While Attorney General Merrick Garland issued federal DOJ mandates on Dec 16, 2023 to limit the use of the abusive 3 strikes federal statute 4B1.1, the overuse of the mandatory minimums and the 924(c) federal law that allows prosecutors to double charge nonviolent gun possessions, the Newark Federal prosecutors office has all but ignored them. They continue to pick up hundreds of non-violent New Jersey state cases each month of Black and Latino local defendants and use these statutes to take a person's sentence exposure from a year or two up to 22 years based on the three strikes law. Some of these people only have a record with probation in their past. There is no sense of racial equity to allowing non violent petty priors to be equal to violent crimes like murder, rape, bank robberies and shootings. The community will not stand for it anymore. Federal prosecutors must focus on federal cases and not use local cases to bolster their careers and rack up convictions. It is time to say "no more". Newark has a long and storied history of being first to stand up against racism. This will be the first such protest in America.
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