California

Ahead of the city’s district attorney election on Tuesday, the alleged baton beating last month of Dacari Spiers has renewed debate over police accountability.

Criminal case files from Oakland’s seminal Riders scandal were among documents shredded by the Alameda County Superior Court in 2015.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva was elected on the promise of reforming the scandal-plagued sheriff’s department. But eight deputies now accuse Sheriff Villanueva of allowing a violent group, the Banditos, to thrive in his department’s ranks.

The gang database in the state gives police increased authority to approach and harass people for virtually no reason at all.

Loftus led the San Francisco Police Commission through a bloody and turbulent era.

Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood and District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer intend to openly defy a 1975 state Supreme Court precedent that says law enforcement cannot intentionally discriminate against a person or group of people.

Miller’s victim impact statement was centered in a recent ’60 Minutes’ segment on the Brock Turner case. But such statements do not heal victims, and Miller’s unfavorable comparison of Turner’s sentence to drug offenders only reinforces carceral logic.

A narrow ruling on Brady lists ensures that protecting the police will continue to prevail over due process.

California is one of only six states that allow staff in juvenile facilities to carry pepper spray. But LA’s coming ban is still facing pushback.

Advocates and homeless people are suing Sacramento County over its treatment of homeless—and the city responded by filing a lawsuit against seven men for being a ‘public nuisance.‘

Our response to crime should focus on healing and accountability, not punishment and retribution.

Senate Bill 136 would repeal one of California’s most frequently used sentence enhancements, which gives judges the discretion to add a year to a felony sentence for every prior felony prison or jail term.

At 16, Larry Rosser was imprisoned for killing a woman who sexually and physically abused him. He served 22 years in the California prison system before being released in 2017, after parole commissioners became convinced he was a rehabilitated victim.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Yesterday seemed by all accounts a good day for police accountability. Scholars recently revealed that police violence is a leading cause of death for Black men, but […]

Assemblymember Jim Cooper is pushing to roll back changes that have successfully reduced incarceration.

A new internal audit shows that officers disproportionately strike, tussle with, and draw guns on Black people but then fail to disclose the incidents in their reports.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Last week, San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan reported that a 57-year-old man has become the first person freed under a new law that lets prosecutors review […]

A federal lawsuit claims that Palo Alto, California, police falsely detained, arrested, and beat a gay Latinx man—then boasted about their brutality.

Last year, lawmakers repealed the felony murder rule, which allowed prosecutors to charge defendants with murders they didn‘t commit. Prosecutors are trying to overturn the new law, but AG Xavier Becerra believes that the reform should stand.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Nearly 20 million people in the United States are estimated to have felony convictions. This makes up approximately 8 percent of all adults and a full third […]

In California, Texas and Florida, advocates sent letters to district attorneys, demanding that they refuse to work with officers with histories of misconduct.

A California Superior Court ruling gives officers accused of misconduct access to investigator notes and files while cases are in progress.

Since the state’s public safety realignment in 2011, sheriffs have used criminal legal reform as a scapegoat for their failure to maintain safe jails—and recent reporting has given county officials a free pass to make that excuse.

Advocates say Anthony Aceves’s death conforms with long-standing issues in the second-largest jail system in California.

Phone calls between prisoners in Orange County and their lawyers were recorded and accessed. How wide the eavesdropping was remains an open question.

The police union’s newly elected vice president led the investigation into the shooting that cleared Officer William Gourley of any wrongdoing.

Corrupt cops, lazy lawyers, and cowardly politicians: Kevin Cooper’s case exemplifies three and a half decades of systemic failures

A new report charges the Los Angeles DA with seeking the death penalty in unjust and harsh ways.

The California county has a thin blue line that appears to protect not just the police, but also the DA’s office, criminal justice advocates say.

Aylaliya Birru has served over four years in a California prison for assaulting her husband, who she said was physically abusive. A pardon from Governor Gavin Newsom is her last hope to stay in the U.S.

Newly released records show that task force members faced allegations of theft and questionable overtime, all under the watch of a commander later fired for lying as the misconduct was investigated.

California’s expansive registry law forces people to pay for crimes they didn’t personally commit.

The fatal shooting by Oakland police of an unconscious man as he woke is putting pressure on the California department to rethink its deployment of force.

Advocates are pushing to abolish the office in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Police union lawsuits delayed many local governments from complying with a new transparency law. In the meantime, some cities have destroyed files.

Senate Bill 1437 virtually eliminated the ‘felony-murder rule,’ but district attorneys aren’t ready to let it go.

State bar organizations have the power to discipline prosecutors, but they studiously ignore bad behavior.

With Appeal senior staff reporter Aaron Morrison

In 2009, Anaheim police shot and killed Theresa Smith’s son. A new California law promises police transparency, but her quest for answers faces a substantial cost.

Senate Bill 1421 requires law enforcement agencies to make public investigative records of officer-involved shootings and uses of force resulting in great bodily harm. But law enforcement unions argue that the law threatens the privacy of their members.