Prosecutor

Since 2015, police in Adams County have taken dozens of reports of rape, yet charges were filed in just two cases.

This fall, however, an initiative goes to voters that would change the law on deadly force by the police, which has led to no officer there being convicted of wrongfully killing someone in the line of duty in more than 30 years.

Jeffery Parker was shot to death by a police officer in his Huntsville home. A grand jury handed up an indictment for murder, but the mayor and City Council appear to be throwing their support behind the officer.

Jacqueline Smalls was sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing a boyfriend whose ‘hands were his weapons.’ She now joins the ranks of criminalized survivors seeking clemency from Governor Cuomo.

The state’s “theft of leased property” statute allows prosecutors to seek felony charges for Pennsylvanians who miss payments on rental items.

Prosecutors can subject those convicted of sexual offenses—and sometimes, those with no conviction at all—to an indefinite period of civil punishment at the end of their criminal sentence.

Public health advocates are concerned that ‘Kristen’s Law,’ meant to punish drug dealers, will criminalize users and fail to stem the opioid crisis.

Grassroots group VOCAL-NY is teaching people with substance use disorder how to avoid getting ensnared in the criminal justice system.

Prosecutors on the “J20” case faced grave allegations of misconduct after withholding exculpatory evidence contained in videos from defense attorneys. But this is far from the first time that this office has found itself in hot water.

Catina Curley suffered physical abuse at the hands of her husband for more than a decade. When she turned a revolver on him, she was charged with murder and sentenced to life. Now, thanks to a court ruling, she has a chance at freedom.

York County resident Aaron Hinds overdosed on heroin with a friend. The friend died, and Hinds now faces a ‘drug delivery resulting in death’ charge and a 40-year prison sentence.

In jurisdictions across the country, people incarcerated before they’ve ever been convicted of a crime are charged a daily fee just for sitting in jail—and several courts have ruled that the practice is legal.

In overdose-wracked Franklin County, Pennsylvania, a small-time dealer is denied bail, while the number of drug induced homicide cases has skyrocketed.

As voters begin to realize that prosecutors in the world’s most incarcerated nation may not be the best people to run the government, the era of the prosecutor politician could be on its way out.  

Kim Kardashian’s successful campaign to free a 63-year-old grandmother serving a life sentence in a drug case is a reminder that we need to go big on clemency. A 52-year-old grandfather named Euka Wadlington, also doing life in a drug case, would be a great place to start.

As worthy cases for clemency from Cyntoia Brown to Calvin Bryant mount in Tennessee, advocates decry the fact that a Tennessee governor hasn’t commuted a prison sentence since 2011.

The DOJ just gave $1 million to the New Orleans DA for rape kit testing, but advocates question whether real change can come to an office fighting allegations that it threatens, intimidates and jails rape and domestic violence victims.

Walliris Velez thought the worst was behind her after she was slashed in a subway car, but then came an arrest and an attempted murder charge by the Bronx DA.

On December 28, 2017, 28-year-old Andrew Finch of Wichita, Kansas, opened his front door to a horde of shouting police officers. Ten seconds later, he was fatally shot in the head — yet the officer who pulled the trigger isn’t the one being charged with his death. The events of that tragic late December day were set […]

A widely shared, recent piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer tells the story of a woman’s grief six months after her husband was murdered. Gerry Grandzol was shot at close range by two young Black men while he was unpacking groceries from his SUV with his two young daughters. The family, which is white, lived in a typically […]

What I am about to tell you is deeply problematic. And it makes sense that of all states, it’s happening in Louisiana — which, with its sky-high incarceration rate, is the “world’s prison capital.” According to local reports, a staggering “one in 86 adult Louisianians is doing time, nearly double the national average. Among black men from New Orleans, […]

Law enforcement’s power to seize property suspected of being used in criminal activity regardless of whether the owner has been convicted of a crime has generated mounting public scrutiny of the practice, known as civil asset forfeiture. Both Nebraska and New Mexico have abolished civil asset forfeiture in recent years, and the Department of Justice under the […]

State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit, which is comprised of Hillsborough County, surprised many last year when he narrowly defeated incumbent State Attorney Mark Ober, who had been the chief elected prosecutor in Florida’s fourth largest county for 16 years. A former federal prosecutor, Warren ran as a supporter of criminal justice reform, vowing to lock […]

