Pennsylvania's Supreme Court declines to hear a challenge to the state's death penalty law. Dave provides analysis on 90.5 WESA's The Confluence.
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Donald Trump's reelection campaign isn't exactly touting his criminal justice platform, but it's not hard to read the tea leaves on what a second Trump term might look like.
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The law makes heroin, cocaine, and meth illegal according to their defined chemical structures. But what about drugs made from synthetic compounds, which can be changed with a tiny tweak in a clandestine lab? Can the law just say "close enough?"
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Supervised injection sites provide a venue where addicts can safely use intravenous drugs under medical supervision. The practice saves lives, but in the midst of a deadly opioid epidemic the Justice Department is going after injection sites using laws designed to shut down crack houses.
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Pete Buttigieg entered the Democratic presidential primary race last spring with a message deliberately light on policy specifics. Since then he's rolled out a robust criminal justice platform, part of a broader package of social reforms -- but will it be enough to win over African American voters skeptical of his record as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, where Buttigieg presided over a string of race-inflected law enforcement scandals?
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Dave explains how prosecutors use "drug delivery resulting in death" charges in opioid overdose deaths on WESA's The Confluence.
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Amber Guyger, the off-duty police officer who murdered Botham Jean in his Dallas apartment, has been found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. The trial's resolution -- and surprising displays of emotion in the courtroom -- have sparked almost as much reaction as the crime itself.
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Koch Industries and Charles and David Koch – names that are synonymous with right-wing political causes and deregulation of industry. So why is Koch joining with the left to give former inmates second chances?
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren's campaign has offered meaty policy proposals on a variety of topics, and criminal justice is no exception. While many of her proposals on issues like mass incarceration, marijuana, and private prisons line up with those of other candidates, they're distinguished by the way Warren frames them: with a dual emphasis on reforming the system and upholding public safety.
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A crime summit held recently in St. Louis was a virtual who's-who of high ranking city and state government officials. Conspicuously absent from the gathering were the progressive, African American district attorneys of St. Louis and Kansas City, who were excluded despite having been elected to the top law enforcement post in Missouri's two largest cities. We look at the latest in a trend of anti-democratic attacks on reformist elected prosecutors.
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Following a string of bank robberies, Portland police put together a photo lineup of suspects -- including one man whose mugshot had been digitally manipulated to remove prominent facial tattoos that were not present on the robber's face as described by witnesses and as shown on surveillance video. Can they do that?
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Urban violence kills thousands of Americans every year. It accounts for almost three quarters of the murders in the U.S., and it traps a huge number of people in poverty, blight, trauma and despair. What if there was a way cut murderous urban violence – by half?
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To understand Sen. Kamala Harris's criminal justice positions, you have to look at each of the three distinct phases of her career: politically ambitious prosecutor in San Francisco, controversial "top cop" AG of California, and Democratic primary contender lurching leftward as consensus shifts on the issues that defined her. Which is the real Harris?
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The Justice Department has announced it will seek the death penalty in the case against Robert Bowers, the white supremacist gunman who murdered worshippers in Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue last year. Dave discusses the decision on Pittsburgh NPR station WESA.
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To celebrate the launch of our Patreon, we're sharing the first in a series of presidential candidate profiles: a look at frontrunner Joe Biden's amazing transformation from a tough-on-crime conservative Democrat during the '80s and '90s into a decarcerationist and would-be reformer on the 2020 campaign trail.
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As reform-minded elected prosecutors gain power across the U.S., they’re increasingly coming under fire from their federal counterparts — most recently, an anti-democratic tirade by U.S. Attorney Bill Barr, who attacked progressive district attorneys for doing what voters elected them to do.
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Many people make their social media posts public. Everyone can see them, like a signed billboard visible anywhere in the world. So, what should we think when we learn that *some* police officers, in some departments, have been posting racist messages or memes endorsing violence, visible to anyone on the Internet?
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In another appearance on 90.5 WESA's The Confluence, Dave follows up on Donald Trump's reinstatement of the federal death penalty.
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We often hear about new methods police try to achieve better results against crime. But do the police have any reason to believe that their new approaches will work? Are their new initiatives based on hope, or on actual evidence that they will really help?
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Regardless of how it looks, there’s no direct evidence that Jeffrey Epstein’s jailhouse death on August 10 was anything other than a suicide. But there’s abundant evidence of a systemic problem with prison suicide — something that’s far more common than most people realize.
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