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The War on Drugs Begins

Drug use for medicinal and recreational purposes has been happening in the United States since the country's inception. In the 1890s, the popular Sears and Roebuck catalogue included an offer for a syringe and small amount of cocaine for $1.50. (At that time, cocaine use had not yet been outlawed.)

In some states, laws to ban or regulate drugs were passed in the 1800s, and the first congressional act to levy taxes on morphine and opium took place in 1890.

The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in 1909 banned the possession, importation and use of opium for smoking. However, opium could still be used as a medication. This was the first federal law to ban the non-medical use of a substance, although many states and counties had banned alcohol sales previously.

In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Act, which regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocaine.

Alcohol prohibition laws quickly followed. In 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, transportation or sale of intoxicating liquors, ushering in the Prohibition Era. The same year, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), which provided guidelines on how to federally enforce Prohibition.

Prohibition lasted until December, 1933, when the 21st Amendment was ratified, overturning the 18th.

Marijuana Tax Act of 1937

In 1937, the "Marihuana Tax Act" was passed. This federal law placed a tax on the sale of cannabis, hemp, or marijuana.

The Act was introduced by Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina and was drafted by Harry Anslinger. While the law didn't criminalize the possession or use of marijuana, it included hefty penalties if taxes weren't paid, including a fine of up to $2000 and five years in prison.

Controlled Substances Act

President Richard M. Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) into law in 1970. This statute calls for the regulation of certain drugs and substances.

The CSA outlines five "schedules" used to classify drugs based on their medical application and potential for abuse.

Schedule 1 drugs are considered the most dangerous, as they pose a very high risk for addiction with little evidence of medical benefits. Marijuana, LSD, heroin, MDMA (ecstasy) and other drugs are included on the list of Schedule 1 drugs.

The substances considered least likely to be addictive, such as cough medications with small amounts of codeine, fall into the Schedule 5 category.

Nixon and the War on Drugs

In June 1971, Nixon officially declared a "War on Drugs," stating that drug abuse was "public enemy number one."

A rise in recreational drug use in the 1960s likely led to President Nixon's focus on targeting some types of substance abuse. As part of the War on Drugs initiative, Nixon increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and proposed strict measures, such as mandatory prison sentencing, for drug crimes. He also announced the creation of the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which was headed by Dr. Jerome Jaffe.

Nixon went on to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973. This agency is a special police force committed to targeting illegal drug use and smuggling in the United States.

At the start, the DEA was given 1,470 special agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Today, the agency has nearly 5,000 agents and a budget of $2.03 billion.

Ulterior Motives Behind War on Drugs?

During a 1994 interview, President Nixon's domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, provided inside information suggesting that the War on Drugs campaign had ulterior motives, which mainly involved helping Nixon keep his job.

In the interview, conducted by journalist Dan Baum and published in Harper magazine, Ehrlichman explained that the Nixon campaign had two enemies: "the antiwar left and black people." His comments led many to question Nixon's intentions in advocating for drug reform and whether racism played a role.

Ehrlichman was quoted as saying: "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did."

The 1970s and The War on Drugs

In the mid-1970s, the War on Drugs took a slight hiatus. Between 1973 and 1977, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession.

Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 after running on a political campaign to decriminalize marijuana. During his first year in office, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize up to one ounce of marijuana.

Say No to Drugs

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reinforced and expanded many of Nixon's War on Drugs policies. In 1984, his wife Nancy Reagan launched the " Just Say No " campaign, which was intended to highlight the dangers of drug use.

President Reagan's refocus on drugs and the passing of severe penalties for drug-related crimes in Congress and state legislatures led to a massive increase in incarcerations for nonviolent drug crimes.

In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses. This law was later heavily criticized as having racist ramifications because it allocated longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans). Five grams of crack triggered an automatic five-year sentence, while it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to merit the same sentence.

Critics also pointed to data showing that people of color were targeted and arrested on suspicion of drug use at higher rates than whites. Overall, the policies led to a rapid rise in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 2014, nearly half of the 186,000 people serving time in federal prisons in the United States had been incarcerated on drug-related charges, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

A Gradual Dialing Back

Public support for the war on drugs has waned in recent decades. Some Americans and policymakers feel the campaign has been ineffective or has led to racial divide. Between 2009 and 2013, some 40 states took steps to soften their drug laws, lowering penalties and shortening mandatory minimum sentences, according to the Pew Research Center.

