A dog known as Puppy Doe was discovered in Quincy Massachusetts on August 31, 2013 with injuries consistent with long term abuse. Her torturer inflicted knife wounds, burns, broken bones, starvation and also split her tongue. The torture was described as a "medieval" form of torture. The injuries were so significant that Puppy Doe needed to be euthanized. Animal abuse in Massachusetts is a felony with a maximum penalty of five years incarceration. There is no minimum mandatory for egregious cases. Strengthening our existing laws should be a top priority in light of this case. A mandatory minimum of a one year incarceration is needed to get these abusers off the street.

My nephew Kenneth Bullock purchased a vehicle in 2012, the collision shop owner came to court and told the judge he sold Kenneth the car, but yet the courts wrongfully convicted Kenneth of the crime. The judicial system is flaw and seriously in crisis the case lack evidence in a conviction, but without a doubt was built around "Reasonable Doubt". Please Help Me!

A family member's abusive partner recently got out of prison because domestic violence is not on the list of violent and serious crimes. The perpetrator had been convicted of "corporeal abuse on a spouse" (domestic violence) under the original Three Strikes law, but that is no longer one of the forty crimes listed as serious or violent. Because domestic violence is not on the list of violent and serious crimes in the new law, he was released early, causing further threat and trauma to the family.

My husband Fred Martinez and his co- worker Higinio Gonzales were killed by a drunk driver in Wichita Kansas, I feel that the owners and servers of alcoholic beverages, in a establishment should also be held accountable. To this date they cannot be held accountable for over serving there patrons Kansas has on average 18,500 auto accidents a year involving alcohol, which resulted in 154 people being killed, and approximately 6,100 more being injured. I feel this is a very important law, and I think it would help cut down on drink driving.

Getting sent to prison for a crime you did not commit may seem like a far-fetched movie plot but for hundreds of Californians it’s a horrifying reality. We both spent over 20 years in prison despite being innocent of the crimes for which we were convicted. We will never get back the time we lost but there are other ways California can give back to those who have been wrongfully convicted, and prevent wrongful convictions from happening in the future. For the last few months we've traveled to Sacramento to urge our state representatives to pass two important bills that will help to protect innocent people from wrongful conviction and give back to the wrongfully convicted after our criminal justice system fails them. These two bills are in Governor Brown's hands now and we are hoping and praying that he signs them into law. Senate Bill 618, authored by Sen. Mark Leno, will streamline the process for exonerees to receive compensation for time spent incarcerated due to their wrongful conviction. That compensation is desperately needed to help exonerees, like us, begin to rebuild our lives after wrongfully spending years behind bars. Senate Bill 569, authored by Sen. Ted Lieu, will require law enforcement to videotape the interrogations of juveniles charged with homicide. False confessions during police questioning of suspects is the second most frequent cause of wrongful convictions, with juveniles most at risk. These two bills provide simple solutions to make California’s justice system more fair and equitable. We need Gov. Brown to sign them into law, so we waste no more time and take concrete action to protect the innocent and help those who have been wrongfully convicted. Please sign the petition to urge Governor Brown to sign SB 569 and SB 618 into law! With deep gratitude, Franky Carrillo, 20 years in prison for a crime I did not commit Maurice Caldwell, 21 years in prison for a crime I did not commit

We need a change in our criminal justice system. The Board has done a great thing in creating a Community Justice Task Force and funding a needs assessment. Now they need to follow through by reallocating money from the Public Safety Sales Tax and other sources to fund alternatives to incarceration.

My step-father is married to both my mother, and another woman in a different city. My mother and step-father have two little girls (age 5 & 8) not only are they seeing that it is okay for their father to be married to two women at a time, they are learning that there is no justice for breaking the law. My mother tried to have him prosecuted since it is a class-C felony, and it was denied. Nobody sees this as a real concern. Bottom line, its a felony, it needs to be treated as so, punished as so.

To see that heroin dealers receive attempted murder and murder charges for distributing a lethal drug.

