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Criminal (In)justice

Problems with police, prosecutors and courts have people asking: is our criminal justice system broken? University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris interviews the people who know the system best, and hears their best ideas for fixing it. Criminal (In)justice is an independent production created in partnership with 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR News Station.
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Criminal (In)justice
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Now displaying: June, 2017
Jun 30, 2017

The Minnesota police officer who killed Philando Castile has been acquitted, despite video evidence of the shooting seen by the jury. How did this happen? 

Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.

Jun 27, 2017

Police leadership must create a strong relationship between officers in the department and the communities they serve, but in the past, the same department may have participated in or enforced racial discrimination.

That history can prevent healing and can make police reform a nonstarter.

Chief Louis Dekmar of LaGrange, Georgia, says it was important for his department to acknowledge and apologize for the 1940 lynching of Austin Callaway, an incident that happened decades before he was born.

Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.

Jun 22, 2017

The rape trial of Bill Cosby has ended in a mistrial. What happens next?

Jun 20, 2017

Being a federal judge is a lawyer’s dream job – lifetime tenure, sophisticated cases, and a good salary, too. So why did Kevin Sharp, a well-respected federal trial judge, give all this up just six years in?

Mandatory minimums are a problem for a lot of people on both sides of American courts, especially in the age of Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump.

Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.

Jun 15, 2017

Three words you may have been hearing a lot lately: "obstruction of justice." What's the legal definition of obstruction? How is it prosecuted? And could a charge like that ever apply to President Donald Trump? David has answers.

Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.

Jun 13, 2017

Automatic license plate readers – those cameras on police cars and light poles that capture plate numbers – have been in widespread use since the 1990s. But some argue regulations for how and how long police can use and store that information hasn’t kept up with the technology.

Nathan Freed Wessler says automatic plate readers are great for spotting stolen cars or wanted drivers, but they’re also watching the rest of us.

Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.

Jun 8, 2017

The Supreme Court will hear Carpenter vs. United States, a case with major implications for police use of location data from cellular networks. David reviews what's at stake.

Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.

Jun 6, 2017

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of federal efforts to fix forensic science in April, but not because the problems were solved. Why stop these efforts now, just as better scientific standards were emerging? And what will it mean for wrongful convictions?

John Hollway, associate dean and executive director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, explains.

Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.

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