Courts & the Law
Prison system palliative care unit has filled just three of 77 jobs
Gov. Roy Cooper signed a bill at the end of 2021 that set state money aside for a long-term care facility at Central Prison to reduce the cost of prison health care for the elderly members of the incarcerated population. The bill called for $7.2 million in recurring funds and 77 full-time employees. Just three […]
Legislators could prohibit police from releasing mugshots
Legislators will consider a bill this session that would bar police from releasing people’s mugshots. The proposal would ban law enforcement agencies from releasing booking photographs taken when a person is processed when they’re admitted to jail. Those mugshots would not longer be subject to public records laws. There’s a notable exception: police could release mugshots in […]
Lawyers: separation of children through child welfare services ‘an ongoing form of torture that America does to Black families’
Toia Potts hasn’t seen her children in years. She said she has done everything the Division of Social Services has asked since her two boys entered the foster care system in 2018, but authorities still terminated her parental rights — and won’t consider allowing her family in Georgia to adopt the children so they can […]
Legislators to try again for parole expansion bill written by imprisoned people serving life sentences
Lawmakers will again consider a bill this session that would allow people sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole the chance to earn release and not die behind bars. Two men serving life sentences wrote the bill, pitching it as a way to reduce violence in state prisons by offering people serving […]
The death penalty does nothing to keep us safe. Let’s end it now.
Exonerated former Death Row inmate details the horrific miscarriage of justice he endured I was a 35-year-old military veteran working for the U.S. Postal Service in Phoenix when my life was turned upside down. I was arrested and charged for a crime I knew nothing about. My trial only lasted four days and the jury […]
Attorneys general from Democratic-led states urge judge to keep abortion pill legal
WASHINGTON — Attorneys general from 21 Democratic-leaning states, including North Carolina’s Josh Stein, are calling on a Texas judge to keep the abortion pill on the market, rejecting claims anti-abortion medical groups made in a lawsuit that’s centered on the medication’s approval more than two decades ago. The latest brief in the case, Alliance for […]
NC Supreme Court picks dates to rehear voter ID, redistricting cases
The North Carolina Supreme Court will rehear oral arguments in redistricting and voter ID cases in mid-March, according to a calendar posted to their website late last week. The high court issued rulings on the two cases, authored by the then-Democratic majority, last year. The majority invalidated Republicans’ voter ID law and ruled that the […]
Suspect science and claims at center of abortion-pill lawsuit
Emergency rooms across America are teeming with women and girls bleeding from abortion drugs in such copious amounts that it’s exacerbating the national blood shortage. Or, at least, that’s the grim – but false – narrative a group of small conservative Christian medical associations have painted for a federal judge in Texas. Their mountain of […]
State data: These factors are correlated with a person’s likelihood of being arrested or imprisoned again
A new study from the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission found higher rearrest rates among formerly incarcerated people who were in solitary confinement or in a high security risk classification when they were released from prison. Just under half of the 16,340 people released from prison in the 2019 Fiscal Year were rearrested […]
Ishee confirmed to head Department of Adult Correction
State senators unanimously confirmed Todd Ishee on Tuesday to head the Department of Adult Correction, an enormous new agency with a 40% staff vacancy rate responsible for overseeing the 115,00 people in state prisons or on probation or parole. Ishee previously headed the prison system when it was under the umbrella of the Department of […]
Racist jury strikes go on trial at the NC Supreme Court
Russell Tucker was a Black man facing the death penalty in the South in the “tough-on-crime” 1990s. He deserved the chance to be tried by a jury of his peers — people who might have had similar life experiences and been able to see him as something other than a one-dimensional “monster.” However, a Forsyth […]
Twice defeated, Republicans to try again for forced sheriff-ICE cooperation bill
For the third time, Republicans will try to enact a law that would require sheriffs across North Carolina to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and honor detainer requests of people accused of certain crimes. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has twice vetoed similar measures. But Republicans might have the votes this year to override the […]