by Julia | Sep 10, 2019 | Alabama, The Open File Blog
Radley Balko is an invaluable national resource as a long form journalist who does a spectacular job covering criminal justice issues in general and the problem of prosecutorial powerand misconduct specifically. Late last week, Radley wrote a very...
by Bert | Aug 9, 2019 | Missouri
“The facts presented by the underlying crime are appalling and horrifying.” That is a line not from the Missouri Supreme Court’s majority opinion affirming the death sentence of Craig Wood, but instead from the dissent. And it is undeniably true. The evidence that Mr....
by Bert | Jun 18, 2019 | California
A new report just published by the ACLU calls our attention to Los Angeles County. There, District Attorney Jackie Lacey—who has been under increasing scrutiny despite her claims of being a reformer—has presided over an organization that continues to waste the...
by OpenFile | Jun 13, 2019 | North Carolina, The Open File Blog
Much about the U.S. Supreme Court is deeply opaque. It’s very hard – maybe impossible – to know which petitions the Justices will grant, what issues they care about, or how they will adjudicate any given case. One thing we do know is that several Republican-appointed...
by Bert | Mar 26, 2019 | Utah
Utah death row inmate Douglas Carter has a new evidentiary hearing to look forward to in light of the Utah Supreme Court’s recent opinion in his case. The opinion—which stems from Carter’s appeal of a post-conviction court’s summary denial—is a model of fairness. In...