Prosecutors

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

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.

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.

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

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.’

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

“We will prioritize family integrity and family unity at every stage of the process to the extent we can do so.”

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.

On the eve of the state’s marijuana legalization law going into effect, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois announced that he would issue 11,017 pardons to people with low-level marijuana convictions.

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.

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.

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 years ago, the executive director of Just Detention International, an organization whose mission is to end sexual assault in jails and prisons, wrote in an opinion piece for […]

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

With Appeal contributors Julia Rock and Harry August

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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