By Melissa Goodman, @mg718 and Ariela Migdal, @ArielaMigdal
The Directors’ Guild of America has released its annual diversity report on TV directing, and it confirms what reports have shown over the past many years: calling “Action!” is still the province of white men, with no improvement for women or women of color since last year.

Women directed only 14 percent of all episodes in 2013, and women of color directed only 2 percent of episodes, both unchanged since 2012. A full seventy of the 225 TV series analyzed – nearly a third of all shows on TV – did not hire a woman to direct a single episode.
This shut-out of women directors is an equality and civil rights issue that should concern all members of the viewing public, especially when viewed in the context of women’s under-representation in the entertainment industry more broadly.
Women, and women of color most egregiously, are overwhelmingly excluded from directing in both TV and film.  This kind of gender segregation would be concerning in any industry, but it’s especially troubling because the sector is so dominant in southern California (indeed, it’s simply known as "the industry").
But it is also concerning because what this industry produces so profoundly shapes and influences our culture. The longstanding exclusion of women and people of color (men of color directed 17 percent of episodes, up 3 percent from last year, an improvement attributable entirely to Tyler Perry directing his own shows) is more than an employment discrimination issue. It also means that the cultural content watched by millions of Americans in their homes is created almost exclusively by white men. Recently released studies once again document how this gender disparity negatively affects how women are portrayed on the screen, which, in turn impacts how women and young girls perceive themselves and their opportunities in life.
The “celluloid” ceiling is shockingly hard to crack. Recent reports have shown that what's true for directors is true for behind-the-camera jobs more broadly. One report recently showed that women make up only 23 percent of film crews, and only 2 percent of directors on 2013’s 100 top-grossing movies, and only 5 percent of workers in cameras and electrical departments.
Women directors have begun to speak out about the pervasive discrimination they face. This is important, as it’s increasingly clear that the old boys’ network in TV and film directing will not change on its own.
Are you a director who has faced discrimination? Tell us your story.
Melissa Goodman is director of the LGBT, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California, and Ariela Migdal is attorney for the ACLU Women's Right Project. Follow ACLU SoCal on Twitter.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League (PPL) has, as a "public service," published an announcement concluding "that when you are detained by a police officer, you must provide identification when asked to do so, or face arrest for obstructing or delaying a police officer." This conclusion is incorrect, and we want to set the record straight on this important issue that has recently been at the center of public debate.

The PPL cites Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District of Humboldt County, 542 U.S. 177 (2004) as upholding "the requirement to provide identification to an officer during a detention" and "ruling a police officer has a right to request identification during a valid detention."

In Hiibel, however, the question was whether a state may compel a suspect to disclose his name during a lawful stop. That case arose in Nevada, which had a stop and identify statute that made it illegal for a person detained by the police not to identify him or herself. There, the defendant refused to identify himself and was convicted and fined under the statute. He appealed, arguing, among other things, that the Fourth Amendment established a right to refuse to answer questions during a stop.

In upholding the conviction, the Supreme Court emphasized the Nevada law. According to the Court, "the Fourth Amendment itself cannot require a suspect to answer questions. This case concerns a different issue, however. Here, the source of the legal obligation arises from Nevada state law, not the Fourth Amendment."

Moreover, the Court emphasized that the state law required no more than answering an officer's request to disclose a name. The Court concluded that "[a] state law requiring a suspect to disclose his name in the course of a valid [] stop is consistent with the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures."

We think it's clear that because California has no stop identify and statute -- and, therefore, in the words of the Supreme Court, has not created a legal obligation requiring a suspect to answer questions -- you cannot be arrested for failing to provide identification when detained by a police officer. (This is not true in the case of a motorist, however, as motorists are required under state law to have a license when driving.)

