Prosecutors

Criminalized Abortions Loom Over Phoenix’s Biggest Prosecutor Election

Maricopa County elects a new top prosecutor this year. In the meantime, state law could let the county’s conservative county attorney prosecute abortions if Roe falls.

Georgia’s Unique Death Penalty Law Is Killing the Mentally Disabled

Georgia is the strictest state in America when it comes to proving intellectual disability in capital cases. This month, the Supreme Court could save the life of a man who says he is mentally disabled—or let the state kill him.

Ex-Prison Boss Drunkenly Pulls Gun On Cops, Shows Two Tiers Of Justice

A New Jersey Woman Claimed Innocence In ‘Shaken Baby’ Death. Now Her Conviction May Get Another Look.

Spurred by an Appeal investigation into Michelle Heale’s controversial 2015 case, a law professor is asking New Jersey’s Conviction Review Unit to “correct an injustice” and set Heale free.

After Years Locked up for Stealing Cold Medicine, Reginald Randolph Is Released

But if he loses his appeal and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declines to grant him clemency, he will likely be sent back to prison.

Hibah Ansari, Anna Simonton

How St. Paul Became The Twin Cities’ Leader On Justice Reform

Although Minneapolis has garnered media attention since the George Floyd uprising, St. Paul may be the Twin City making the most strides toward transformative justice. But Sheriff Bob Fletcher’s actions may undo positive steps in Ramsey County.

Lots to be thankful for. Plus a reality check.

Nick Wing

Big Retail Chains Are Manufacturing a Shoplifting ‘Crisis’

A Homeless Man Has Spent 800 Days At Rikers After Stealing Cold Medicine. Now His Prison Sentence May Be Beginning.

Blind in one eye and at risk of losing vision in the other, 58-year-old Reginald Randolph is now on the verge of being sent to state prison to serve out a maximum of four years.

‘She Just Said She Wanted To Be Believed’

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.

George Gascón, Marilyn Mosby

Resentencing Units Can Rectify, Rehabilitate, and Restore

A concerted effort to review, resentence, and release is the right thing to do for those who have been unjustly sentenced. It is also the right thing to do for our community.

Law Enforcement Reformers Sweep Major Races In Los Angeles County

Candidates promising to remake Southern California’s legal system, won major races for DA, county supervisor, and City Council, among others while overcoming significant spending by pro-law enforcement groups.

Michigan Lifers Are Organizing Their Families to Vote

The Adolescent Redemption Project, a new group organized by Michigan prisoners sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, is advocating for progressive prosecutors.

Marcia Brown

Four Austin Women Reported Their Sexual Assaults. But Police And Prosecutors Failed To Hold The Perpetrators Accountable.

While a debate over defunding the police rages in Austin, a new lawsuit reminds its residents that assault cases in the city are routinely ignored.

Joseph Darius Jaafari, Joshua Vaughn

Missouri Attorney General’s Office Pushes To Keep Innocent People In Prison

Its decades-long commitment to upholding convictions—even those marred by police or prosecutorial misconduct—has left Missourians languishing in prison for years.

Emily Hoerner

Highway Stop-And-Frisk: How Pennsylvania State Troopers Conduct Illegal Traffic Searches

A review of five years of cases that arose from traffic stops in the south-central region of the state shows that police used underhand tactics to justify holding and searching drivers illegally.

In Arizona, a County Attorney Candidate’s Past Seems To Contradict Her Pro-Reform Stance

Julie Gunnigle, who is running in Maricopa County, says she supports alternatives to incarceration. But a decade ago in Illinois, she prosecuted a woman for recording phone calls and helped put her in jail for 18 months.

Virtual Hearings Have Created A ‘Caste System’ In America’s Courts

Precautions meant to minimize the spread of COVID-19—like remote hearings by video conferencing—have drastically changed the way people experience the judicial process, leaving some at a distinct disadvantage.

Elizabeth Brico

Mississippi Teen Who Has Languished In Jail For 17 Months Without An Indictment Is Just ‘One Of Thousands’

Sixteen-year-old William Haymon has spent more than 500 days in an adult jail in rural Lexington, Mississippi. There are no state rules governing how long a person can be incarcerated without being formally charged with a crime.

Premal Dharia, Jullian Harris-Calvin

The Defund Movement Aims to Change the Policing and Prosecution of Domestic Violence

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

Racial Disparity Among Prosecutors and Trial Judges Translates to Unequal Justice, Activists Say

Studies show that 95 percent of the nation’s prosecutors are white and that the lack of Black and brown representation in courts negatively affect outcomes for people of color.