For over 40-years, hundreds of thousands of men and women have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for a combined hundreds of thousands of years for conduct alleged, admitted, or found to be; "[i]n violation of Title 21, United States Code, Section 841(a)(1)" from which, "any person" NOT REGISTERED for federal jurisdiction to be federally regulated is STATUTORILY EXEMPT!

Our country's public defenders (PDs) are already grossly underpaid and overworked and our poor are already significantly over-represented in our criminal justice system. Because our legislators will not approve a federal budget, federal PDs are being forced to take pay cuts and furlough days and the poor are not receiving the representation provided in the Constitution. PDs are the only hope our poor have when they are arrested - often falsely - for a crime. I cannot be silent while once again the poor suffer, often sitting in prison while legislators play political games. Please intervene and see to it that budgets are restored to our federal public defender's offices immediately.

Eviction for the use of Marijuana is stupid when people actually die from alcohol every year and there are two strikes for that.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have been held in solitary confinement by the State of Louisiana longer than any inmates on record in the United States. For over 41 years Wallace and Woodfox have been kept in six-foot-by-nine-foot cells a minimum of 23 hours a day (for more information about their case see http://www.angola3.org). These types of conditions are notorious throughout US prisons, where isolation units have become common practice rather than being used under the most extreme of cases. As of today, about 80,000 prisoners throughout the United States are kept in solitary confinement. A movement with international support calls for Louisiana authorities to end the deplorable prison conditions experienced by these men for over 4 decades (see http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/cases/usa-the-angola-3). Recognizing that Wallace and Woodfox are not alone, United States House Representatives Cedric Richmond, Jerrold Nadler, Scott Lead, and John Conyers, drafted a letter to the Department of Justice calling for investigations into the alarming conditions of several Louisiana state prison facilities. In their letter, the Representatives condemn the patterned use of long-term solitary confinement as a violation of the US Constitution's Eighth and Fourteenth Ammendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment and due process) and also call for an independent investigation of its widespread practice in Louisiana, in particular solitary confinement in Angola Prison. (http://democrats.judiciary.house.gov/press-release/reps-richmond-conyers-nadler-and-scott-lead-letter-calling-investigation-several) Herman and Albert are at the forefront of a campaign that affects hundreds of Louisiana inmates CURRENTLY being held in long-term solitary confinement units with no meaningful opportunity to be returned to general population. Many of these inmates have been held in solitary confinement for years, while still others have been held for decades. Over 70% of those held in solitary confinement will leave prison, and reenter our communities far physically, emotionally and psychologically more damaged than when they were admitted to prison. The practice of solitary confinement has been universally condemned by many organizations including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Furthermore, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, recently urged the US Government to abolish the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement. Méndez stresses that “even if solitary confinement is applied for short periods of time, it often causes mental and physical suffering or humiliation, amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and if the resulting pain or sufferings are severe, solitary confinement even amounts to torture.” Considering that Louisiana has lagged behind as other states join in the growing movement to end mass incarceration and the use of solitary confinement, the TIME HAS ARRIVED to review how this inhumane prison practice is being used in Louisiana prisons and jails. Please join this call to demand that the Louisiana Legislature's Administration of Criminal Justice Committee host a public hearing on the use of long-term solitary confinement before the beginning of the 2014 legislative session. For more information, resources and dialogue about the use of long-term solitary confinement in US prisons please visit: http://ccrjustice.org/solitary-factsheet http://www.nyclu.org/files/publications/nyclu_boxedin_FINAL.pdf https://afsc.org/resource/solitary-confinement-facts http://www.nrcat.org/torture-in-us-prisons/statement http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/08/03/what-its-like-to-spend-8-years-in-solitary-confinement/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solitary-confinement-cruel-ineffective-unusual http://www.motherjones.com/special-reports/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/solitary-confinement-cruel-but-not-unusual/2013/08/03/9c9b6992-f0b0-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html http://www.solitarywatch.com