District attorneys across the country have resisted the use of conviction rates as a measure of success, Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said.
To the extent that the prosecutor contemplated the use of prior convictions in a one-stage recidivist trial, his right to do so is of course established by Spencer v. State of Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 87 S.Ct.
But as California implements criminal justice reform, it has an opportunity to take a leading role by curtailing its own use of felony convictions to deny voting access.
This was no accident, because the use of criminal convictions, often for petty, nonviolent crimes, arose in the Deep South immediately after the 15th Amendment was passed to give former slaves the right to vote.
On Wednesday I will deal with the EEOC's Enforcement Guidance on the Use of Arrests and Convictions in Employment.
In a lengthy analysis in August, Judge Mark Bennett of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, in Sioux City, described a "shocking, jaw-dropping disparity" in use of the prior-conviction enhancements, with some prosecutors routinely invoking them and others rarely.
Analysis in 2006 by GeneWatch UK, which monitors the application of genetic technology for public interest and human rights, showed that the rate of convictions using the DNA database actually fell after the introduction of retention of records at arrest (rather than charge) in 2004.
"The Louisville Lip,'' they called him, and it wouldn't have worked except he backed up everything he said, stood by everything he believed, fought through everything in his path, from racism to religious discrimination to skepticism that a fighter could use the power of conviction to connect the world.
The article, which won a National Magazine Award, was a harrowing account of decades of drug use, arrests, convictions and jail sentences.
Yet the use of DNA to secure convictions is growing fast.