Dawn R. Wolfe

Jacklean Davis Was The First Black Woman To Serve As a Homicide Detective in New Orleans. Did A Now Disbarred Prosecutor Bring About Her Fall?

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

The Suffolk County DA’s Attack On Public Defenders Was Misguided

During a Boston radio show where Rachael Rollins accused defenders of harming Black and Brown communities, the DA demonstrated that she misunderstands the role that prosecutors play in the criminal legal system: caging those very people.

Tennessee Set to Execute Intellectually Disabled Black Man In Killing of White Woman Even Though Innocence Questions Persist

Attorneys say the prosecution’s theory of the murder case was ‘concocted out of whole cloth’ and based on ‘outdated racial stereotyping.’

Steven Hale

Massachusetts Prosecutors Should Use Their Power To Dismiss Cases Now

District attorneys in the state could decarcerate quickly by dropping unnecessary cases.

Will Isenberg

The Last Trial In California

As the novel coronavirus spread in the state, a Solano County judge denied numerous motions to continue a troubled double kidnapping and rape case marred by allegations that a Vallejo police detective withheld exculpatory evidence.

Brian Krans

Fired Louisiana Prosecutor Had ‘Whites Only’ Sign in Property He Owned

Jason Brown, who has worked in several parish DA's offices, was accused of using illegal tactics to win at least one case before arriving in Calcasieu Parish, where he was terminated over alleged dishonesty in a continuance motion. Now, The Appeal has learned that he had segregation-era signs in an art studio he owned.

Jon Campbell

Justice in America Episode 25: Conversation with Sherrilyn Ifill

Josie Duffy Rice and guest co-host Darnell Moore talk with Sherrilyn Ifill about policing, civil rights, the criminal justice system, and more.

Rikers Island Physician Voices Coronavirus Fears As Cuomo Meets With Officials Looking To Scuttle Bail Reforms

Late Wednesday, the chief physician at the Rikers jail complex said on Twitter that judges and prosecutors must not leave New York City's jailed population ‘in harm’s way.’

Darwin BondGraham, Brian Krans

‘What Will It Take For You To Call This A Homicide?’

In California, a Vallejo detective and a Solano County prosecutor concealed exculpatory evidence from a man facing murder charges. They went on to face accusations of misconduct in other high-profile cases.

Why Has Jackie Lacey’s Conviction Review Unit Exonerated So Few People?

Critics say there may be systemic problems with how the unit is run within the Los Angeles County DA’s office.

Jessica Pishko

Alabama Prepares To Execute A Man Whose Case Is Haunted By Claims Of Police Misconduct

Nathaniel Woods, who was convicted in connection with the deaths of three Birmingham police officers in 2004, is ‘100 percent innocent,’ the man who shot the officers told The Appeal.

Criminal Justice Group Drops Support For Pretrial Risk Assessment Tools As Ohio Justices Seek To Block Their Use

Reform advocates say the risk assessments are racially biased and are not effective at their key tasks: predicting the likelihood someone will return to court.

Dawn R. Wolfe

As Bail Reform Takes Hold Across New York State, a Rural County Wrestles With The Future Of Its Aging Jail

The debate around bail reform focused predominantly on New York City's Rikers Island, but the bigger impact may be upstate, where almost two-thirds of the state’s jail capacity is located.

Ted Alcorn

Joe Kennedy III Says He Is Running A Progressive Senate Campaign. But He Worked For One Of The Most Regressive D.A.s In Massachusetts

In his run for president, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been forced to address his consulting past. Kennedy should do the same about his work.

Will Isenberg

Family Separation And ‘A Longer View Of Public Safety’: A Conversation With San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin

Arkansas Executed Ledell Lee. Posthumous Testing Will Most Likely Prove He Was Innocent, Lawsuit Says

Lee’s family wants officials in Jacksonville, Arkansas, to turn over evidence that was used to convict and sentence him to death. The family says that evidence could posthumously exonerate him.

Illinois pardons are a reminder of the scale of marijuana arrests, past and present

Manhattan D.A. Suggests He Nudged The Governor To Fix A Loophole In New York Rape Law. It’s A Bit More Complicated.

Cyrus Vance says he sent Governor Cuomo a letter about the issue in April 2018; Cuomo's office says it never got it. In the intervening months, critics say Vance's messaging on the issue discouraged survivors of rape from coming forward.

How to Rethink Drug Dealing and Punishment

Criminalizing those who sell drugs by enacting more punitive laws may lead to more dangerous drug use and will disproportionately affect communities of color, a new report suggests.

