News & Commentary

The number of people in American jails is staggering -- 2.2 million, or one in every 100 American adults. Vermont has done better than many other states in bucking the trend. Nonetheless, despite low crime rates, we've been putting more people behind bars, leading to full prisons and the transfer of inmates to private out-of-state jails. The ACLU-VT is part of a coalition, Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, that's working with the national group "Grassroots Leadership" to cut Vermont's ties with private, for-profit prisons and bring Vermont inmates home. You can help -- sign the "Locked Up and Shipped Away" petition to bring Vermont inmates home.

Most of us have probably been thinking a lot about Ferguson, Missouri, this week. On Monday a grand jury there declined to recommend charges against the white Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson, who shot and killed a young black man, Michael Brown, in August. The events may seem distant, but here's a sobering fact that may make them seem a bit more immediate. Police in Burlington, VT, arrest African-Americans at a higher rate than police in Ferguson.

Vermont is not known for explosive devices planted along country roads or interstate highways, or armed guerrilla fighters hiding in the woods. But that hasn't stopped the state's police agencies from obtaining armor-plated, bomb-resistant military vehicles from the U.S. Department of Defense. These heavy, gas-guzzling vehicles -- built at great public expense for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have found their way into Vermont through a federal program that has led to what Americans saw this summer in Ferguson, Missouri: the militarization of state and local police.

It's been a long time since Edward Snowden revealed to the world the extent of electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency -- so long, in fact, that a movie, CitizenFour, has just been released detailing how and why Snowden did what he did. Congress is not a promising nominee for an award bestowed for quick redress of violations of Americans' basic rights. It has a chance to get in the running, though, for such an award (if not for "quick redress," then at least for "redress") if it takes up and passes the USA Freedom Act during the lame duck session now underway in Washington.

Since 1999, seven Vermont police agencies have applied to the federal Department of Defense's used military equipment giveaway program to obtain sniper rifles. The St. Johnsbury PD asked for a pair to watch over the town of 7,000. The Orange County sheriff's department also asked for two (the county's population is 29,000, which raises the question of what goes on in St. J. that doesn't go on in Orange County). And the PD in the Chittenden County suburb of Shelburne similarly asked for a pair. Shelburne is the image of peacefulness, with few or no known outbreaks of long-range combat (although the town does have, according to its application, approximately "4,000 tourists in during the season not counting camp residents"). The Lamoille County sheriff's department asked for two sniper rifles, and Brattleboro did, too -- along with 15 M-16 automatic assault rifles.

The Supreme Court of the United States has denied review in all of the marriage equality cases pending before it. As a result of the court's action, same-sex couples in Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Utah will now be able to marry the partners they love. Today's orders also mean that same-sex marriage will soon become lawful in at least 30 states.

Vermont's federal trial court has ruled in favor of a Rutland County parent who was barred from school board meetings, concluding that the ban violated his rights to free speech and due process.

The ACLU of Vermont has filed suit on behalf of a motorist who was stopped and had his car seized, leaving him stranded on the side of the road eight miles from his home in Rutland, because a state trooper said he smelled marijuana but otherwise had no evidence of a crime. At issue is not just an illegal traffic stop but whether police can continue to use a "sniff test" as evidence of a drug crime when possessing small quantities of the drug (marijuana) is no longer a crime.

Constitution Day is this week. It was on Sept. 17 in 1787 that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia wrapped up their work and put their signatures to the document they had been working on for four months. In 2004 Congress officially designated Sept. 17 as Constitution Day, a day to celebrate the federal form of government established in that document and the individual rights attached to it in the Bill of Rights, added in 1791 as the first 10 amendments. But there's a second constitution we should celebrate, too, and that's the Vermont Constitution. The cause for celebration is not just because it's our own state's constitution but because in some cases, the Vermont Constitution provides better protection of personal rights than the U.S. Constitution.