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Last July, Georgia nurses found Juan Carlos Ramirez Bibiano’s body in a puddle of his own excrement, and vomiting after being left in an outdoor cell in the summer heat, according to a lawsuit announced Thursday, which alleges that officers were negligent when they left Ramirez, 27, in an outdoor cell at Telfair State Prison for five hours without water, shade or ice, even as the outside temperature climbed to 96 degrees. That evening, Ramirez died of heart and lung failure caused by heat exposure, The Associated Press reports . The warden earlier that day directed officers to check on inmates, bring them water and ice and limit their time outside. The Department of Corrections reported that Ramirez died of natural causes, said Jeff Filipovits, one of the attorneys for Norma Bibiano, Ramirez's mother. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported  that starting in March, the Department of Corrections stopped immediately reporting the causes of inmate deaths. The attorneys for Ramirez's family said they have minimal information about the events leading up to his death. They aren’t sure which officers were in charge of Ramirez and whether officers brought Ramirez to an outdoor cell for routine or punitive purposes. “The number of deaths that are occurring in custody is galling, and the absolute lawlessness inside of prisons is a humanitarian crisis,” Filipovits said. “I don’t use those words lightly." Outside of Georgia, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has faced complaints of widespread dysfunction. The Associated Press found rampant sexual abuse, criminal misconduct from staff, understaffing, inmate escapes, COVID outbreaks and crumbling infrastructure inside prisons across the country.

The Trump administration’s Justice Department broke with long-standing norms during the 2020 election cycle by publicly commenting on an ongoing investigation into nine military mail-in ballots tossed into a dumpster in Pennsylvania,  according to a report released Thursday  by the agency’s inspector general, the Washington Post reports . The report outlines how, on Sept. 24, 2020, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania David Freed took the unusual step of stating publicly that federal officials had launched an inquiry into the  discarded ballots  and that all nine ballots were cast for Trump. Then-Attorney General William P. Barr called Freed twice and “encouraged and authorized” him to issue a statement, including that the ballots were cast for Trump, according to the report issued Thursday. The report recommends that the Justice Department update its policies to spell out what information employees may include in statements about investigations when they deem a public statement is necessary; and make clear whether the attorney general is exempt from any department policies. The discarded ballots in Luzerne County became  fodder for election conspiracies , with then-President  Donald Trump  using the investigation to sow doubt into whether the election could be conducted fairly. Trump later relied on such doubts to fuel his false claims that he had defeated  Joe Biden  in the election — claims he has continued to repeat during his current campaign for the White House. Still, the inspector general concluded that Barr did not violate Justice Department policies, citing the “ambiguity regarding the applicability” of those policies. Freed, who was interviewed for the report, was faulted for not coordinating his statement with the FBI, a step he didn't think it was necessary since he had been dealing with Barr, the top person in the Justice Department.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s executive order last month, which pardoned  175,000 individuals  for prior cannabis offenses, “will help many Marylanders with prior convictions navigate the criminal justice system’s uncharted waters,” writes Robert Melvin, the northeast region senior manager of state government affairs for the R Street Institute, in a commentary for Maryland Matters .  “Unfortunately, the narrow scope of these laws means that many other former justice-involved residents are struggling to chart a new course in life,” he writes, suggesting that a Clean Slate policy would automate the process so that a person seeking an expungement no longer needs to hire a lawyer, attend judicial hearings, or pay fees for expungements. “It’s currently estimated that  1 million adults in Maryland  have a criminal record, and 410,000 of those adults could benefit from a Clean Slate law,” Melvin writes, noting the difficulties in the expungement process. “While the majority of states, including Maryland, offers petition-based record sealing,  reports have found  that fewer than  2% of eligible individuals  take advantage of this opportunity because of the rigors of navigating the convoluted and costly process."

Though a New York Times investigation published Friday concluded that a bullet likedly hit Donald Trump, FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday raised questions regarding the nature of the injury sustained by Donald Trump in the assassination attempt earlier this month, questioning whether it was caused by a bullet or by shrapnel, The Guardian reports. During a hearing on Wednesday in Washington, before the House judiciary committee, Wray told lawmakers that it was not clear what precisely caused the injury to Trump’s ear during the shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month. The burst of gunfire from a shooter on a roof with a sightline to the stage and crowd killed one rally-goer and left others wounded. “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray testified . “As I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else.” Shortly after the shooting, Trump said in a statement on Truth Social that he had been shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of his right ear. After the shooting, Trump released a memo about his recovery from Ronny Jackson, the former White House doctor and current Republican representative, but the former president has not allowed the medical professionals who treated him to talk publicly about his condition. On Thursday, Jackson responded to Wray’s testimony in a post on X, calling Wray’s comments to lawmakers “absolutely irresponsible” and “politically motivated” against Trump. “What little credibility he may have left is GONE after recklessly suggesting Trump might not have been hit from a bullet,” Jackson said. “It was a bullet,” he added. “I’ve seen the wound!” Wray also testified to lawmakers on Wednesday that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the shooter who had attempted to assassinate Trump, had searched online for information about the 1963 assassination of former president John F Kennedy.