Zachary A. Siegel

Freeing People As A Response To Prison Rape

After The Exoneration Of Three In Baltimore, Man Whose Wrongful Conviction Was Driven By Same Detective Seeks Justice

Convicted in 1982 in a murder case in which exculpatory evidence was not shared with his attorneys, Wendell Griffin now calls on State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby to clear his name.

Harris County D.A. Candidate Audia Jones Says She Won’t Prosecute Sex Work

The incumbent in the race, Jones’s former boss Kim Ogg, will not support a blanket refusal to prosecute sex workers, her office says.

Kira Lerner

Sexual Assault Survivors Who Want Restorative Justice Have Limited Options

Alternative approaches to rehabilitation and healing still face resistance, even though the criminal legal system’s reliance on punishment has done little to move the needle on addressing sexual violence.

Tyler Kingkade

Harris County D.A. Kim Ogg Didn’t Deliver On Her Promise Of Reform. Now Another One Of Her Former Prosecutors Is Running Against Her.

Carvana Cloud, until recently the chief of the Special Victims Bureau, is entering the race to unseat her former boss.

Roxanna Asgarian

Kamala Harris’s Criminal Justice Record Killed Her Presidential Run

Harris’s record as a prosecutor was representative of a politics of the past. The nation has moved on.

Lara Bazelon

In a Louisiana Parish, Hundreds of Cases May Be Tainted By Sheriff’s Office Misconduct

During the tenure of Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal, deputies assaulted and harassed men inside the parish jail. Several deputies were convicted in federal court, and now cases brought by the office are under renewed scrutiny.

Louisiana Prosecutors Push To Retain Nonunanimous Jury Verdicts

In 2018, the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment that requires unanimous jury verdicts in felony cases for crimes committed on or after Jan. 1, 2019. Now, the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of the nonunanimity rule—with prosecutors arguing that the U.S. Constitution does not require unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley Unveils Sweeping Plan To Reshape American Criminal Legal System

Under the proposal, localities would be incentivized to significantly decrease prison populations.

Kira Lerner

Public Defender Chesa Boudin Wins San Francisco D.A. Race In Major Victory For Progressive Prosecutor Movement

Son of incarcerated parents, backed by Black Lives Matter co-founders, Boudin will be the next DA of San Francisco.

Deadlocked San Francisco District Attorney Race Shows Strength of Progressive Prosecutor Movement

Chesa Boudin is just 240 votes behind Suzy Loftus, even after local law enforcement spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat him.

Who Gets To Proclaim The Progressive Prosecutor Mantle?

Interim San Francisco D.A. Suzy Loftus claims to be a "progressive," but her long record as a prosecutor reveals an all-too-familiar path chosen by establishment-types who have little interest in disrupting the status quo.

Patrisse Cullors

The Appeal Podcast: When Police Officers Double as Prosecutors

With Appeal contributors Julia Rock and Harry August

Adam H. Johnson

New Orleans Public Defenders Punished For Locating Key Witness

The attorneys said they did nothing wrong by finding a victim in a rape case who had disappeared, but a judge accused them of making her unavailable.

A California Sheriff And Prosecutor Want To Jail Homeless People. Their Plan Is Unlawful.

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.

Kate Chatfield

DNA Testing Could Save This Texas Man’s Life. But Prosecutors Are Opposing It.

Rodney Reed, set to be executed on Nov. 20, is innocent of a rape and murder, his lawyers say, and untested evidence will prove it. But prosecutors have pushed back, arguing the evidence is contaminated.

This Louisiana Gulf War Veteran Is Serving Life For Selling $30 Worth Of Marijuana

Derek Harris awaits arguments in the state Supreme Court about the sentencing, which one judge called ‘unconscionable.’

Why Juries Need Expert Help Assessing Jailhouse Informants

Informants are highly motivated to lie. But jurors don’t always have the information or skills to discern the truth.

Alexandra Natapoff

A Trap Of Low-Level Drug Arrests And Court Debt In Pittsburgh

In 2017, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala prosecuted more than 1,700 low-level drug possession cases. More than $2 million in court-imposed debt was levied on people who were charged in these cases.

George Joseph, Ali Winston

When Prosecutors Bury Police Lies

Court records and interviews with former prosecutors show that internal assessments of police dishonesty are rarely memorialized, potentially violating the rights of people charged in criminal cases and sometimes keeping the records of bad cops clean.

Louisiana Prosecutors Use The ‘Habitual Offender’ Statute To Jail People For Life. Attorneys For Lifers Are Fighting Back.

