Category: Criminal Justice Reform

A Times investigation into an intelligence program that turned into a system of organized harassment. — Kathleen McGrory & Neil Bedi, Tampa Bay Times Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco took office in 2011 with a bold plan: to create a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happened. It sounded like a pitch for a […]

Mr. Flowers had faced the possibility of a seventh trial in the quadruple-murder case from Mississippi. — Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, The New York Times Six times, prosecutors took Curtis Flowers, a Black Mississippi resident, to trial on the same murder case before mostly-white juries. And six times, the trials ended with convictions that were later reversed […]

By Madison Alder (Reporter) & Jasmine Ye Han (Data Reporter), Bloomberg Law Donald Trump is on track to be the first president since Richard Nixon to go a full first term without selecting a Black nominee for a federal appeals court. Just one of Trump’s 53 confirmed appeals court judges is Hispanic and none are […]

More than 40 years after the death of the Rev. Jacob Blake, his grandson is at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement protests over him being shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. By Elvia Malagón, Chicago Sun Times In 1969, the Rev. Jacob S. Blake’s voice was so forceful that he didn’t need […]

“That’s who we’re marching for. For George. For Breonna. For Ahmaud. For Jacob. For Pamela Turner and Michael Brown. For Trayvon. And anyone else who lost their lives to evil.” By Trone Dowd, VICE Black Americans who have lost loved ones to police brutality banded together Friday to commemorate the 57th anniversary of Dr. Martin […]

“Before I am an athlete, I am a black woman. And as a black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand … rather than watching me play tennis,” Osaka wrote. By Elisha Fieldstadt, NBC News Two-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka said she wouldn’t play her semifinals match Thursday […]

Lanisha Bratcher, who voted while on probation in North Carolina without knowing she was ineligible, now faces two felony charges By Sam Levine, The Guardian A North Carolina prosecutor accused of using a racist law to prosecute an African American woman for voter fraud has now doubled the charges against her, the Guardian has learned. The case […]

By Joe Marusak & Michael Gordon, The Charlotte Observer Ronnie Long, a North Carolina man who has spent 44 years in prison for a rape he says he didn’t commit, will finally be freed, his lawyer said Wednesday. “The state said it will ask the district court to enter a writ vacating Ronnie’s conviction. In […]

A grand jury indictment accused the officers of pulling George Robinson, 62, from his car in Jackson, Miss., last year, slamming him headfirst into the pavement, and striking and kicking him in the head and the chest. By Michael Levenson & Marie Fazio, The New York Times Three Mississippi police officers have been charged with killing a […]

The HBO documentary “Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn” examines the 1989 murder of the titular 16-year-old in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and how far we have (or haven’t) come since. By Cassie Da Costa, Daily Beast Can the victims of hate crimes, or their families, ever see justice under our system?  Muta’Ali’s latest documentary Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn, which […]