Choose your location
The Marshall Project
He’s in an Ohio Prison for Exposing Someone to HIV - Even Though He Couldn’t Transmit the Virus
Caymir Weaver kept his gaze forward and his jaw set as a county judge chastised him during an October court date. “You disrespect everything that’s proper and moral and ethical,” Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge R. Scott Krichbaum told him. — Weaver was used to being judged for having HIV. He’d had it since he was born. But now he was facing time in prison for it.
Ohio Is Among 34 States That Criminalize People Living With HIV. Who Gets Prosecuted?
There are no national reporting requirements that track arrests or prosecutions under state laws that criminalize people living with HIV. Until recently, it wasn’t clear how frequently people were arrested or prosecuted under six Ohio laws that criminalize certain acts – including sex – or substantially increase the penalties. Some of the laws also apply to people with hepatitis or tuberculosis. — Research released by theOhio Health Modernization Movement and Equality Ohio, two groups pushing for the laws to be reformed, identified 214 cases prosecuted in Ohio during a six-year-period ending in 2020. The information came from court dockets, clerks and prosecutors in Ohio’s 88 counties. That number is likely lower than the actual number of cases prosecuted. Not all counties included detailed enough information on the charges, some cases weren’t counted.
These States Are Once Again Embracing ‘Tough-on-Crime’ Laws
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. For decades, Louisiana had the nation’s highest rate of incarceration. And — given that the U.S. is among the most...
How Federal Prisons Are Getting Worse
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. On Wednesday, federal prisons’ director Colette Peters once again found herself facing tough questions over an agency in crisis. Members...
Black Drivers Still Paying ‘Bratenahl Tax’ in Affluent Cleveland Suburb
A new analysis shows Bratenahl’s pattern of disproportionately ticketing Black drivers continued in the aftermath of a 2022 Marshall Project - Cleveland and WEWS News 5 investigation. The recent review of Bratenahl Police Department ticketing from February 2023 through the end of the year shows officers cited Black drivers...
Knock, Knock! Who’s There? The Police.
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. Last October, students at Northwestern University near Chicago wrapped a parody article imitating their student newspaper around hundreds of copies...
This Mississippi Court Appoints Lawyers for Just 1 in 5 Defendants Before Indictment
The right to an attorney is fundamental to the U.S. justice system. Yet, in a small Mississippi court off the interstate between Jackson and Memphis, that right is tenuous. The two judges in Yalobusha County Justice Court appointed lawyers for just 20% of the five dozen felony defendants who came before them in 2022, according to a review of court records; nationally, experts estimate that lawyers are appointed to at least 80% of felony defendants at some point in the legal process because they’re deemed poor. In this court, the way these two judges decide who gets a court-appointed attorney appears to violate state rules meant to protect defendants’ rights. A few defendants have even been forced to represent themselves in key hearings. Despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that everyone gets a lawyer even if they’re too poor to pay for one, most felony defendants in this court went without any representation at all before their cases were forwarded to a grand jury, according to a review of one full year of court files by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. (Read more about how we analyzed the court’s appointment rate inour methodology.)
What Crime Data Says About the Effects of Texas Busing Migrants
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says since 2022, his state has transported more than 100,000 migrants to “sanctuary cities” around the...
I Never Thought I Could Fall In Love With a Woman. Then Came Prison.
There’s a phrase that is often used in women’s prisons: “Gay for the stay.”. When I first heard it, at Taconic Correctional Facility in 2019, I didn’t understand what it meant. This was my first time in prison, and I was a married heterosexual woman with six children. — But during my first visit to the recreation yard in this Westchester, New York prison, I couldn’t help but notice how many women were coupled up.
5 Takeaways From Our Investigation Into Police Use of Spit Hoods
Many police departments use mesh bags, commonly known as spit hoods, to cover the heads of people in custody so they can’t spit on officers. Police say the devices are safe. But an investigation by The Marshall Project and WTSP, the CBS affiliate in Tampa, found that in some circumstances, the hoods can be deadly. — Here are five takeaways from our findings, based on thousands of pages of documents, videos and interviews with victims and their families, police departments and experts. Themain article of this investigation contains more information.
