicial vacancies, lawyer shortages and delays processing digital and physical evidence," reports Amanda Hernández of Stateline. In rural Vermont, "There were over 35,500 pending cases statewide, according to data from the Vermont Judiciary. About 42%, or 15,294 of those pending cases, are criminal cases. That's double the amount of pending criminal cases pre-pandemic."

Study: many legal-aid programs don't work in rural areas because they're designed for cities

"Many legal-aid programs don’t work in rural areas because they are designed to serve large cities, a new research study says. The result is that low-income rural residents aren’t getting equal access to justice, according to a new paper published in the paper in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law Policy," Olivia Weeks reports for The Daily Yonder.

The report, based on case studies in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, found that such programs fail the rural poor in three ways: they don't account for the lack of broadband access, they incorrectly presume that anyone in crisis can competently serve as their own attorney, and their standards for justice don't line up with rural Americans' expectations, Weeks reports.

Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin have high poverty rates, low employment, an economy mostly reliant on mining, and "an absence of large legal firms, limited social services, and rural lawyer shortages that are accelerated by a graying pool of local attorneys. 'Legal deserts' like this one significantly reduce the efficacy of state and federal legal aid funding. Even if the cash support is there, the practitioners aren’t around to take advantage of it," Weeks reports. "In rural areas, only 14 percent of civil litigants receive legal assistance. The other 86% are left to defend themselves in court. This rate of civil representation is less than half the national average." The authors say defendants in rural Wisconsin can wait as long as four months for a public defender. 

The authors write that lawmakers' access-to-justice solutions are often inaccessible to rural defendants: "Most simply, the initiatives touted as advancing 'equal administration of justice for all' often prove to be the very same self-help forms, helplines, and online resources that low-income rural residents identify as barriers to justice." 

Lack of broadband access, lower tech literacy, and too little legal guidance also make a just legal result less likely for the rural poor, they write: "Without addressing the rural digital divide, the ability of technology to close rural civil justice gaps remains limited."

Analyst: Rural-urban divide in criminal justice is widening

Rural people can have a harder time with criminal justice than urban or suburban residents, and the gap is widening, Marc Levin writes for The Crime Report, published by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York.

"First, rural areas are less equipped to deal with the spike in drug overdoses in 2020, many of which are fatal. In recent years, overdose death rates in urban areas matched or exceeded rural areas, reversing a prior pattern. More recent data by type of jurisdiction is not available; but many of the states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, that saw significant declines from 2017 to 2018 have lost ground so far this year," Levin reports. "While addiction knows no boundaries, research has found that rural areas are less likely to have accessible treatment options. Rural and smaller law enforcement agencies and paramedics may have longer response times and be less likely to carry naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug." Levin is chief of policy and innovation for Right on Crime, an initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Many justice systems have turned to virtual court appearances and probation check-ins, but that could be more difficult in rural areas with poor connectivity. "Fortunately, text messaging and phone applications that do not require this level of connectivity provide an alternative for pretrial services and community supervision officers to keep in touch with those they are supervising," Levin reports.

Indigent defense has long been a challenge in rural areas, and the pandemic "has made it more difficult for defense lawyers to meet with their clients, whether that is due to protocols limiting access to defendants in jail or the challenge of maintaining a safe office environment with frequent visitors," Levin reports. "Rural areas have largely been left behind by advances in urban areas such as holistic defense, through which organizations like Bronx Defenders connect their clients to services and treatment, resulting in better outcomes by solving the challenges that led them to be involved in the justice system."

Another inequality, Levin notes, is that 54% of prisons are in rural areas, which increases the risk of coronavirus transmission among the incarcerated as well as staff and the community beyond.

A recent report from the Southern Methodist University Law School's Deason Center has some recommendations for closing the rural-urban gap in criminal justice. Their suggestions include "innovations in technology and training, law school legal clinics serving Native American tribes and other rural communities, and a combined undergraduate and law program for students seeking to practice in rural areas," Levin reports.

Quick hits: baby chicks DOA because of mail delays; rural legal deserts a critical health determinant, study finds

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Legal experts question move that leaves William Pendley in power at the Bureau of Land Management. Read more here.

Mail delays cause chicks, ducklings and seedlings to be delivered dead, and "Replacement parts for farm machines are late in coming. Prescription refills are taking a week or more to reach mailboxes, a particular threat because rural communities are older than most of America," The New York Times reports.

Rural legal deserts are a critical health determinant, study finds. Read more here.

Traditional farming releases carbon from the soil into the air; a practice known as "regenerative agriculture" could help put it back. Read more here.

Marsy's Law ballot initiatives promise to protect crime victims, but could cause legal problems too

Six states will soon vote on ballot initiatives to grant crime victims certain rights under the state constitution equal to those of criminal defendants, like the right to be treated fairly, confer with prosecution, and attend important court proceedings. But some legal experts worry that approving "Marsy's Law" amendments "could set up a clash over core aspects of the U.S. legal system, such as the accused person’s Sixth Amendment right to due process and the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty," Sophie Quinton reports for Stateline.

Marsy's Law is named for billionaire Henry Nicholas's sister, who was murdered in 1983. Nicholas's mother ran into Marsy's killer in public a few days after the murder; no one had notified her that he had been released on bail. Since then, Nicholas has spent $27 million funding victims' rights amendments in 12 states, Quinton reports. In Kentucky yesterday, a judge ordered that the results of the referendum not be certified because the ballot language specified by the legislature is vague and  doesn't make clear that the law would add 10 new rights for crime victims.

