Yvette Butler
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ytbutler.bsky.social
Yvette Butler
@ytbutler.bsky.social
150 followers 260 following 2 posts
Associate Professor of Law. Exploring Constitutional Law, Epistemology, and Collective Liberation.
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ytbutler.bsky.social
Thanks @inquest.bsky.social for publishing my invitation to build a better world. Can we get legislatures to stop passing laws for “tough on crime” optics, as opposed to doing the hard work of addressing #poverty, #exploitation, and generations of state sponsored #subjugation and neglect?
inquest.bsky.social Inquest @inquest.bsky.social · Apr 16
“The criminalization of survival strategies strikes me as particularly blind to reality, and it does not make us safer.” — @ytbutler.bsky.social on the cruelty of criminalizing people for doing what they have to just to live. Check out the whole argument in the latest from Inquest.
Just Surviving - Yvette T. Butler - Inquest
Crimes committed because of financial hardship are a form of labor and should not be subject to criminal legal punishment.
inquest.org
April 18, 2025 at 8:16 PM
ytbutler.bsky.social
Thanks to @indymultifaith.bsky.social for sharing my opposition to #indianastatehouse SB 289. This bill is #misleading, #contradictory, chills #speech, and suppresses #innovation. The bill is up for a hearing at 9:30AM on Monday, April 7, 2025. 🎙️
Four points in opposition to SB 289. 1) clouding the historical record, 2) preventing innovation and agility, 3) the bill is contradictory, and 4) it seems to surveil only efforts to address the consequences of our violent and exclusionary past.
April 6, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by Yvette Butler
nycsouthpaw.bsky.social
AUSA Hagan Scotten, former clerk for John Roberts, really put some mustard on his resignation letter.
BY EMAIL Re: United States v. Eric Adams, 24 Cr. 556 (DEH) Mr. Bove, I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct. The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so, for the reasons stated in her February 12, 2025 letter to the Attorney General. In short, the first justification for the motion-that Damian Williams's role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued under four different U.S. attorneys is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse. No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives. There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know much i i red oril, in this ily. wing the perset arthro he Reside is ving to, give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me. Please consider this my resignation. It has been an honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. Yours truly, Hagan Scotten Assistant United States Att…
February 14, 2025 at 3:43 PM