One of the more positive things to result from deteriorating state budgets across the nation is that some state lawmakers are looking to smart criminal justice reform as a way to trim budgets. Whether motivated by cost savings or human rights, these changes are an important step toward a...

Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran a front page article describing the realities of solitary confinement for inmates in Virginia. The horrors of 23-hour-a-day lockdown, sensory deprivation and isolation were lauded by Department of Corrections (DOC) officials as a necessary measure for handling the “worst of the worst.”...

We heard a lot last week about the MacPhail family, who wanted Troy Davis executed despite serious, worldwide concerns about his innocence. But what about the loved ones of murder victims who oppose the death penalty?

Why haven't we heard many, if any, media accounts from James Anderson's family?

The state of Georgia has blood on its hands.

Wednesday night, Georgia strapped down an innocent human being and forced lethal poison into his veins until he died. In your name, in my name, unashamed and unhesitating.

This case had most of the worst of what we have come to...

After his sister's death in the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, once-avowed white supremacist Mark Stroman shot and killed Waqar Hasan, who was Pakistani, and Vasudev Patel, an Indian immigrant, during a series of convenience store and gas station rampages in Texas. Rais Bhuiyan, a...

When I was a child, my cousin was brutally murdered. As far as our family knows, the police never found his killer.

A few years later, another cousin of mine was murdered in prison. His killers were in cahoots with his jailers, so none of them was ever prosecuted.

No...

Recent news reports suggest that Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of leaking government files to WikiLeaks, is being held by our government, alone, often naked, in a small isolation cell for months at a time as he awaits legal proceedings to commence against him. Many Americans are appalled by...