Henri Lyles is challenging his life sentence under a statute that penalizes people for prior convictions. A favorable decision by the state Supreme Court would mean that he and a dozen people sentenced to life could one day be freed.

Harris County D.A. Seeks Execution of Intellectually Disabled Man, Lawyer Says

Kim Ogg ran as a reform-minded district attorney candidate, but her office has sought two death warrants for Dexter Johnson, whose lawyer says cannot name everyday objects and has an IQ of 70.

An Indiana Woman’s Long Fight for Justice

In a rare move, a federal court vacated Anastazia Schmid’s murder conviction, saying she’d received ineffective assistance of counsel and had been mentally unfit to stand trial. But Schmid, who’d spent 18 years in prison, remained locked up for three months more.

Victoria Law

New York Law Removes ‘Unnecessary’ Step for Children Charged With Felonies

16-year-olds won’t have to reappear in adult criminal court if they’re arrested when youth court isn’t in session.

San Francisco Deserves Restorative Justice

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

Chesa Boudin

‘You Don’t Own Me’

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.

The Persistent History of Excluding Black Jurors in North Carolina

A statewide pattern of discrimination in jury selection has gone largely uncorrected, while lives remain in the balance, advocates say.

Sanders And Warren Just Released the Most Decarceral Criminal Justice Platforms Ever

The 2020 presidential candidates recently unveiled national criminal justice agendas that reimagine public safety and punishment.

An Alabama Man On Death Row Says He Is Innocent. Will He Get a New Trial?

In 1998, prosecutors failed to tell the defense that a key witness in Toforest Johnson’s capital murder trial would receive thousands of dollars in reward money for her testimony, Johnson’s attorneys say. Now a Birmingham judge must decide whether their argument has merit.

The First Beneficiary of a Sentence Review Unit Walks Free

In Queens D.A. Race, Criminal Justice Reform Is The Real Winner

Establishment candidate Melinda Katz declared a narrow victory in the New York City borough’s district attorney primary, but progressive Tiffany Cabán pushed the race to the left on issues like marijuana and sex work.

When Cops Lie, Should Prosecutors Rely Upon Their Testimony At Trial?

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

Pennsylvania Democrats Had a Chance to Reject Law Limiting Philly D.A.’s Authority

Lawmakers say Republicans used deceptive tactics to pass the controversial bill. The legislative record tells a different story.

Spotlight: Cory Booker’s New Sentencing Reform Bill Is About Redemption

Media Frame: 5 Common Tactics Used to Discredit Reform D.A.s

The backlash is underway against a recent wave of prosecutors who champion criminal justice reform. Here are some methods of attack.

Adam H. Johnson

Law Enforcement Is Urged to ‘Think Like a Parent, Not a Prosecutor’

A new DA in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, is treating the overdose crisis as a criminal matter rather than a community health issue.

In Rare Motion, Atlanta’s D.A. Reversed Tough-On-Crime Stance

The office of Paul Howard supported early release for a woman convicted of armed robbery. But a judge and advocates questioned the move since thousands of others don’t get that consideration.

Spotlight: The Citizenship Question, the Supreme Court, and Who Deserves a Do-Over

Orange County’s ‘Standard Operating Procedure’

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.

Spotlight: Linda Fairstein is Canceled. Is ‘Law & Order’ Culture Next?

Spotlight: Prosecuting Lifesavers Exposes Deep Problems With Laws and Their Enforcement

Data Raises Questions About Harris County D.A.’s Push for More Lawyers

Records show Kim Ogg’s office appeared to misrepresent felony prosecutor caseloads in its $21 million budget request.

Keri Blakinger

Spotlight: ‘A New Wave of Prosecutorial Transparency’

An Alabama Woman Got Pregnant While In Jail. She Has No Memory of Having Sex.

Since 2017, LaToni Daniel has been incarcerated pretrial in a capital murder case. During that time, Daniel became pregnant, and she just delivered a baby boy. But as she brings in new life, she also faces the death penalty.

Scandal-Plagued Arizona Prosecutor Won’t Release Records, Lawsuit Alleges

The ACLU of Arizona is suing Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s office over its alleged lack of transparency.

Louisiana Bill Could Jail Defense Attorneys for Doing Their Jobs

‘The bill forces attorneys to choose between violating our ethical mandates or going to jail for following them.’

Kira Lerner

Alabama Woman Faces Life Sentence For Killing Man Who Allegedly Raped Her

In 2018, Brittany Smith killed a man who she said brutally raped her. Smith was charged with murder and she now faces life in prison as well as challenges getting adequate treatment at a state psychiatric hospital.