In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100:1 to 18:1.

The recent legalization of marijuana in several states and the District of Columbia has also led to a more tolerant political view on recreational drug use.

Technically, the War on Drugs is still being fought, but with less intensity and publicity than in its early years.

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War on Drugs - Timeline in America, Definition & Facts | HISTORY

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The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative in America that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by increasing and enforcing penalties for offenders. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today.

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America's War on Drugs: Crack and the LAPD | History

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national center for biotechnology information

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The war on marijuana: the transformation of the war on drugs in the 1990s - PubMed

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The results of this study suggest that law enforcement resources are not being effectively allocated to offenses which are most costly to society. The financial and personnel investment in marijuana offenses, at all points in the criminal justice system, diverts funds away from other crime types, th ...

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

War on Drugs, the effort in the United States since the 1970s to combat illegal drug use by greatly increasing penalties, enforcement, and incarceration for drug offenders.

The War on Drugs began in June 1971 when U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be "public enemy number one" and increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and drug-treatment efforts. In 1973 the Drug Enforcement Administration was created out of the merger of the Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and the Office of Narcotics Intelligence to consolidate federal efforts to control drug abuse.

The War on Drugs was a relatively small component of federal law-enforcement efforts until the presidency of Ronald Reagan, which began in 1981. Reagan greatly expanded the reach of the drug war and his focus on criminal punishment over treatment led to a massive increase in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 1984 his wife, Nancy, spearheaded another facet of the War on Drugs with her "Just Say No" campaign, which was a privately funded effort to educate schoolchildren on the dangers of drug use. The expansion of the War on Drugs was in many ways driven by increased media coverage of-and resulting public nervousness over-the crack epidemic that arose in the early 1980s. This heightened concern over illicit drug use helped drive political support for Reagan's hard-line stance on drugs. The U.S. Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which allocated $1.7 billion to the War on Drugs and established a series of " mandatory minimum" prison sentences for various drug offenses. A notable feature of mandatory minimums was the massive gap between the amounts of crack and of powder cocaine that resulted in the same minimum sentence: possession of five grams of crack led to an automatic five-year sentence while it took the possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine to trigger that sentence. Since approximately 80% of crack users were African American, mandatory minimums led to an unequal increase of incarceration rates for nonviolent Black drug offenders, as well as claims that the War on Drugs was a racist institution.

Concerns over the effectiveness of the War on Drugs and increased awareness of the racial disparity of the punishments meted out by it led to decreased public support of the most draconian aspects of the drug war during the early 21st century. Consequently, reforms were enacted during that time, such as the legalization of recreational marijuana in an increasing number of states and the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 that reduced the discrepancy of crack-to-powder possession thresholds for minimum sentences from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. Prison reform legislation enacted in 2018 further reduced the sentences for some crack cocaine-related convictions. While the War on Drugs is still technically being waged, it is done at a much less intense level than it was during its peak in the 1980s.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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War on Drugs | History & Mass Incarceration

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War on Drugs, the effort in the United States since the 1970s to combat illegal drug use by greatly increasing penalties, enforcement, and incarceration for drug offenders. It began in 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse to be 'public enemy number one' and increased funding for drug control.

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John Hope Franklin: Racism in the 1990's

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The Beating of Rodney King, and the 1992 L.A. Riots

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The Los Angeles riots erupted on 29 April 1992 after four white police officers were acquitted over the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.

Anger led to days of looting and burning, 54 deaths and $1bn (£610m) of damage to the city. A state of emergency was declared in South Central Los Angeles.

In the wake of the riots the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was forced to change.

The grainy black and white footage of King's beating offered proof of what the black community had been complaining about for decades - police brutality.

Some LAPD officers reporting on disturbances in the black communities of South Los Angeles in 1992 used code to describe disturbances in their areas: NHI - "No Humans Involved".

Members of the predominantly white, male police force said it was "gallows humour" and regularly described the African-Americans they were meant to protect and serve as "monkeys" and "gorillas".

An independent commission to investigate the King beating detailed a culture of racism and abuse within the LAPD, where excessive force was not only tolerated but often covered up by fellow officers in a code of silence.

