Criminal Justice Reporter
Cristal Starling lost $8,000 after she missed one of several filing deadlines to contest the seizure of her money by police. A federal appeals court says she and others like her should be given more leeway.
Both the state attorney general and the state legislature declined to defend the law in court after the ACLU of Arizona and news media organizations sued to overturn it.
Joshua Rohrer not only seeks damages for his violent arrest but also wants the city's anti-panhandling ordinance overturned on First Amendment grounds.
For five decades, the agency has destroyed countless lives while targeting Americans for personal choices and peaceful transactions.
But poor record keeping hides the real number.
The National Association of Medical Examiners now says "excited delirium" should not be cited as a cause of death.
Massachusetts reformed its notoriously bad public records laws in 2020, but reporters are still fighting to get the police misconduct files they're legally entitled to.
The ruling is likely the first by a state supreme court to undercut the popular forensic technique.
Minneapolis police used gratuitous force, discriminated against black and Native American residents, and retaliated against people exercising their First Amendment rights.
There's no deep mystery behind why Trump kept boxes of classified documents. He wanted them.
All they found was some cool cars and clothes.
The feds allege the former president was keeping classified documents on America's nuclear program and defense capabilities in his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Texas' public record law let police hide records of suspects who died in custody from grieving families, reporters, and lawyers.
DeSantis calls the bill a "jailbreak," a gross misrepresentation of the criminal justice reform bill.
A Reason investigation earlier this year detailed the case of a Minnesota woman who was sentenced to 40 years on probation for a drug crime.
The FBI's sloppy, secret search warrants should be a concern for all Americans.
Retire the paw patrol.
The records confirm medical neglect in a federal women's prison that Reason first reported on in 2020.
The lawsuit says Disney has been subject to "a targeted campaign of government retaliation—orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney's protected speech."
Florida will now only require an 8–4 majority for a jury to recommend a death sentence. Alabama is the only other state that allows split juries to recommend death sentences.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two consolidated cases by Alabama women whose cars were both seized for more than a year before courts found they were innocent owners.
It's been nearly three years since New York repealed its police secrecy law, and departments are still fighting to hide misconduct records.
'Digidog is out of the pound," New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared, not ominously.
Alvin Bragg's case against Donald Trump has put the once-obscure position of district attorney into the national spotlight.
Police detectives accused Jerry Johnson of being a drug trafficker and seized cash he says he intended to use to buy a semitruck at auction. He was never charged with a crime.
Seven sheriff's deputies say the rapper subjected them to "embarrassment, ridicule, emotional distress, humiliation, and loss of reputation" after a drug bust on his house came up empty.
Prisons and jails around the country have been banning physical mail and used book donations under the flimsy justification of stopping contraband.
Even if you despise the media, you should be rooting for better public record laws.
The Institute for Justice says Robert Reeves' First Amendment rights were violated when prosecutors filed and refiled baseless felony charges against him after he sued to get his car back.
Yes, even children should have access to an attorney.
The two-year investigation, launched after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, concluded that Louisville police routinely used invalid search warrants and failed to knock and announce their presence.
Michael Friend was arrested in 2018 for holding a sign that read "Cops Ahead" near a police checkpoint. That arrest violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights, a federal appeals court has ruled.
Reason reported in 2020 on allegations of fatal medical neglect inside two federal women's prisons. The Bureau of Prisons heavily redacted reports that would show if women died of inadequate care.
Elon Musk’s shambolic takeover may not have been great for Twitter, but it was fantastic for Mastodon.
The longest-serving California senator was a hardline drug warrior, a surveillance hawk, and no friend of freedom.
Tiffany Lindsay says officers never contacted her to let her know they shot her dog. Instead, a neighbor found it in their trash can.
The last of the reelection campaign's defamation lawsuits against media outlets looks like it is headed for defeat, like all the others.
Prison staff were fired in less than half of substantiated incidents of sexual misconduct between 2016 and 2018, and only faced legal consequences in 6 percent of cases.
According to a lawsuit, Amir Worship was sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands raised when an officer shot him, shattering his kneecap.
What was originally intended as an alternative to incarceration has become a system for mass state control.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission might make medical neglect a qualifying condition for compassionate release.
"In short, the controlling motivations for the suspension were the interest in bringing down a reform prosecutor," the judge wrote.
It may sound bizarre, but yes, you can be punished at sentencing for an offense you were acquitted of by a jury.
For 20 years, D&D has offered third-party publishers an open, royalty-free license to create new works using its game. A leaked revision would end all of that.
Irvington made national headlines last year when it filed a lawsuit against an 82-year-old woman for filing too many public records requests. Now it says a lawyer for FIRE should be prosecuted.
Oregon was one of only two states that allowed for non-unanimous guilty verdicts until the Supreme Court outlawed them in 2020.
While rising crime created headwinds for candidates who supported criminal justice reform, the apocalyptic storm never quite arrived.
