Favorite On the day a California jury sentenced 25-year-old Irving Ramirez to die, Dionne Wilson went out to a bar to celebrate. “We had a major party,” she told me. Ramirez had shot and killed her husband, Dan, in 2005 — the first Alameda County cop to be murdered in the line of duty in…
All posts tagged Prisons
Hillary Clinton Still Haunted by Discredited Rhetoric on “Superpredators”
Favorite Hillary Clinton is relying on support from black voters to help her carry South Carolina in the Democratic primary on Saturday, but at a fundraiser in Charleston on Wednesday night, she found herself confronted by a young black activist demanding an apology. As video of the protest shows, the activist, Ashley Williams, interrupted Clinton’s remarks about criminal…
Solitary In California Jails Still Hellish Despite State Reforms
Favorite AT JUST 5 FEET TALL, Christopher Carroll could barely see out of the two narrow window slats of his cell door in San Diego’s Central Jail, where he ended up on June 14, 2014, for disorderly conduct and being drunk in public. Four days after his arrest, Carroll committed suicide. Because of his small…
Do Adults Have a Privacy Right to Use Drugs? Brazil’s Supreme Court Decides
Favorite The past decade has witnessed a remarkable transformation in the global debate over drug policy. As recently as the mid-2000s, drug legalization or even decriminalization was a fringe idea, something almost no politician would get near. That’s all changed. That the War on Drugs is a fundamental failure is a widely accepted fact among experts…
What Explains the Power of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Middle Finger?
Favorite The penalty phase of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial began Tuesday in a federal courtroom in Boston. Already convicted of 30 felony counts relating to the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, an attack that killed 3 people and maimed dozens more, the 21-year-old will now have the jury effectively decide whether he should spend the rest of his life…