If you'd like more support for our position, we suggest that you consider what the State of California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General (AG) has concluded. The Office of the AG publishes the California Peace Officers Legal Sourcebook (CPOLS), a "training and resource manual for state and local law enforcement covers state and federal laws and constitutional issues involving the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments." In it, the AG concludes:

The Court [in Hiibel] upheld as constitutional a Nevada "stop and identify" statute and found that a detainee's failure to identify himself could be the basis for a lawful arrest under a companion statute almost identical to Penal Code section 148[, which makes it unlawful to resist, delay, or obstruct an police officer in the discharge of his or her duties].

Unlike Nevada and other states, California does not have a statute mandating that a detainee identify himself, and that obligation cannot be read into Penal Code section 148. Although you may take whatever steps are necessary under the circumstances to ascertain the identity of a person you have lawfully detained, Hiibel does not provide a means of arresting someone for failing or refusing to identify himself. The [United States Court of Appeals for the] Ninth Circuit has ruled that a suspect's failure to identify himself cannot, on its own, justify an arrest: "the use of Section 148 to arrest a person for refusing to identify herself during a lawful [] stop violates the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures." CPOLS, section 2.14a (citations omitted) (emphasis in original).

We add, moreover, that even if Hiibel’s holding applied in California, and it clearly does not, it provides no support for the PPL's conclusion that when you are detained by a police officer, you must provide identification. Hiibel makes clear that, where there is an obligation to answer questions, it is satisfied by stating your name, rather than providing your identification.
 

Hector Villagra is executive director at the ACLU of Southern California. Follow Hector on Twitter.

By Katherine Williams
Last week, two men who had been sentenced to death 30 years ago were proven innocent by DNA testing. Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were teenagers when they were wrongly accused of the brutal rape and murder of a child in North Carolina. One of the most shocking parts of the story is that prosecutors hid evidence that linked a convicted rapist to the murder, a man who went on to kill another child while McCollum and Brown were wrongly imprisoned.

The case is a stark reminder of the dual harms of wrongful conviction: when the innocent are imprisoned, the guilty go free.
Take action right now: urge Governor Brown to sign three bills to help the innocent people wrongly imprisoned here in California!
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 22 percent of the 1,427 wrongful convictions that have resulted in exoneration were due to false or misleading forensic evidence and 46 percent were due to official misconduct. Unaccounted for is the stark reality that wrongful convictions rarely result in exonerations.
While no single law can remedy this profound injustice, there are three bills before Gov. Jerry Brown right now that will make significant advances in California towards a system that accounts for mistakes and allows for an evolution: a day where no man or woman suffers from a preventable wrongful conviction.
These bills are:

• SB 980 (Lieu) will make post-conviction DNA testing more efficient, more effective, and more consistently applied across California.

• AB 885 (Ammiano) will permit a court to give a special instruction to the jury in cases where the prosecutor intentionally or knowingly fails to disclose evidence that the defendant may be innocent.

• SB 1058 (Leno) will assure that people who are wrongfully convicted because of expert testimony can have their convictions reversed when that expert later admits he or she was wrong, or is proven wrong by new research.

Supported by the ACLU of California, the two Innocence Projects in California, and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, all three bills were introduced to respond to the fact that haphazard and dishonest applications of evidence – even intentional withholding of evidence – victimizes the innocent and fails to bring true perpetrators to justice.
Strong bi-partisan leadership sent these bills to the governor. All three bills garnered vocal support from both parties, notably from Republican Senator Joel Anderson (R-Temecula) who, on the floor of the California Senate this August, said about SB 1058 that, “It is egregious to allow a guilty man to walk free, but it is even more egregious to put an innocent man in jail.”
A few days later he added: “Let’s not hide behind laws that incarcerate innocent folks,” as AB 885 came up for a vote.
Anderson spoke right to the fact that absent a change in the law, California could potentially incarcerate more innocent individuals and continue practices that make it practically impossible for those individuals to prove their innocence.
Join us in urging Gov. Brown to sign SB 1058, SB 980 and AB 885, to make wrongful convictions a relic of our criminal justice system!
Katherine Williams is legislative advocate at the ACLU of California's Sacramento Legislative Office.