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Washington Court Rules Published for Comment

The following proposed rule changes and new rules were ordered published for comment by the July 11, 2018 En Banc Administrative Conference per Order 25700-A-1236: Proposed changes to CrR 4.7 – Discovery and CrRLJ 4.7 ...

WSBA Council on Public Defense Seeks Your Input

The WSBA Council on Public Defense (CPD) is seeking input from defenders in two areas of practice: ITA and persistent offender cases. Today, the CPD Mental Health Committee is submitting proposed Performance Guidelines to the full...

Update: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

By: Sara Sluszka, Immigration Resource Attorney Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has been a temporary authorization to stay in the U.S., known as “deferred action,” for young undocumented immigrants who ca...

WDA-Incarcerated Parents Project (IPP) Challenges Defenders to Keep Children and Parents Together

By D’Adre Cunningham, J.D. Recently there has been a lot of media[1] attention accompanied by moral outrage about the federal zero-tolerance policy,[2] which incorporated a practice of forced child-parent separations at our ...

Critical Criminal Justice Reforms for Washington’s Youth: E2SSB 6160 Changes Decline and Auto Decline Statutes

Timely and Critical Criminal Justice Reforms for Washington’s youth: E2SSB 6160 Changes Decline and Auto Decline Statutes (effective June 7, 2018) Last week Governor Inslee signed E2SSB 6160, a bill that dramatically changes the...

WDAIP Preliminary Analysis of Jennings v. Rodriguez

On February 27th, in Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U. S. ___(2018), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that many noncitizens facing deportation, including those convicted of certain crimes and detained by ICE when released from state/fe...

Action Alert: SB 6052 – Death Penalty Abolition In Sight!

We are SO CLOSE to abolishing the death penalty in Washington. Senate Bill 6052 was voted out of the House Judiciary Committee and is currently in the Rules Committee. This is the farthest that any abolishment bill ever introduced...

King County Council Passes Immigration Ordinance that Prohibits Use of Local Resources to Participate in ICE Enforcement

Today, in a 6-3 vote, members of the King County Council passed an immigration ordinance that prohibits use of county resources, including law enforcement and the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (the jail), to take any ...

Urgent Legislative Action Alert

Bills must be voted out of their house of origin by tomorrow, February 14, 2018. Please use the link below to contact legislators urging them to pass SB 5689, the Keep Washington Working Act. This bill will provide protection ...

Didn’t attend our “Readying Yourself for the Draeger” CLE? Here’s what you missed!

On February 2, 2018, defenders in King County (as well as defenders from a variety of other jurisdictions who made the trek into Seattle) gathered to learn about the State’s new breath test machine—the Draeger 9510. We had a g...

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