"With the Rodney King beating and the riots, that was the beginning of the end of the old imperial LAPD. Because LAPD had a very arrogant, 'we're above the law' attitude," says Connie Rice, a civil rights lawyer.

"It was the first time the black community's complaints couldn't be denied and swept under the rug."

The commission, led by future US Secretary of State Warren Christopher, depicted an out of control LAPD with rogue officers beating suspects and bragging about it over patrol cars' communication systems.

The report published the messages to illustrate the King beating was not an isolated incident. It noted that LAPD management monitored the messages but did nothing about the abuse.

Some memorable messages include:

"I hope there is enough units to set up a pow-wow around the susp so he can get a good spanking and nobody see it."

"I obviously didn't beat this guy enough. He got right back up and is still being obnoxious."

"The last load went to a family of illegals living in the brush along side the pas frwy [Pasadena Freeway]... I thought the woman was going to cry ... so I hit her with my baton."

Caught on camera

While the use of excessive force was not uncommon, what made the Rodney King beating unusual is that it was captured on camera.

The footage - and the ensuing outrage - forced the LAPD to change radically. But change did not come overnight.

When the Christopher Commission released its report and recommended ways to reduce racism, sexism and the use of excessive force, some officers reportedly held a bonfire party to show what they thought of the findings.

The LAPD was about 68% white in 1992. When the riots broke out, Bernard Parks, now an LA city councillor, was LAPD Deputy Chief - the highest ranking African-American officer on the force at the time.

"The big battle inside of LAPD was people trying to determine where they came out on the side of whether it was appropriate or inappropriate using force on Rodney King. There was a lot of tension around that," says Mr Parks.

"There were those who thought, 'Hey, what happened to Rodney King, he deserved it, he was running from the police. If he hadn't have done that the police wouldn't have done what they did.'

"And there were others, like myself, who said, this is inappropriate. No matter what happened before the camera came on, it couldn't justify what you saw on the tape."

Mr Parks, who became chief of police in 1997, says the video led to changes within the LAPD and that the community's complaints were ultimately taken more seriously.

Many of the Christopher Commission recommendations focused on boosting multiculturalism in the police force, so that the officers would better reflect the communities they patrol. The force has slowly shifted from a paramilitary style to more interactive, community policing.

Officers who were once appraised by the number of the arrests they made are now encouraged to prevent trouble before it happens, says Connie Rice, who has moved from "constantly suing" the LAPD to working with them.

"I've even got a parking space there," laughs Ms Rice, who has been working with the LAPD on a programme placing 50 police officers in four housing projects.

"Their job is to help communities become healthy so crime plummets in those housing projects. These cops will get promoted for demonstrating how they avoid arresting a kid."

Changing South Central

While Rodney King may have been the catalyst that sparked the Los Angeles riots, the conditions in South Los Angeles are arguably what caused them.

The area was dominated by gangs and a lack of education, jobs and opportunity. Crack cocaine use was rife and young people often found joining gangs like the Bloods or Crips their safest bet for a future.

The neighbourhood has changed a lot in 20 years.

The crime rate is down. And the area is now called South Los Angeles and proudly boasts neighbourhood names, rejecting the toxic "South Central" and all its connotations of ghettos and violence.

The population is now mostly Hispanic, not African-American.

But much is still the same. South LA is still poor and struggling with gangs and a lack of opportunity.

While much inside and out of the LAPD has improved, Mr Parks says it is naive to think riots could not happen again, especially when there is such a chasm between the rich and poor in the city.

People who say they predicted the riots are kidding themselves, he said.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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Twenty years after the Los Angeles riots left 54 dead and caused $1bn of damage, Regan Morris find the city's police have been forced to change.

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Rodney King makes a statement at a Los Angeles news conference on May 1, 1992, in which he asked for an end to violence. (David Longstreath/AP)
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As Memphis and the nation brace for the Friday release of body-camera footage of the beating death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police, many Americans are remembering the video of the 1991 beating of Rodney King that sparked demonstrations against police brutality and eventually led to violence.