Because criminal cases are technically between the prosecutor and the suspect, victims and their families have not historically had many rights during the process. Over the past 40 years, laws have been enacted by all states and the federal government to give victims more rights, such as the right to be notified when a defendant is out on bail. But some say these laws aren't enough, and that enacting a constitutional amendment rather than a statute will make it more likely for victims to receive the protection and notification they deserve. On the other hand, "the American Civil Liberties Union, defense attorneys and some prosecutors say states already are doing plenty to protect victims, and that the proposed amendments could make it harder for the accused to get a fair trial," Quinton reports.

John Piro, the chief deputy public defender for Clark County, Nevada, told Quinton that Marsy's Law would interfere with defendants' due process rights by allowing victims the right to be present and heard in court before the defendant has entered a plea. "Now the prosecutor is going to be unduly influenced by a passionate person who wants to see vengeance — they’ll call it justice — handed out," he said. Research backs Piro up: emotional statements in court can make jurors more eager to punish defendants, especially if the victim is white.

Marsy's Law can trigger logistical problems too. In South Dakota, defendants ended up staying in jail longer while courts waited for victims to be notified about bail for even minor crimes like vandalism, Quinton reports. But University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, a victims' rights expert who has supported Marsy's Law, told Quinton he hasn't heard of the law leading to major problems in most states. The law is beneficial, he said, because it allows victims to refuse to share personal information with the defense that could put them in danger, such as their address or phone number.

Report shows how one judge's practices contribute to chronic jail overcrowding in two Kentucky counties

Mercer (top) and Boyle counties (Wikipedia map)

Rural jails all over the country face constant overcrowding, and though the problem is usually blamed on jail construction delays or outdated jails, judges share some of the blame. A recent study of the criminal justice system in Kentucky's Boyle and Mercer counties found that one circuit judge was largely responsible for overcrowding at the Boyle County Detention Center because of "'discriminatory' bond practices and lethargic case-processing times," Ben Kleppinger reports for The Advocate-Messenger in Danville, Ky. "The jail is stuffed with pretrial felony defendants who can’t afford their bonds and must wait months to resolve their cases, according to the blunt assessments of consultant Dr. Allen Beck in chapter two of the 106-page 'Jail and Justice System Assessment.'"

Kleppinger is a fellow of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, which held a conference on rural jails in July and publishes The Crime Report, which is currently featuring Kleppinger's story as an example of good local reporting on the issue.

The consultant's report, which the counties commissioned, found that Circuit Judge Darren Peckler is a major contributor to overcrowding by requiring cash bonds, setting limits on the number of pleas he will hear, having only one arraignment date per month, revoking bonds when defendants are indicted, and not offering bonds to participants in a new "rocket docket" program intended to quickly dispose of cases, Kleppinger reports.

Requiring defendants to pay a cash bond is the biggest cause of overcrowding; the report found that only 3 percent of defendants in the two counties are able to leave jail without a cash bond, compared to 18 to 55 percent in neighboring counties. The report notes that research shows that non-financial bonds are as effective as financial bonds. Requiring cash bonds also can cause poor defendants to plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit in order to speed up the process, Kleppinger reports.

Peckler refused to participate in the study, and forbade District Court Judge Jeff Dotson from participating as well. The consultants combed through tens of thousands of documents and interviewed people at every stage of the local criminal justice system before writing their report.

"The report does note a 'major decline in the jail population in the last several months,' which it attributes to the public defender’s office and defense attorneys 'advocating for the pretrial release and use of non-financial bonds during circuit court arraignment,'" Kleppinger reports. The report also notes that it's common for such a decline to happen during a criminal justice system study because the sudden attention often prompts members of the system to reconsider habits.

Still, the report found that there is still a strong "local legal culture" in which participants reinforce each other's incorrect belief that financial bonds improve appearance rates in court. The consultant recommended that someone from the Pretrial Justice Institute hold a presentation for local criminal justice officials.

More accountability needed for rural judges without law degrees

It's a little-known fact that around 2,000 judges in mostly-rural New York are presiding without a law degree or any legal training whatsoever.

Joe Sexton of ProPublica surveys the recent repercussions of this practice in a new piece prompted by the recent resignation of Justice Gary M. Poole of the Rose Town Court in Wayne County. Poole, who is not an attorney, agreed to resign effective July 1 and never again seek judicial appointment after the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct began investigating claims that he screamed at and threatened a former girlfriend and her new boyfriend in court.

In 2006, state officials promised reform after The New York Times published a series condemning the practice of allowing non-attorneys to preside as judges.

"The examination found overwhelming evidence that decade after decade and up to this day, people have often been denied fundamental legal rights," writes William Glaberson of The Times. "Defendants have been jailed illegally. Others have been subjected to racial and sexual bigotry so explicit it seems to come from some other place and time. People have been denied the right to a trial, an impartial judge and the presumption of innocence."

This week, in reviewing recent commission reports, Sexton reports that non-attorney judges are still being frequently disciplined for unprofessional conduct. One justice, for instance, was ordered to be removed from office in May after trying to have his daughter's traffic ticket removed, as well as trying to influence the decisions of the judge who was handling appeals of his decisions.

The practice of appointing non-attorney judges arose from the high cost to small communities of hiring qualified judges and lawyers, as well as frequent rural anti-lawyer sentiment, reports Glaberson, noting also that non-attorney judges tend to be powerful players in local politics.

To reduce misconduct and increase accountability, the Commission has recommended several reforms. "The court system has supplied every town and village court with laptops that have audio capability," commission administrator Robert Tembeckjian writes to ProPublica. "And a rule of the Chief Administrative Judge requires all proceedings to be recorded and maintained, and more extensive ethics training for judges."