More from The Appeal:
A veteran D.C. police officer says the Metropolitan Police Department’s Gun Recovery Unit deploys illegitimate tactics in a war on guns that have fostered an adversarial relationship between the department and the communities they are supposed to serve.
Brandon Soderberg Apr 14, 2021
The Appeal examined 17 fatal shootings by the Vallejo police over the last decade and found at least six cases where the person shot may have been unarmed.
Brian Krans Mar 24, 2021
Former Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson’s fiery dissents on mass incarceration and sentencing in America’s most carceral state garnered international attention. But the rise of the first Black woman on the court was characterized by one battle after another with the Deep South’s white power structure.
Elon Green Mar 02, 2021
Outside of the traditional foster care system exists a shadow system of potentially hundreds of thousands of children removed by CPS to their relatives or family friends—without a court case, monetary support, or due process.
Roxanna Asgarian Dec 21, 2020
Many of the 230,000 women and girls in U.S. jails and prisons were abuse survivors before they entered the system. Research for The Appeal shows that at least 30 percent of those serving time on murder or manslaughter charges were protecting themselves or a loved one from physical or sexual violence.
Justine van der Leun Dec 17, 2020
More than 20 women accused Harry Morel, a longtime district attorney in Louisiana, of sexual misconduct. But Morel pleaded guilty to just a single obstruction of justice count while Mike Zummer, the FBI agent who investigated him, was fired. Now, Zummer is speaking about what he says is a grave injustice—at the hands of the Justice Department.
Jerry Iannelli Dec 15, 2020
When election and racial justice protests rocked the city, Lori Lightfoot used raised bridges and shutdown public transportation as crowd control measures, which harmed the city’s workers.
Maya Dukmasova Nov 13, 2020
The DA’s office has been home to bribery, corruption, and more since it was formed 170 years ago. What could a progressive prosecutor do to change that?
Civil liberties experts say the Strategic Response Group’s recent crackdown on ICE protests is the most brutal suppression of protests in decades—and many of its officers are the subject of significant misconduct allegations, including a supervisor with 32 complaints.
Ali Winston Oct 15, 2020
An investigation by The Appeal and Spotlight PA found that troopers in three counties have taken big money from drivers, many of whom were never charged.
Though domestic violence is often cited as a reason to maintain the carceral status quo, advocates say there are more humane—and effective—alternatives.
Jessica Pishko Jul 28, 2020
In the 1990s, Davis was a policing superstar, hailed as the best crime solver the Crescent City had ever seen. But a dispute over a paid detail at a festival turned into a major federal case against her, brought by a prosecutor involved whose conduct in other cases was called ‘grotesque.’
Ethan Brown Jul 01, 2020
Prosecutors wanted to make an example of Justin Dixon, who has been in an Arizona prison for 14 years, with 37 ahead of him. Now, as COVID-19 spreads in the facility where he’s being held, his family is desperate for him to be released.
Meg O'Connor Jun 25, 2020
The ‘drug house’ ordinances that force landlords to kick out tenants are mostly compounding the overdose crisis, critics say.
Leora Smith Jun 09, 2020
Despite early warnings, jails and prisons have seen a rapid spread of the virus—a humanitarian disaster that puts all of our communities, and lives, at risk. Every day, The Appeal examines the scale of the crisis, numbers of infected and dead, around the nation.
Kelly Davis Jun 04, 2020
No Evil Foods created products like El Zapatista and Comrade Cluck, but workers say its conduct doesn’t live up to its leftist branding.
Paul Blest May 19, 2020
On the anniversary of the Baltimore Uprising protests, new evidence in Gray’s death uncovers suppressed witness accounts of police brutality.
Justine Barron Apr 23, 2020
Dennis Sica struggled with substance use disorder and sold small amounts of heroin that prosecutors connected to overdose deaths. Because of an 1980s-era federal law, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Jon Campbell Mar 05, 2020
Probation officers in the state’s 13th Judicial Circuit file thousands of violations, and they’re heard by a judge known for his harsh, punitive style.
