gbmarshall's blog

Pro-gun advocates may have planned to boldly celebrate the fifth anniversary of Richard Heller’s successful gun rights case. However, a murder spree in Santa Monica and George Zimmerman’s murder trial are over-shadowing those plans.

Stop Frisk and Swab: DNA Database

Criminal justice began a new era when the U.S. Supreme Court decided law enforcement could take DNA from arrestees. However, complex consequences await communities of color already reeling from police abuse of stop and frisk practices.

Not simply about DNA being a better way to catch criminals, Justice Samuel Alito said this case, Maryland v. King, is the “most important criminal procedure case the Supreme Court has heard in decades.” This 5-4 decision had conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in heated opposition to taking DNA from arrestees.

Malcolm X was a complex man. The beating death of his grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, 28, in a Mexico City bar, days before his grandfather’s birth date, only adds to this complex legacy. For, the life and death of Malcolm X is unlike any other civil rights icon.

Malcolm X is remembered as an impassioned speaker who demanded change by any means necessary. Malcolm X said things aloud about White oppression most African-Americans whispered because they lacked his courage, intellect, and love of race. Yet, he was gunned down by his own people.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was brutally honest. No U.S. Supreme Court Justice has ever revealed such personal details of life behind their rise to this nation’s most coveted law job.

Her memoir “My Beloved World” is historic because no sitting Justice has ever exposed intimate details of their childhood, especially one involving an alcoholic father and crime-ridden Bronx, NY, neighborhood.

“They betrayed everything we worked for,” says Jocelyn Cooper, 84, her delicate voice firm with rage. With yet another Black politician indicted for corruption, she, like so many others, wonder if the community will ever realize its full political potential.