On behalf of MACDL, Attorney Wood co-authored an amicus brief challenging racist pretextual stops in Commonwealth v. Garner. Joining the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Racial Justice, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, and the New England Innocence Project, the brief argues that the routinely degrading practice of pretextual stops must be abolished. This case, dealing with a person who was repeatedly stopped by the same police officer for minor offenses, shows how pretextual stops and justifications for the inevitable searches that follow depend on racist assumptions of dangerousness, subjective police conclusions, and inferential leaps sold to courts as police “training and experience.” That kind of junk evidence in the service of an oppressive, racist practice must be banned from our courts.