After the success of her novel Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen spent years trying to prove a man’s innocence. Now she’s “absolutely broke” and “seriously ill,” and her next book is “years past deadline.”
Texas juries send people to death row by making predictions about future violence. Racial bias has often played a troubling role. In the 1970s, one Supreme Court case paved the way.
Twenty-five years ago this month, “superpredator” was coined in The Weekly Standard. Media spread the term like wildfire, creating repercussions on policy and culture we are still reckoning with today.
A Florida family opted for restorative justice over the death penalty for the man who murdered their mom. What happened next made them question the very meaning of justice.
A Texas con artist made millions promising prisoners’ families the thing they wanted most: to bring their children home.
The family separation crisis that no one knows about.
Andrew Goldstein’s crime set in motion a dramatic shift in how we care for the violent mentally ill. Including for himself—when he’s released this month.
Every law student knows John Brady’s name. But few know the story of the bumbling murder that ended in a landmark legal ruling.
Can a violent adult jail teach kids to love school? A rare look inside one of the only high schools at an adult jail
How Cops became the most polarizing reality TV show in America.
More than a year ago, Nevada death row prisoner Scott Dozier gave up his legal appeals and asked to be executed. He’s still waiting.
When the prosecutor in a 1924 trial focused on the murder of a priest backed the suspect–and everything that followed.
The vans, operated by for-profit companies, carry tens of thousands of people every year. They lack beds, toilets, and medical services. More than a dozen women have alleged they were sexually assaulted by guards while being transported; since 2012, at least four people have died.
“I grew up idolizing my brother. Then he killed a man.”
Overcrowding in prisons leads to doubling up inmates in solitary confinement, regardless of their homicidal intentions or mental health.
An attorney pieces together a life cut short.
Voices from the inside of New York City’s infamous jail.
On the penalties imposed – or not – on prison guards who have sex with inmates.
An innocent man was executed – in 1761. Voltaire got on the case.
Truancy is punishable by fines, probation, and in some cases throwing parents in prison. Does any of that really keep kids in school?
Brutality persists at the famous prison.
A teenaged prisoner is left unprotected by America’s laws against prison rape.
How bad lawyering and an unforgiving law cost condemned men their last appeal.
In 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for starting a fire that killed his three daughters. The case hinged on the testimony of a jailhouse informant named Johnny E. Webb. Today, Webb says he lied.