It has been over a week since California law enforcement announced what many have waited to hear for more than 40 years — that they identified and captured the man they believe to be the Golden State Killer, thought to be responsible for at least 12 murders and nearly 50 rapes between northern and southern California from […]

When Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark announced last September that gun possession and assault charges would be dropped against teenager Pedro Hernandez, who had spent 12 months on Rikers Island, she pledged her office would investigate what went wrong, and that the investigation would “go wherever the evidence leads.” A lot had gone wrong in the case […]

It was late afternoon on Dec. 26, 2016 — the day after Christmas, a day when most stores are busy processing the returns for unwanted gifts — when Curtis Lawson entered a Walmart in Knoxville, Tennessee. He had a receipt for $39.57 in purchases made earlier that month. He needed cash. He walked through the store, picking up the […]

In 2010 Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and presidency. Barack Obama was just heading into his second year in office. Social media was basically brand new. Adele had just won the Grammy for Best New Artist the year before. And millions of people in the United States had a naive hopefulness about the future of […]

When veteran San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis announced her resignation during the spring of 2017 to run for a spot on the county’s Board of Supervisors, she was clear about who she wanted to finish her term and ultimately serve as San Diego’s next DA: her Chief Deputy Summer Stephan. Indeed, another former deputy […]

We loathe mass incarceration. We loathe police brutality. But most of us have absolutely no idea how to address the critical flaws in our justice system. What this brilliant short film called “Prosecutorial Accountability” breaks down is the fact that no single individual has more power and more influence in the criminal justice system than […]

Just a few months ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo seemed sure that criminal justice reform was imminent. During his annual State of the State address in January, he called for a legislative package that would limit civil asset forfeiture, reform discovery, reduce trial delays, and most notably, significantly reduce the use of cash bail. […]

In 1963, the Supreme Court handed down Gideon v. Wainwright, which held that the government had to provide a lawyer to any poor defendant facing prison time. While often trumpeted as one of the Court’s greatest modern decisions, it has also been embroiled in controversy from the beginning. Like all Supreme Court opinions that impose new […]

At the beginning of the year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo laid out a plan that would eliminate cash bail for those charged with misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Last week, however, his plan stalled out during budget negotiations with state legislative leaders. For bail reform advocates, including public defenders and advocates for incarcerated people, the plan’s failure serves as […]

Brian Solano spent over two years on Rikers Island before a potentially exonerating NYPD video interview was disclosed to his defense attorney. But that video is now being excluded from his June trial.

In February 2017, Mweze Kyungu was pulled over by Houston police officers in Harris County, Texas for a defective brake light and then arrested. “You kill people like me,” Kyungu told the arresting officers, “all you do is kill black people.” Thus began a nearly year-long ordeal for Kyungu in Harris County’s criminal justice system, […]

When Steven Shockey was arrested at a San Diego port of entry in December 2011, he knew his luck had run out. The 52-year-old was trying to re-enter the United States after jumping bail and fleeing to Mexico because of an arrest in Williamson County, Texas, for the aggravated assault of his ex-wife. Because of […]

In August 2017, 29-year-old Richard Gaworecki of Union, New York trembled as a Johnson City Village Court judge read charges that included selling heroin that led to the death of Nicholas McKiernan, 26, that July. About one month later, Broome County District Attorney Steve Cornwell, assisted by his first ever “overdose investigator,” upgraded Gaworecki’s charges […]

In May 1988 on the south side of Chicago, a video store caught fire in the middle of the night. The fire spread quickly, eventually burning down seven other nearby businesses and killing two people. The police determined it was arson, and quickly identified the owner of the video store as the mastermind of a four-person plot. […]

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro may be eyeing a run at the governor’s office in 2022, yet his law-and-order voting record on the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons suggests that he is playing to Democratic primary voters of a bygone tough-on-crime era.

Voters in Florida may soon get to decide whether to give victims of crime a bigger say in the criminal justice system.

On the evening of January 29, 2018, Caryn Santa knew she only had a few hours to save her son, Robert Collazo. Collazo, 21, had been held on Rikers Island for almost three years, charged with the murder of Jose Velasquez.