Chicago is gearing up to host a secure and lively Democratic National Convention next month, as confirmed by federal, state, and local officials last Thursday. This comes despite the Secret Service grappling with security lapses linked to the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump, The New York Times reports . At a news conference in downtown Chicago, elected officials and law enforcement leaders said that for more than a year they had been in close coordination on security plans for the four-day convention, which starts on Aug. 19. “Let me state this unequivocally: Chicago is ready,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat. He added: “Chicago is not just hosting another convention. We are welcoming another new breath of life into our nation with the historic nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris.” Still, officials warned that the convention would take place in a heightened security environment. Since the attack, the Secret Service has reviewed the security plan for the Democratic convention, said Derek Mayer, the deputy special agent in charge in the Chicago field office of the Secret Service. Officials expect tens of thousands of protesters to demonstrate in Chicago during the convention, particularly pro-Palestinian activists who have opposed President Biden’s stance on the conflict in Gaza. Law enforcement officers from outside Chicago will receive additional training as they joined local police officers to assist with security for the convention. The Circuit Court of Cook County announced this week that it was making plans for an influx of arrests during the convention, including opening a temporary facility to handle additional court appearances. Several dozen judges have made room in their calendars to handle the proceedings if necessary.

In September 2016, three and a half decades after he shot President Ronald Reagan in a deranged bid to impress the actress Jodie Foster — a crime for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity — John W. Hinckley Jr. was released from St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric in Washington, D.C. Mark O’Connell spoke with him recently, in light of the Trump assassination attempt, and wrote a lengthy profile about his conversations with Hinckley for The New York Times . The federal court that granted his release barred him from speaking with media and did not allow Hinckley, who was a songwriter for some years before the failed assassination attempt, to release any of his work, without the specific approval of the treatment team entrusted with his care. In 2022, not long after his mother died, the last of those restrictions were lifted. The restrictions were intended to ensure that he neither courted nor was courted by the media and that his mental stability would not be threatened in the immediate aftermath of his release by widespread attention. But after 2022, Hinckley became a social-media figure of sorts. “For a majority of people who encountered his internet presence, Hinckley was an absurd and quintessentially American aberration: a guy who shot, and very nearly killed, the president and was somehow still alive to sing his songs about peace and love and redemption,” O’Connell writes. Then, after a young man took shots at former President Donald Trump, Hinckey posted: “Violence is not the way to go. Give peace a chance.”

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed  a sweeping gun bill  Thursday that includes a crackdown on hard-to-trace “ghost guns” and on modifications including “bump stocks,” AP News reports . The law is part of an effort by the state to respond to a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that  citizens have a right to carry firearms  in public for self-defense. On  ghost guns , the law toughens oversight for those who own privately made, unserialized firearms that are largely untraceable. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice reported recovering 25,785 ghost guns in domestic seizures. Also, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling last month that struck down a Trump-era ban on  bump stocks , the law also imposes strict penalties for the possession of modification devices, such as Glock switches, which supporters of the law say convert an otherwise legal firearm into a fully automatic firearm. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have their own bans on bump stocks  that aren’t expected to be affected  by the ruling. The law also expands Massachusetts’ extreme risk protective order law — also known as the red flag law — by authorizing health care professionals and others who interact regularly with people in crisis to petition a court to suspend a person’s right to possess or carry a gun to protect themselves and others.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin  has directed  the Pentagon to review 20 Medals of Honor awarded for actions during the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre,   in which the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry opened fire on hundreds of Native Americans, including women and children, the Washington Post reports . The news follows requests from South Dakota  state lawmakers  and members of Congress, and  over two decades  of pressure from Native American groups. “The fact that the title of the event is ‘massacre’ would not seem to be the kind of thing you award medals for,” said South Dakota state Sen. Lee Schoenbeck (R), who helped oversee a  state resolution   earlier this year calling for an official inquiry into the awards. “It’s time to get it right.” More than 425 Medals of Honor were awarded for action during that campaign, according to the  Department of Veterans Affairs . On Dec. 29, 1890, U.S. Army soldiers  killed an estimated 350  Lakota people in the southwest corner of South Dakota in what is now part of the  Pine Ridge Reservation . Historians believe the event was preceded by a single shot stemming from a disagreement between the soldiers and Native American warriors they were attempting to disarm. “I have never heard of a more brutal, cold-blooded massacre than that at Wounded Knee,” Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, who was an Army commander during the American Indian Wars, wrote in a  November 1891 letter . Miles wrote that women, small children and babies were among the dead.

