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Over-Reliance on Plea Deals is Damaging the Criminal Legal System

gorodenkoff / iStock by Getty Images Over-Reliance on Plea Deals is Damaging the Criminal Legal System by Nneka Ewulonu It’s easy for the average American to envision a courtroom trial. Shows like “Law and Order” inundate us with fictional depictions of trials—from the thud of a gavel to the inquisitive eyes of a jury—with an […]

The Dissenter

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.

Louisiana Prosecutors Try To Disqualify Black Judge Who Called Out Discrimination

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. Two Louisiana judges will begin hearing arguments tomorrow about whether a Black judge should be recused from more than 300 criminal cases after she criticized prosecutors for the disproportionate rate of […]

Deceptively Tragic: Qualified Immunity in Police Suits

It is all too commonplace to read of police-civilian encounters ending in what is reported as “tragedy.” In May of this year, 15-year-old Jordan Edwards was shot and killed when a Balch Springs, Texas police officer fired a rifle into the window of the car in which Edwards was a passenger, as the car tried […]