domestic violence

The Huffington Post's Melissa Jeltsen has a feature about how women often have to choose between leaving partners who are abusing them and having housing. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, domestic violence is the third leading cause of homelessness among families. Jeltson, who focused her piece on New York City, reports that there are going to be 683 city-run units where families can stay indefinitely. "But in a city of 8 million people, it’s simply not enough to meet the need," Jeltsen writes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has made it harder for prosecutors to convict people who make threats on social media, The Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports.

Petitioner Anthony Elonis was convicted of threatening to kill his estranged wife, law enforcement officials and a kindergarten class through Facebook posts written in a rap lyric-esque way; he was convicted under a federal law that makes it a crime to communicate '''any threat to injure the person of another.'"

But the high court, in a narrow opinion, said that Elonis' state of mind had to be considered, Barnes reports. The majority of the justices rejected the idea that a poster's intent is immaterial in judging whether he or she has stepped outside the bounds of the First Amendment and truly threatened others. Lower courts have found that what matters is only if a reasonable person would interpret the words as a threat.

The court's narrow ruling leaves it up to the lower courts to develop exactly what standard should be applied to determine if a poster has made a true threat.

According to the United Nations, the court system in Afghanistan is failing women who are victims of violence, leading them to turn to mediation instead, the Los Angeles Times' Ali M. Latifi reports. Women interviewed by UN investigators reported they have to pay bribes to move the judicial process along, that they don't know how the law applies to their cases, and they fear imprisoning the men who are often the sole breadwinners for their households. Orzala Ashraf Nemat, a women’s rights activist, told the L.A. Times that mediation can be a long-term solution to domestic violence, but, on the other hand, "'in the past, we have had judges telling victims of gang rapes to marry their rapists. Clearly, there has to be a certain level of corruption in the formal systems for people to prefer mediation.'”

The Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes are seeking the power to try domestic violence cases involving non-tribal members, the Portland Press Herald's Colin Woodard reports. The plan is setting up a dispute over the scope of tribal authority in Maine.

A 2013 federal law expanded the authority for tribes to try domestic violence crimes involving non-tribal members so long as tribal courts meet federal constitutional standards and provide legal counsel. A bill has been introduced in Maine to align that state's law with the 2013 amendment to the Violence Against Women Act as well as to give the Penobscots expanded criminal jurisdiction for offenses that involve sentences up to three years.

The Maine Attorney General's Office argues that federal law does not apply to Maine tribes because "the Maine Settlement Act of 1980, which says that no federal Indian law is applicable within Maine if it 'affects or pre-empts the civil, criminal or regulatory jurisdiction of the State of Maine' unless Congress explicitly specifies it is to apply to the Maine tribes," Woodard reports.

Tribal leaders counter that the bill would enable to them to better protect women abused by their non-American Indian intimate partners.

The U.S. Supreme Court currently is considering the standard that should be applied to judge whether someone has stepped outside the bounds of the First Amendment and truly threatened others. Kevin Reed, a magistrate judge in Memphis, wrote in the Washington Post today that the justices should apply an objective standard, not a subjective standard, to true threats. If a subjective intent standard is applied, then prosecutors would have to prove that a defendant purposefully intended to threaten a victim, leaving them in the untenable position of trying to prove something that exists only in a defendant's mind, Reed says. "Abusers are keenly aware that victims never really know if their threats are serious or not," the judge concludes. "Ultimately, their objective is to keep victims guessing about whether they are in real danger. The Supreme Court should refuse to protect this manipulative behavior."

After the Portland Press Herald defied a gag order, a judge presiding over a domestic assault case involving an attorney retracted the order, the newspaper's Scott Dolan reports: "'It is certainly very clear to me that this particular order was not lawful, and I should not have ordered the media to refrain from reporting what was said,”' Judge Jeffrey Moskowitz said in a Portland courtroom. It was the testimony of the lawyer's 34-year-old ex-girlfriend that the judge ordered not to be reported.

MintPress News' Christine Graef reports on how a revised Violence Against Women Act is putting tribal authorities in charge of cases of abuse and violence against American Indian women: "The reauthorized act extends tribal jurisdiction to non-Native Americans who commit acts of violence or sexual assault against their Native American spouse or partner. While such incidents often go unreported, the amount that are reported reflect a disproportionate number of Native American women will be raped, stalked or physically assaulted compared to their non-Native American peers." According to the Indian Law Research Center, more than 88 percent of violent crimes committed against American Indian women are committed by non-American Indians over which tribal governments lack jurisdiction.

The amendment goes into effect next March.

There are limitations to the amended law. Tribes must have a criminal justice system that provides legal counsel to defendants, provide non-American Indians in a jury pool and inform defendants of their right to file federal habeas corups petitions, Graef writes. Federal prosecutors will continue to prosecute crimes for tribes that don't have their own justice systems. And jurisdiction only applies to cases in which the perpetrator and the victim were in a relationship.

The Pascua Yaqui is going to be the first American Indian tribe to prosecute a non-American Indian for domestic violence after the Violence Against Women Act was expanded to allow American Indian tribes to have that enforcement authority, the Washington Post reports. While the law is meant to address violent crimes inflicted on Native women by non-Native men, the law does not address every such circumstance: "While it covers domestic and dating-violence cases involving Native Americans on the reservation, the law does not give tribes jurisdiction to prosecute child abuse or crimes, including sexual assault, that are committed by non-Indians who are 'strangers' to their victims. In addition, the law does not extend to Native American women in Alaska," the Post reports.