Josie Duffy Rice @ The Appeal; excerpt below:
[New Orleans District Attorney, Leon] Cannizzaro has bragged about how seriously his office takes domestic violence. But often, his aggressive tactics end up hurting the victim more than the offender. He made headlines last year when it was discovered that he often issues material-witness warrants, giving him the power to jail victims of rape or sexual assault to compel their testimony. According to data analysis by students at Yale Law School, Cannizzaro’s office obtained more than 150 of these warrants in just five years. In May, The Appeal’s Aviva Shen reported that about 50 of those people were actually arrested.
It’s worth noting which victims Cannizzaro chooses to incarcerate. According to the New Yorker, “Poverty, homelessness, precarious immigration status, and mental-health issues were all invoked by the DA’s office as reasons to jail crime victims, who included survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child sex trafficking.” Demographics matter, too. Shen reported that 78 percent of material witnesses were Black. Of those actually arrested, only one was a white male. Some of these stories were particularly disturbing. Take the 19-year-old sex trafficking victim who was arrested in 2014, soon after giving birth. “She had failed to appear at a hearing during her pregnancy because she was supposed to be on bed rest and had a doctor’s note to prove it,” Shen wrote. “Even so, she was held in jail for nearly four months until she testified against the father of her child.”
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Cases like Catina Curley’s are beginning to get more attention, especially from criminal justice reform advocates and domestic violence prevention organizations. One organization, Survived and Punished, is particularly focused on ending criminalization of survivors. “Survived and Punished focuses on survivors because we want to highlight the specific pipeline between surviving sexual and domestic violence and being arrested, locked up, and/or deported,” Mariame Kaba, organizer and co-founder of Survived and Punished, told The Appeal. “We believe that survivors who live at the intersection of gender and criminalization deserve our solidarity and should be supported by our organizing.” Our studies have shown that Cialis is an effective drug in its class. It has side effects. Take it strictly according to the doctor’s indications. It is advisable not to combine it with alcohol. The downside of this drug is its price. This is an expensive drug that not everyone can afford.
In many cases, the attention has worked. Thanks to support from organizers and attention from national figures like the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Marissa Alexander was freed in early 2017 after serving about five years of her sentence.