Medical Marijuana Is Legal, But Oklahoma Is Charging Women for Using It While Pregnant
Amanda Aguilar’s ordeal seemed to be over. — The criminal case against her began after she delivered her youngest child in Ponca City, Oklahoma, a small town near the Kansas border, in 2020, and the baby tested positive for marijuana. Aguilar had been taking the drug to treat severe morning sickness during pregnancy. Medical marijuana is legal in Oklahoma, and she had a doctor-approved state license to use it. Her son was healthy at birth. But the hospital reported her to child welfare workers, who handed over her baby’s drug test results to police. Aguilar, whose case was featured in a2022 story by The Marshall Project and The Frontier, was charged with felony child neglect.
If You Can’t Afford an Attorney, One Will Be Appointed. And You May Get a Huge Bill
On a Sunday evening in November 2015, Lori Mathes was in the kitchen of her gray and blue bungalow in Onawa, a small town in western Iowa. She was talking on the phone with her mother, she recalls, when four police officers barged in with their guns drawn. They said they were looking for her ex-husband, who had stopped by for a visit.
The AI Lawyer is Here
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. As criminal justice journalists, my colleagues and I read a fair amount of legal filings. — Historically, if I came...
My Biggest Daily Challenge in Prison Isn’t Violence. It’s the Monotony.
Although I’m no stranger to prison, I still find myself scanning my surroundings as if I’m seeing SCI Chester for the first time. I study the bars on the windows obstructing my view of freedom, the rusted locks that trap me in my cell, the blank white walls winding throughout the prison. Sometimes I think about the psychology behind the color choice. Oddly enough, the blankness resonates with me. It reflects the emptiness that I’ve felt for nearly a decade of my 27-year sentence for murder and weapons charges.
Bill Would Change How New York Disciplines Abusive Prison Guards
The New York state corrections department would gain the power to remove abusive guards from its prisons under a state senate bill filed on Monday. Currently, the commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision does not have the ultimate authority to fire guards accused of serious misconduct and often must defer to third-party arbitrators who determine disciplinary outcomes. But the bill, filed by state Sen. Julia Salazar, a Brooklyn Democrat, would give the commissioner the final say in such cases. In a memo accompanying herbill, Salazar, the chairwoman of the Senate committee on crime victims, crime and correction, said she drafted the legislation in response to an investigation by The Marshall Project, published last year in collaboration with The New York Times. The investigation showed that New York’s prison department often tried but failed to fire corrections officers accused of abuse or trying to conceal it. From the articles, Salazar wrote in the memo, “a stark picture emerged of a staff disciplinary system that is essentially completely broken and ineffective.”
‘The Fullness of Time’: Jacob Wideman Confronts His Fate
Part Eight of the “Violation” podcast explores what time means behind bars. And listeners respond to the question: Did Jake get what he deserves?. When we talk about prison, we inevitably talk about time: “doing time,” or “serving time.” It’s as if time were “a commodity like money that can be spent, earned, lost, owed, or stolen,” Jacob Wideman’s father, John Edgar Wideman, reflected in “Brothers and Keepers,” his 1984 memoir about the life sentence of his younger brother, who was convicted of second-degree murder. But of course, you can’t take people’s time away. You can only make it more painful, more solitary, more slow. As Wideman wrote, “No one does time outside of time.”
The Food on Your Table, Brought to You By Prison Labor
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. If you’ve shopped at Walmart, Target, Costco, Whole Foods or many other large grocery chains recently, there’s a chance you...
New Execution Methods, Old Problems
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. The state of Alabama had said that when strapped to a gurney and fitted with a mask pumped full of...
How a Borrowed Blazer, Tie and Dress Shirt Helped Me See Myself as a Man, Not a Prisoner
The old saying “clothes make the man” reminds us that what we wear signals our status in the eyes of others. But during a recent event at Washington Corrections Center, a change in clothing helped me see myself as a man, not just as an “inmate.”. This...
The Marshall Project
743+
Posts
5M+
Views
The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system.
Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments. It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency: our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. We strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation. Join us in shaping the news narrative together.