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Wikimedia Commons The Private Probation Problem Is Worse Than Anyone Thought
A new Human Rights Watch report reveals the extent of the damage done by private probation companies and highlights the ways in which public officials have enabled the practice.
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Reuters Missouri Executed This Man While His Appeal Was Pending in Court
Herbert Smulls was pronounced dead four minutes before the justices in Washington denied his final stay. Did Missouri officials breach their ethical duties by permitting this to happen?
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Reuters When Victims Speak Up in Court—in Defense of the Criminals
A death penalty case in Colorado has generated an unusual fight between a district attorney and two parents who oppose capital punishment against the man who murdered their son.
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David Goldman/AP Images The Public School Where Prayer Is Everywhere
A Buddhist family has filed a lawsuit against Louisiana's Sabine Parish School Board for violating the First Amendment.
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Pete Seeger and the American Soul
The folk singer, who has died at 94, had one defining feature: selflessness.
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The Secrecy Behind the Drugs Used to Carry Out the Death Penalty
Inmates killed by lethal injection used to get a dose of sodium thiopental. But that drug is no longer available, and, in a blow to transparency, prison officials in Missouri and elsewhere won't say how it has been replaced.
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AP South Carolina Is Still Defending Its Neglectful Prisons
The state is asking a judge to reconsider his epic ruling highlighting the abuse and neglect of mentally ill prisoners, claiming that the courts should stay out of the grim business of corrections.
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Wikimedia Commons Georgia's Debtors' Prisons Belong in a Dickens Novel
In 2000, the state had the bright idea to privatize its probation services. The result has been unjust, unconstitutional, and entirely predictable.
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The Uncertain Future of Voter-ID Laws
In striking down Pennsylvania's ID requirement at the polls, Judge Bernard L. McGinley has given supporters of such laws in states across the country a reason to worry.
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Reuters The Feds Don't Care About Khalid Sheik Mohammed's 'Manifesto'?
The government has spent the past 12 years sharply restricting communications from terror suspects. So how did a 36-page document by the self-professed mastermind of 9/11 go public?
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Reuters A California Jury's Baffling Verdict
The video shows two former police officers beating a mentally ill man into a coma. So why were they acquitted?
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Reuters The Civil Rights of Children, Georgia Edition
The Obama Administration last week warned against over-discipline in the nation's schools. An important new lawsuit in Georgia offers a glimpse of how high that cost can be for young offenders.
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AP The Black Students Who Wouldn't Leave the Lunch Counter
On civil rights, the Sixties actually started on February 1, 1960. And one of the four men who started it was Franklin McCain, who died Thursday at the age of 73.
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SCDC When Good People Do Nothing: The Appalling Story of South Carolina's Prisons
A judge's order in an inmate abuse case highlights the role played, or not played, by the state's political and legal infrastructure.
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Reuters 'The Most Expensive Sheriff in America' Is Getting More Expensive
Another multi-million-dollar bill comes due this year for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's reckless antics in Maricopa County, Arizona. And that's why more taxpayers may finally be asking: Who keeps voting for this guy, anyway?
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Reuters Poverty in a Cup: Why a Federal Judge Rejected a Florida Drug-Test Requirement
The biggest recent court decision you may have missed involved a proposed state law that would have put up a new hurdle for welfare recipients.
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The Year Ahead in Court Battles
The big cases of 2014 may resolve some of the legal cliffhangers of 2013.
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'If I Need ID to Buy Cough Syrup, Why Shouldn't I Need ID to Vote?'
How to respond to an ubiquitous, and misleading, question about voting rights
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Is the NSA's Spying Constitutional? It Depends Which Judge You Ask
Two recent rulings draw diametrically opposed conclusions about the same set of facts.
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AP George Zimmerman: Portrait of an Artist as a Killer
His profitable foray into art sums up so much of what's wrong with the nation's criminal justice system.