King, 25, was driving on a Los Angeles highway on March 3, 1991, when officers chased him and pulled him over for speeding. After he exited the car, officers seeking to subdue him fired a stun gun at him and brutally beat him. A nearby resident filmed the encounter with a camcorder, and the video played repeatedly on TV. When a California jury failed to convict the four charged officers the next year, an uprising began across parts of the Los Angeles area, ultimately leaving more than 60 people dead and more than 2,000 injured.

'Burn, baby, burn': What I saw as a black journalist covering the L.A. riots

As the violence escalated, King issued a plea: "Can we all get along?"

King died on June 17, 2012. His Washington Post obituary, by Emily Langer, captured how the events of March 3, 1991, transformed both his life and his country. The obituary is reprinted below, along with images of front-page stories about King and the demonstrations that engulfed Los Angeles:

Rodney King, the Black motorist whose violent encounter with White Los Angeles police officers after a car chase in 1991 was captured on home video and helped prompt one of the worst race riots in U.S. history, and an abiding controversy about American justice, died June 17. He was 47.

Mr. King apparently drowned at his home in Rialto, Calif., according to local police. His fiancee called 911 early Sunday morning, saying that she had discovered Mr. King at the bottom of his swimming pool. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A preliminary investigation showed no signs of foul play.

Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, died on Jan. 10 after sustaining injuries during an encounter with Memphis police three days earlier. (Video: AP)

Two decades ago, Mr. King, then 25, found himself at the center of one of the most volatile debates over race and the law since the end of the civil rights movement. To many people, especially in the Black community, he became a symbol of the police brutality that had long been inflicted on African Americans.

"History will record that it was Rodney King's beating and his actions that made America deal with the excessive misconduct of law enforcement," the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement after Mr. King's death.

The devastation of the Tulsa Race Massacre

Mr. King has become known for the words he spoke in an appeal he made during the riots that followed his arrest. "Can we all get along?" he urged. "Can we get along?

On March 3, 1991, Mr. King was driving on a Los Angeles interstate when California Highway Patrol officers attempted to stop him for speeding. During the eight-mile high-speed chase that ensued, members of the Los Angeles police joined it and assumed control when Mr. King ultimately pulled over.

Although he got out of the car, Mr. King resisted arrest and at one point threw officers off his back.

L.A. police officers testified to their fears that Mr. King appeared to be under the influence of the drug PCP, which can unleash aggression in users.

Test results would show, however, that Mr. King had been drinking. To subdue him, the officers fired a stun gun and beat him with batons, leaving him bloodied and bruised. His cheekbone, skull bones and ankle were broken.

A nearby resident, George Holliday, was wakened by the noise and began filming the incident from his apartment balcony with a camcorder. Holliday later released the grainy footage to the news media, which played and replayed the incomplete, frequently edited footage, searing the beating into national memory.

The next year, four L.A. officers were tried in connection with the incident. The California jury, which had no Black members, acquitted three of assault charges, and a mistrial was declared for a fourth.

Tulsa isn't the only race massacre you were never taught in school. Here are others.

"Viewed from outside the trial, it was hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video," President George H.W. Bush was quoted at the time.

Parts of Los Angeles erupted in riots, which left more than 50 people dead and more than 2,000 wounded, while hundreds of fires broke out and many businesses were looted.

As the violence continued, Mr. King emerged from his home to make an appeal:

"People, I just want to say - can we all get along? Can we get along? ... We've got enough smog here in Los Angeles, let alone to deal with the setting of these fires and things ... It's not right, and it's not going to change anything ... We've got to quit."

Those words, particularly the phrase about getting along, have become part of the popular culture and have helped to keep his name, and the events of 20 years ago, alive in American consciousness.

Rodney Glen King was born April 2, 1965, in Sacramento. He grew up in Altadena, Calif., with several brothers and sisters. For much of his life, he was known as Glen.

He had worked in construction after dropping out of school. At the time of the beating, he was a manual laborer at Dodger Stadium and was on parole from prison. He had been sentenced after pleading guilty in a robbery.

During Mr. King's childhood and adolescence, his father had often forced Mr. King to help him with his janitorial work until 2 a.m. on school nights, sometimes beating him.

"Maybe those whuppings prepared me for Koon," Mr. King once said, referring to Sgt. Stacey Koon, who was one of two L.A. officers ultimately convicted on federal charges of violating Mr. King's civil rights.

