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Churchill Downs / Reed Palmer Photography / AP The Ugly Truth About Horse Racing
An exposé by PETA, published in The New York Times, shows a side of the sport that the industry has tried hard to shield from public view.
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Wazimu0/Flickr Why Does Mississippi Want to Execute Michelle Byrom?
The state wants to execute a 56-year-old mentally ill woman on March 27th, even though no one now seems to believe that she murdered the husband who had battered and abused her for years.
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Mercy for Animals The Law That Makes It Illegal to Report on Animal Cruelty
What makes Idaho's agricultural industry deserve special protection from journalists and activists?
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Gary Clements Glenn Ford's First Days of Freedom After 30 Years on Death Row
Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Metal spoons. What's re-entry like for a man who last breathed free during Ronald Reagan's first term as president?
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James R. McClure/Caddo Parish Indigent Defender Office Freedom After 30 Years on Death Row
A case involving a black man convicted by an all-white jury in Louisiana decades ago may be reopened.
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AP Today Is the 50th Anniversary of the (Re-)Birth of the First Amendment
On March 9, 1964, a unanimous Supreme Court reversed a libel verdict against The New York Times in a case brought by Alabama officials who complained about a civil rights advertisement in the paper. The First Amendment, thankfully, hasn't been the same since.
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Alex Brandon/Associated Press What John Roberts Can Say About the Rule of Law and Debo Adegbile
The Senate's rejection of the nominee for a Justice Department post imperils the bond between attorney and client. The chief justice needs to speak to shore up that bond.
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Evan Vucci/Associated Press 2014: Senate Race Baiting Sinks a Nomination for Civil-Rights Chief
The failure of Debo Adegbile's nomination to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division sets a sad precedent for young lawyers.
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Ross D. Franklin/AP When Prosecutors Admit to Cheating
Federal attorneys in San Diego knew they had gotten an unfair conviction. And to their immense credit, they asked an appeals court to make things right.
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Trent Nelson/AP Should a Defense Lawyer Have to Decide How His Client Should Die?
Legal ethicists are alarmed by a recent federal appeals court ruling that requires attorneys to suggest alternatives to the lethal injection procedures they deem unconstitutional.
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Serge Melki/Flickr Supreme Court Case May Stop States That Still Execute Mentally Disabled
The justices banned execution of mentally disabled people in 2002. Now they are poised to tell death penalty states that they really meant it.
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Jonathan Ernst/Reuters What Does the Supreme Court Really Think About the Right to Counsel?
The chief justice pens a paean to criminal defense attorneys, never mentioning the national crisis the Court has helped perpetuate.
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Paul Sakuma/AP How a Colorado Judge Just Blocked the Victims' Right Movement
According to a new ruling, the parents of a murdered man are not allowed to tell jurors that they oppose the death penalty.
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National Museum of Crime and Punishment American Exceptionalism, Crime-and-Punishment Edition
It is part of human nature to punish, and often cruelly so, but a provocative new book persuasively explains why American punishments remain so relentlessly harsh even in the 21st Century.
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Colorado Department of Corrections/AP Colorado's Prison Director Spent 20 Hours in Solitary—but That's Not Enough
Rick Raemisch subjected himself to hours of isolation and wrote a stirring op-ed for the New York Times. But will he offer relief to the mentally ill inmates who have been suffering for years under the system's inhumane treatment?
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Morteza Nikoubazi/Reuters The Ghost of Herbert Smulls Haunts Missouri's Death Penalty Plans
It's been just three weeks since Missouri executed Herbert Smulls before his appeals were exhausted. And virtually nothing has gone right for the state in its efforts to implement the death penalty since.
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Darren Whiteside/Reuters Can a State Carry Out the Death Penalty in Secret?
The Georgia Supreme Court ponders whether death-row inmates can demand to know about the drugs being used to kill them—a question with profound national significance.
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Jason Reed/Reuters Another Chance for the Justices to Say No to Prosecutorial Misconduct
Virginia prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence and defied a federal judge in a death-penalty case. Will the Supreme Court let them get away with it?
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Federal Bureau of Prisons An Experiment in Atlanta May Transform Care of Mentally Ill Prisoners
Faced with allegations of systemic abuse and neglect, federal prison officials move—quietly and, so far, effectively—to improve the level of care and treatment those inmates receive.
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Reuters Why Some States Still Fight the Exoneration of the Innocent
Record numbers of wrongful convictions were overturned across the nation last year. But in some places, the trend seems to moving in the opposite direction.
