Brittany Smith, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of a man she says brutally raped her, argued in court this week that she acted in self-defense and should be immune from prosecution.
Top prosecutors in Baltimore, Chicago, and New York City are supporting Kim Gardner over the “entrenched interests” that they say seek to undermine reforms and police accountability.
The most productive solution would be to allow prisoners and formerly incarcerated people to vote, but until that happens, the least we can do is stop giving their voting power to the towns that profit from their imprisonment.
Moms 4 Housing made a home for their families in a vacant house in Oakland. Yesterday, police in tanks and riot gear evicted them.
A class-action lawsuit filed Saturday alleges that staff at a New Hampshire youth detention center subjected children to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse
“I sometimes wonder whether, in 100 years’ time, people will be as shocked by the length of sentences we are imposing as we are by some of the punishments of the 18th century,” the lord chief justice of England and Wales said in 2006.
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez of Texas told The Appeal about her vision for a complete overhaul of her state’s legal system.
The former deputy public defender promised that his office would immediately end cash bail and stop seeking three-strikes sentencing enhancements.
An enormous database of DNA samples could pave the way for increasingly exclusionary anti-immigrant policies
The rise of progressive prosecutors and the #MeToo movement has meant an increased focus on sexual assault. But justice cannot be measured in more prosecution or long sentences.
Melinda Katz, who was inaugurated Monday, is facing criticism over what some say is a broken campaign promise.
Josh Shapiro has warned that changing the state’s sex offense registry requirements threatens public safety. But experts say his fears are unfounded and the registry provides little to no public safety benefit.
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.
As a form of punishment, incarceration does not enhance public safety when it is not balanced against its tendency to make a person’s unfortunate situation worse.
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.
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. In 2014, Morgan Godvin’s best friend, Justin DeLong, experienced a fatal drug overdose. She had sold him the heroin he used. The next night, police officers raided […]
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 […]
District Attorney Rachael Rollins ran as a reformer who would work to increase transparency, but her office and the police department have been fighting the order.
After two terms at the helm of the nation’s largest prosecutor office, Lacey has drawn pointed criticism from community advocates who say she is standing in the way of criminal justice reform.
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.
After protests over the police shooting of Alton Sterling, DeRay Mckesson, the Black Lives Matter activist, was sued by a police officer.
The former San Francisco DA got the nod over incumbent Jackie Lacey, whose tenure advocates and activists have long criticized as lackluster.
More prosecutors are trying to root out wrongful convictions and restore trust in the legal system. They’re meeting opposition on all sides.
Prosecutor Jessica Cooper of Oakland County, Michigan, has aggressively pursued life without the possibility of parole for children, critics say. She recommended the sentence for Barbara Hernández, who at 16 was a ‘slave’ to an abusive boyfriend who drew her into a plan that ended in murder.
The Austin-based labor and immigrant rights attorney, who has pledged to end money bail and nonviolent drug prosecutions, is looking to unseat incumbent District Attorney Margaret Moore.
Carvana Cloud, until recently the chief of the Special Victims Bureau, is entering the race to unseat her former boss.
In Franklin County, experts say Ron O’Brien’s capital cases—which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars— amount to ‘just taxpayer money being lit on fire.’
District Attorney Margaret Moore continues to face accusations that her office mishandles the prosecution of sex crimes.
Harris’s record as a prosecutor was representative of a politics of the past. The nation has moved on.
Tribal jurisdiction over intimate partner and sexual violence was created in the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and advocates argue it is necessary for accountability and safety.
Critics say the list, which would apply to defendants in St. Louis County, Missouri, would infringe on people’s constitutional right to a speedy trial.
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. The criminal legal system is unequal. Technology was supposed to help. But most of the time, technological advances end up magnifying inequality instead. Consider an example as […]
On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee voted 24-10 in favor of the MORE Act, which would legalize marijuana at the federal level.
Some officers have recently boasted about breaking state law and collaborating with ICE, according to messages posted in the group and obtained by The Appeal.
Efforts are underway to address life without parole sentences and free people who have been in prison for decades.
The state’s parole board has recommended that Willie Mae Harris, convicted of killing her husband in 1985, be freed five times. Now 72 and completely blind, her fate lies with Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and MacArthur Justice Center are filing a class action lawsuit against Doug Evans on behalf of every potential Black juror in the district.
What you’ll read today Spotlight: Massachusetts’ highest court is urged to address a crisis in indigent defense Tuesday’s election boosts voting rights for people with past convictions Deadlocked San Francisco district attorney race shows strength of progressive prosecutor movement 39 years after a death sentence, Bobby Moore resentenced to life in prison in Texas In response to Freedom of Information request, Brooklyn […]
Rather than separating families, child ‘welfare’ agencies should help families get access to the care they need.