Samantha Schuyler Feb 26, 2020
Across the country, the death penalty is in steep decline. But in September, the state’s attorney general sought execution dates for nine men, and its Supreme Court set dates for two of them.
Steven Hale Feb 18, 2020
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister’s stings, conducted under the guise of targeting human trafficking, netted the largest number of arrests there since 2008. Sex workers say the operations put them at risk.
Molly Minta Jan 28, 2020
The death of 27-year-old India Cummings in 2016 garnered national media attention and a renewed push by local activists over conditions of confinement in the New York county’s jails. But the deaths haven’t stopped.
Raina Lipsitz Jan 16, 2020
The state said Michelle Heale shook the baby to death, but some experts say her conviction was based on debunked science.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Jan 15, 2020
The poor healthcare that Bobbie Jean Johnson received during her more than 40 years in prison contributed to her death, family members say.
Roxanna Asgarian Nov 25, 2019
Even after a major class action suit required Illinois to revamp its prison healthcare system, doctors whose alleged neglect resulted in major injury or death still remain on the prison system payroll.
Taylor Elizabeth Eldridge Nov 08, 2019
Three Bronx friends recount their 2012 arrests in the NYPD’s ‘Operation Crew Cut,’ along with their experiences with the court system and incarceration, and reflect on their lives seven years later.
Olivia Heffernan Jul 30, 2019
The accusations span decades and involve two separate Biddeford cops and at least seven alleged victims.
Roxanna Asgarian Jul 01, 2019
Over a three-year period, Alachua County prosecutors closed 236 sexual battery cases: 115 were dropped, 92 were offered plea deals, and seven went to trial.
Molly Minta Jun 24, 2019
Carlton Roman has been stuck in prison for nearly 30 years for a murder he has long denied. Now, with a crowded primary for Queens district attorney weeks away, he could finally get a chance to go free.
Aaron Morrison Jun 05, 2019
At least two people have killed themselves in jail after waiting for more than a week to be appointed a lawyer.
Mario Koran May 20, 2019
Tina Rodriguez was sent to prison in Texas for allegedly starving her son to death. But recent discoveries about the medical examiner who conducted the baby’s autopsy raise questions about her case.
Debbie Nathan Apr 22, 2019
Activists suspect the investigation was tainted by the close relationship between the police and prosecutors.
Aaron Morrison Mar 22, 2019
A new coalition of people in the sex trades wants New York to become the first state to fully decriminalize their work.
Melissa Gira Grant Feb 25, 2019
The technology also allows authorities to mine call databases and cross-reference the voices of individuals prisoners have spoken with.
An Oklahoma woman is serving 18 months in prison after being accused of failing to protect her daughter from the girl’s dad.
Roxanna Asgarian Dec 18, 2018
The program was supposed to target ‘leading’ violent offenders. Today it’s sweeping up low-level, and disproportionately Black, defendants.
George Joseph Nov 21, 2018
Recent Supreme Court rulings have led to a review of life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed at age 17 and younger, but attorneys for Avis Lee say there’s no reason to stop there.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Nov 12, 2018
A lawsuit brought by a Compton resident detailing an alleged beating by deputies is just one of nearly three dozen federal civil rights lawsuits alleging brutality and racial bias at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Louisiana is keeping people behind bars long after their sentences have expired, attorneys say.
Victoria Law Sep 26, 2018
A man sentenced to die in prison is inciting debate over ‘felony murder’ rules in Colorado.
Katie Rose Quandt Sep 18, 2018
A single training document uncovered in a prosecutor’s files could save Russell William Tucker’s life.
Jacob Biba Sep 04, 2018
A New York City man has been shuffled between Rikers Island and mental hospitals for 32 years.
From local charities, to the editorial pages, to city politicians, New Orleans strip clubs were blamed for human trafficking, leading to abusive police raids – harming the dancers they claimed they were protecting, and pushing the dancers to fight back.
Melissa Gira Grant May 30, 2018
Bryce Covert Apr 02, 2018
But the witness may have flipped again, leaving the future of the conviction up in the air.
In Justice Today invited leading thinkers in criminal justice reform to answer the question, “2018 is the year….” This is what they said.
In Justice Today Jan 02, 2018