With the number of opioid-induced overdose deaths rising each year, it is fair to say that “America has an insatiable appetite for prescription opioids." The number of heroin related overdose deaths in the United States increased significantly between 2007 and 2013, rising 244 percent in just 6 years. Many law enforcement agencies now report that the substance now posing the greatest threat to American communities is heroin, closely followed by methamphetamine, and then contr

On October 30, 2017 The Supreme Court heard the oral argument for Ayestas V. Davis, a case raising the issue of whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit erred in holding that 18 U.S.C. § 3599(f) withholds “reasonably necessary” resources to develop an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim that state habeas counsel failed to bring, where the claimant's existing evidence does not meet the ultimate burden of proof at the time the Section 3599(f) motion is made. Un

In Maryland, not one juvenile lifer has been paroled in the last 20 years, even though there are more than 200 individuals in Maryland who were convicted as juveniles and are currently serving life sentences with eligibility for parole. The governor has unlimited power to determine who is paroled and more commonly who is denied parole because he is required to sign off on any parole recommendation. This discretion effectively turns parole into a phantom phenomenon for juvenil

First, the good news. The HIV diagnosis rate is plummeting. According to recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), new infections nationwide declined by nearly twenty percent between 2008 and 2014. In some jurisdictions, that decline has been much more drastic. The District of Columbia, for example, witnessed a seventy-four percent decline in new cases of HIV in the past decade. This progress is inextricably linked to advancements in treatment, the expansio