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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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Now displaying: February, 2020
Feb 26, 2020

A post by Paul Butler at Crime Story Daily proposes a new theory about the uproar over actor Jussie Smollett's disputed claim of being the victim of a hate crime: the real target is a progressive prosecutor.

Crime Story: The Real Target of the Jussie Smollett
Charges

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Feb 23, 2020

The Trump administration's immigration lawsuits against so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions pits the Justice Department against the doctrine of federalism, formerly a bedrock principle of conservative ideology.

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Feb 19, 2020

The thwarted sentencing of Roger Stone kicks off the latest in a series of cascading crises for the integrity of the Justice Department, and it's all we can do to keep up. Dave recaps a week of dramatic and fast-moving events.

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Feb 18, 2020

Every year, courts hand out sentences of life without the possibility of parole to people convicted of serious crimes.  Our guest today was one of those people, and he’ll tell us what that was like – and, with his sentence commuted, what his life is like on the outside, after 43 years. 

Our guest is Robert Wideman, given a life sentence without parole at 25, and now free after Pennsylvania’s governor commuted his sentence in 2019. 

Feb 16, 2020

This episode originally appeared on the Criminal Injustice members feed on November 17, 2019. To hear all of our premium episodes as soon as they're released, become a $5 member at patreon.com/criminalinjustice


Michael Bloomberg makes a late entry to the Democratic presidential primary field. The billionaire media baron hasn't released a policy agenda for criminal justice, but he has a voluminous record from his time as New York City mayor -- and it's not good.

Feb 14, 2020

The chief prosecutor of St. Louis, a woman of color elected in 2016 on a reform platform, has faced intense pushback from the day she took office. Now Kim Gardner, the first African American to serve in the post, is suing the city and its police union under a federal law passed during Reconstruction to combat white supremacist vigilantism. Progressive prosecutors elected in other cities are rallying around Gardner, but can the suit succeed?

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Feb 11, 2020

Why are so many people dying in Mississippi state prisons? As with most systemic problems, the causes are many and complex.

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Feb 6, 2020

Donald Trump's impeachment lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, makes a remarkable assertion: if the president believes his own reelection is in the national interest, then nothing he does in pursuit of that goal can be impeachable.

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Feb 4, 2020

When HIV appeared in the U.S., it was a death sentence and a source of real fear. Now, with treatment, people living with the virus can live long and full lives. So why do laws still criminalize some actions of people living with HIV? Our guests are Jada Hicks, Staff Attorney for the Center for HIV Law and Policy, and Amir Sadeghi, the Center’s National Community Outreach Coordinator. They’ll discuss how the law still criminalize actions by people living with HIV which would cause no consequences for others.

Feb 1, 2020

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Kicking off the promotional tour for his new book, A City Divided, Dave spoke to a packed house at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library Lecture Hall on January 14. Criminal Injustice members can hear the full program, courtesy of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures.

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