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.
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.
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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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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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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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.
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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.
At the direction of Donald Trump, U.S. Attorney General William Barr is launching a national commission on crime and law enforcement. It's not the first time a president has formed such a panel, but indications are that this one will take a very different approach than its predecessors.
A quick note from Dave with details on upcoming public appearances for A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in Police Confrontations.
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Police suicides are on the rise. Just how bad is the problem? Why is it happening, and what can be done to stop it?
Sandy Jo MacArthur is a former Assistant Chief for the Los Angeles Police Department who now coordinates mental health training for all Los Angeles County law enforcement.
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Florida may soon execute a man convicted of murder largely on the testimony of another man with whom he shared a jail cell. The problem? The informant, an ex-cop, has a decades-long long record of fraud and deception. A joint report by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine says Paul Skalnik may be one of the most prolific jailhouse snitches in the country. But the use of such informants to bolster flimsy cases is widespread.
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A City Divided, David Harris's book on the 2010 beating of Jordan Miles by Pittsburgh police, drops this week. You can hear him talk about the project in person at one of these upcoming appearances:
Years before Ferguson, the well-publicized beating of a black teen by three white police officers exposed a deep racial divide in Pittsburghers' perceptions of, and experiences with, law enforcement. On its tenth anniversary, David Harris explores the Jordan Miles case and its aftermath in a new book -- A City Divided: Race, Fear and the Law in Police Confrontations.
In this special episode, Dave sits down with producer Josh Raulerson to discuss what the incident can teach us about race, human perception, and the militarization of policing.
Catch Dave on tour:
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The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice began just a year after Ferguson. The Initiative aimed to improve criminal justice outcomes and police-community relations in six cities. Now the results are in. Did it work? And what can we learn as we look for ways to improve our whole system?
Jesse Jannetta is a Senior Policy Fellow in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where he leads projects on prison and jail re-entry, community-based violence reduction strategies, and community supervision. He co-authored a report assessing the Initiative’s implementation phase.
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