Friday Roundup: Wasted Stimulus Funds and Stupid Crimes

There was plenty of criminal justice news to go around this week. Below is a roundup of a few stories I didn't get a chance to cover on the blog.

• Ohio inmate Joseph Fears could be freed as early as Tuesday after serving 25 years in prison for a crime DNA now proves he didn't commit. The story of another wrongfully convicted man was on NPR this morning and will be featured Sunday on "60 Minutes." Ronald Cotton was wrongfully convicted of raping Jennifer Thompson-Cannino in 1987. Today, the two have a new book and are working to promote eyewitness identification reforms.
• Newspaper magnate Conrad Black has finished his first year in prison and seems to be doing ok. "In some respects, there is less intrusion here of the irritations of daily life than on the outside," he says.
• The law was after moms this week. Georgia lawmakers sought to ban some of the procedures that led to Nadya Suleman's octuplets in California, and an Ohio mom picked up a child endangerment charge for driving while breastfeeding. (She was also on the phone)
• El Presidente Barack Obama spoke today in Columbus and mentioned that stimulus dollars are saving police jobs there. While well-funded police departments are important to deter violent crime, we should also be looking at decriminalizing drugs so police can focus their resources on more important matters and we can spend stimulus cash on building stuff rather than simply maintaining order.
• Twenty people died in riot at a prison in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
• A man got shot robbing a gun store in Chicago. I saw this story in a tweet from @Michael_Hoffman. The same tweet introduced me to the twitter hashtag #stupidcrime - where I learned about a hostage held by a man with a Sega gun and a bus driver who punched McGruff getting punched in front of some kids. #stupidcrime = new guilty pleasure.
• I wrote about the new prison report from the Pew Center on the States earlier this week, but I have to mention it again. That graphic above comes from the report, and there's a lot of great research in there. I highly recommend reading at least the executive summary. Or download the fact sheet for your state.