Mr. King received a $3.8 million settlement from the City of Los Angeles and the police department. Much of the money was used to pay his legal fees. His memoir, "The Riot Within," was released in April.

In the book, Mr. King acknowledged having struggled with drugs and alcohol. After the 1991 incident, he continued to have run-ins with the law, including domestic violence charges.

Mr. King's marriages to Denetta King and Crystal Waters ended in divorce. Survivors include a daughter from an early relationship, Candace; a daughter from his first marriage, Dena; and a daughter from his second marriage, Uniqua. According to news reports, he was engaged to Cynthia Kelley, a member of the jury in his civil lawsuit.

In discussing his arrest, Mr. King once told the Los Angeles Times: "I hate that it was me. I hate that it would be anybody at the center of attention like that. I wouldn't wish that on nobody. I have to turn it around, put it behind me, which is really hard."

But, in an interview with the paper this year, he appeared to take a longer view of the significance of his arrest.

He took the position that "it changed things."

"It made the world a better place," he said.

The devastation of the Tulsa Race Massacre

May 28, 2021

The devastation of the Tulsa Race Massacre

May 28, 2021

The hatred these Black women can't forget as they near 100 years old

August 28, 2022

The hatred these Black women can't forget as they near 100 years old

August 28, 2022

The long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S.

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March 18, 2021

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Who was Rodney King? His 1991 beating by L.A. police roiled America.

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The release of body-camera footage of the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols recalls the horrifying video of the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police.

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American Prisons and Prisoners in 1990 on JSTOR

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Morris E. Lasker, American Prisons and Prisoners in 1990, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 135, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 30-40

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If you even half-paid attention in high school history class, you might be forgiven for thinking that federal courts are the most powerful courts in the land. After all, they've been responsible for landmark rulings about everything from abortion rights to school desegregation - disputes so well-known, the cases are household names: Roe v. Wade. Brown v. Board of Education. Despite those high-profile decisions, when it comes to protecting prisoners' rights and avoiding executions of innocent people, the top courts in the land are oddly impotent.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court told Arizona prisoner Barry Jones that even though four federal judges agreed he may well be innocent of the 1994 murder that sent him to death row, the high court couldn't overturn his conviction or stop Arizona from executing him. (Jones had argued he was hindered by poor lawyering at multiple stages of his case.)

In a 6-3 decision on Monday, in a case titled Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, the conservative justices said they couldn't do anything about it, because of one wonky law passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by then-President Bill Clinton. Misleadingly called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the law was created during the tough-on-crime '90s, to keep violent prisoners from getting released on what politicians called technicalities. But now, experts say the law actually keeps innocent people in prison on technicalities - and most of the cases it affects have nothing to do with terrorism or capital punishment.

In these cases, the importance of finality outweighs any claims the prisoners might make, the court's conservative majority said. "Serial relitigation of final convictions undermines the finality that 'is essential to both the retributive and deterrent functions of criminal law,'" Justice Clarence Thomas wrote.

While many judges and prosecutors complain about the length of the appeals process, these days there are few defenders of the 1996 law - other than state attorneys general who prosecute appeals in federal courts. "Lots of people are stuck," said Christina Mathieson, director of the National Habeas Institute, which advocates for prisoners in these cases. "The gates to the federal courts are closed."

Here are five things you should know about the law known as AEDPA ("ed-puh"):
1. It was created after the Oklahoma City bombing.
The idea that federal courts could provide state prisoners with an added layer of protection from state government overreach dates back to the founding of our country. The framers envisioned federal judges as a safeguard to ensure rogue states weren't ignoring the U.S. Constitution.

But in the 1990s, with crime rates and death penalty approval ratings both at historic highs, a small but vocal minority of Republicans had had enough of what they saw as prisoners filing endless, frivolous appeals that deprived victims of the finality they deserved. They wanted to set stricter filing deadlines, narrow the claims state prisoners could ask federal judges to review, and limit the power of federal judges to overturn state convictions.

