By The Editors
The bullying swagger of Michael Daragjati, once apparently his perverse badge of honor, was nowhere in evidence earlier this week as he sat in Brooklyn’s federal district court.

By The Editors
The contentious relationship between the police force of a small Connecticut town and its Latino community reached a new stage Tuesday when the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested four of the town’s police officers and charged them with racially profiling and harassing Latinos.

By Tanea Lunsford
Having an incarcerated parent often means being part of a family where hiding the truth is a way of life.

On January 4, 2012, Maryland’s highest court issued a unanimous ruling (PDF) in Richmond v. District Court of Maryland that guarantees the right of indigent defendants to have a lawyer present at their initial bail hearing.

By Lee A. Daniels
Nicholas K. Peart, a 20-something Harlem resident and college student, in an op-ed column in the New York Times last month that describes in a calm, almost clinical way how police racial profiling works at street level to deprive innocent people of their rights and of any reason to trust the police.

By Lee A. Daniels
The death penalty, once an inviolate feature of America’s legal and political landscape, has lost significant support among the American public, according to a report released this week.

In an article for the Open Society blog, Christina Swarns, Director of the Criminal Justice Practice of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, discusses how the controversial case had “continued to follow the arc of [the debate about] the American death penalty.”

The defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose controversial 1982 conviction and death sentence for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer galvanized a worldwide protest, recorded a critical landmark this week.

Today, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office announced that it will not seek another death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Pennsylvania law now requires Mr. Abu-Jamal to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for his controversial 1982 murder conviction in the shooting death of a police officer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By The Editors
Once the sentencing rules for an offense are changed to lesser terms, is it fair to still subject some individuals to the old, harsher rules?