Manhattan prosecutors have implored a New York judge to uphold the guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump in his hush-money criminal case. Trump contends that the verdict is now irrelevant due to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity, Courthouse News reports . In a 69-page court filing made public Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to disregard Trump’s argument that certain evidence from the hush-money trial should have been withheld from the jury based on the landmark immunity decision. Trump has argued the entire case should be tossed because prosecutors elicited testimony from Hope Hicks about her efforts to downplay a 2018 Wall Street Journal article about Trump’s supposed adulterous behavior. Since Hicks was Trump’s presidential communications director at the time, Trump claims prosecutors violated his presidential immunity in getting her to testify. Trump also argues prosecutors shouldn’t have been able to show the jury certain tweets that he made while president. But prosecutors said Thursday that this evidence only concerns Trump’s unofficial conduct, which is not protected under the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. “There is no basis for disturbing the jury’s verdict, and defendant’s motion should be denied,” they wrote. The Supreme Court ruling has already disrupted Trump’s sentencing schedule. Merchan was initially slated to sentence Trump on July 11, but he pushed back the date to mid-September to allow the presidential immunity issue to be fully briefed.

Justice Elena Kagan publicly called for strengthening the new ethics code of the U.S. Supreme Court by adding a means of enforcement, The Associated Press reports . In her first public remarks since the nation’s highest court wrapped up its term earlier this month, Kagan said she wouldn’t have signed onto the new rules if she didn’t believe they were good. But having good rules is not enough, she said. “The thing that can be criticized is, you know, rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them, and this one — this set of rules — does not,” Kagan said at an annual judicial conference held by the 9th Circuit. Kagan proposed that Chief Justice John Roberts could appoint a committee of respected judges to enforce the rules. After reports from ProPublica and The Associated Press, the court is now considering adopting an ethics code following undisclosed trips and partisan activity by some justices. Public confidence in the court has slipped sharply in recent years. In June, a survey for The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 4 in 10 U.S. adults have hardly any confidence in the justices and 70% believe they are more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters.

In 2022, there were 4 active shooter incidents documented at elementary and secondary schools. These resulted in 52 casualties, which was the second highest number in any year since 2000, following 2018 (81 casualties). Also, during the 2021–22 school year, public schools reported 10 firearm possessions per 100,000 students from prekindergarten through grade 12, which was higher than in any school year over the previous decade (ranging from 2 to 7 possessions per 100,000 students). Yet the proportion of students ages 12–18 who reported being bullied during school was lower in 2021–22 than in 2010–11 (19 vs. 28 percent). The proportion of high school students who were in a physical fight on school property also decreased, from 12 percent in 2011 to 6 percent in 2021. Those stats come from the Report on Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2023 , released this week by The Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics. The report summarizes statistics about crime and safety in schools, including findings on  active shooter incidents and deaths ,  student victimization ,  bullying ,  students carrying weapons ,  mental health services offered in schools ,  safety and security measures , and on-campus  criminal incidents  at postsecondary institutions, including  hate crimes . This year’s report draws on the most recent national data available at the time the report was produced, which for most findings is data from 2021 or 2022, the first year back at school after the pandemic shutdown. During the first year of the pandemic, when many children were learning remotely from home, the criminal victimization rate decreased at schools. Then there was an uptick. “The latest available data show that criminal victimization of 12- to 18-year-olds increased in schools in 2022. Similarly, the crime rate on college campuses increased in 2021,” said NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr. “However, neither rate exceeded 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Compared to a decade before, the total criminal victimization rate at schools remained lower, with some exceptions for specific types of crimes such as forcible sex offenses on college campuses.” At the postsecondary level too, crimes were generally less prevalent in 2021 than a decade earlier. Along with the lower school crime came a slight drop in mental-health services. But supports increased in other ways. In the 2021-22 school year, 49% of public schools provided mental-health services to students, down from 55% in 2019. But 90% of public schools reported providing increased social and emotional supports for students in 2021–22; 8 percent also reported doing for staff.