When Timothy McVeigh bombed a U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, Republicans had recently swept the midterm elections, and Clinton saw an opportunity to work with incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich on a tough-on-crime initiative. The "Effective Death Penalty Act" - part of Gingrich's legislative agenda - was rolled into Clinton's Antiterrorism Act. The newly-created AEDPA passed both the House and Senate by wide margins, even as then-Senator Joe Biden sought, unsuccessfully, to hold back some of the law's more onerous provisions, warning that it would keep innocent people in prison - though he ended up voting for it anyway.
2. The law makes it harder for many prisoners to win appeals.
Understanding why this is true requires a bit of background on how appeals work. Most criminal cases - more than 95% - go through state courts. But if someone wants to keep fighting their conviction, they can take the case to federal court.

But the 1996 law made it a lot harder to do that, adding complex technical restrictions for both prisoners and judges - changes that Brian Stull, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, likened to "chutes and ladders and Byzantine procedures that a prisoner has to navigate."

As a result, far fewer prisoners were able to get federal courts to consider - much less agree with - their claims of prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate lawyering, and other problems with their trials. In 2009, one study found that before the 1996 law, between half and two-thirds of state prisoners sentenced to death had their arguments vindicated in federal court. Afterward, that number fell to 12%.
3. The law was intended to speed up death row appeals, but failed.
Before the 1996 legislation took effect, people in prison didn't have an exact deadline for how long they could wait to bring their claims to federal court, according to Rob Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center.

"You just couldn't unreasonably delay," he said.

But now, prisoners have just one year to prepare and file their federal appeals. If that sounds like a long time, remember that death penalty cases often require intense investigations to track down witnesses and uncover new evidence. As a result, prisoners regularly lose their one shot at a federal appeal just because the clock has run out.

A Marshall Project investigation in 2014 found that 80 death row prisoners had missed the one-year deadline and their chance at an appeal in federal court - sometimes by just a single day - due to mailing or filing mishaps.

Despite the problems the one-year deadline can cause, it's failed to correct the problem it aimed to solve: The average time between sentencing and execution has doubled since AEDPA passed.
4. It doesn't just affect terrorism and death penalty cases.
The name "Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act' is a bit of a misnomer. Although the law affects both terrorism and death penalty cases, it also affects other criminal appeals, including everything from drug crimes to murder. By some estimates, more than 99% of prisoners affected by AEDPA have not been convicted of terrorism or sentenced to death.

In part, the law's effect is so broad because of the long-standing lack of investment in indigent defense - when poor defendants are provided lawyers. Public defenders are generally " under-qualified, under-compensated, and under-resourced," says Christina Swarns, Executive Director of the Innocence Project. This makes it hard for them to put up a vigorous defense at trial or on appeal, which requires tracking down witnesses, gathering documents and consulting experts. This lack of investment, in turn, makes mistakes and oversights more likely.

"There is no fair fight at the front end," Swarns said. "For this demand for finality to have integrity, we have to make damn sure what we're doing on the front end is working. And we know it is not."
5. It makes federal courts less powerful.
AEDPA changed the balance of power in criminal appeals. Federal judges can no longer overturn state court decisions - even those that violate federal law - except in very narrow circumstances.

"If you're a federal judge, you can't disagree or overrule an obviously wrong ruling in state court simply because it wasn't wrong enough," says George Kendall, a death penalty attorney who has argued before the Supreme Court.

In the case the Supreme Court decided this week, a second man, David Martinez Ramirez, argued that the state of Arizona violated his Constitutional right to an effective lawyer when they assigned him an attorney who failed to look into the developmental delays and egregious abuse he suffered as a child - evidence a competent attorney would have used to persuade the jury that he deserved life in prison instead of death. An appeals court agreed Arizona violated the Sixth Amendment by appointing an attorney who admitted she was not "prepared to handle 'the representation of someone as mentally disturbed as ... Ramirez.'"

Still, the Supreme Court said his death sentence should stand because he didn't follow the correct procedure in filing his appeals.

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The Supreme Court Made It Harder to Get Innocent People Out of Prison

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How the Supreme Court expanded the most important law you've never heard of.

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Why The US Prison System Is The Worst In The Developed World

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Huey P. Newton: Controversial Revolutionary Behind the Black Panthers

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Activist Huey P. Newton co-founded the militant Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale in 1966.

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Huey P. Newton: Controversial Revolutionary Behind the Black Panthers

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Activist Huey P. Newton co-founded the militant Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale in 1966.