The Appeal

In 2014, then-23 year-old Morgan Godvin sold a small amount of heroin to her friend and fellow drug user Justin DeLong who subsequently overdosed and died. Morgan was charged by the federal government for "drug delivery resulting in death" and served five years in prison––despite Justin's family pleading for leniency. Now out of prison and majoring in community health education at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Godvin is on a mission to raise awareness of the hyper-punitive rise of "drug induced homicide" prosecutions. She joins us this week along with special guest host Leo Beletsky, a professor of Law and Health Sciences at Northeastern University, to discuss what activists are doing to push back against the latest trend in Tough on Drug Crime cruelty.

Despite hundreds of people being put to death in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, surprisingly little data exists on who exactly is killed by the government. Two reporters at The Intercept, Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura, have spent the last three years working on filling the gap in knowledge––collecting and assembling data on how widespread, racially biased, and arbitrary the death penalty remains in 2020. This week, they join us to talk about their findings.

In recent years, the number of police in American schools has skyrocketed as social services have been cut. As of 2016, 1.7 million students are in schools with police officers but no counselors, 3 million students are in schools with officers but no nurses, and 10 million students are in schools with police but no social workers. This invariably has led to abuse and undue arrests of children, some as young as 6 years old. Today we are joined by Appeal contributor Roxanna Asgarian to discuss one case in Pittsburgh that saw a 7-year-old with development issues detained, pinned down and left with PTSD. 

In 2018, Brittany Smith was assaulted and raped by a man in her Alabama home. Later that night, when the same man attacked both her and her brother, Smith shot and killed him in what she calls self-defense. Now she's on trial for murder and her case tells us a lot about how our criminal legal system treats gendered violence. Today we are joined by Appeal writer Lauren Gill to talk about this case and the broader trend of throwing the book at women who defend themselves from abusive men.  

Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) bas been the subject of countless news specials, TV drama plots, and shocking tabloid headlines––horrific tales of child abuse, quickly met with the firm justice of the state. But in recent years, medical and legal experts have begun pushing back against the conventional wisdom surrounding SBS, questioning its fundamental scientific basis. Today we are joined by Appeal staff writer Elizbabeth Weill-Greenberg to talk about efforts to reexamine many of the assumptions about how our legal system treats SBS cases.

The only people in the United States the government is required by law to provide healthcare for are the incarcerated. But what constitutes a baseline standard of care is very much in doubt and many human rights activists and legal experts argue the healthcare, namely in states like Illinois and Louisiana, is far below any moral or constitutional standard. Today Type Investigation's Ida B. Wells Fellow and Appeal contributor Taylor Elizabeth Eldridge joins us to discuss how we are long overdue for a national conversation on healthcare neglect in America's sprawling prison complex.

On our last episode of the year we're doing something a little different: Joining us to co-host this week is Appeal contributor Zach Siegel, who's a journalism fellow at Northeastern University Law School's Health in Justice Action Lab, to discuss false narratives around drug addiction and how prisons are increasingly employing puritanical pseudoscience in the so-called "War on Opioid Addiction". We will also be joined by our guest, Lev Facher of STAT News. 

Last month, 106 legal scholars signed a brief supporting St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner's efforts to get a new trial for Lamar Johnson, a man convicted of murder in 1995 for a crime many––including the prosecutor's office that convicted him––say he couldn't have possibly committed. The initial trial, which involved paid witnesses who later recanted and jail house snitches, is now seen as a stain on the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office, but pro-carceral forces in Missouri and a system rigged in opposition to obtaining new trials are preventing this from happening. How could something so obviously wrong be permitted by our justice system? Today we are joined by Daniel Harawa, assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law to explain how our system often makes achieving justice virtually impossible––even when DA's themselves support it. 

To those tasked with radically reimagining the U.S. legal system and moving it away from the current carceral, hyper-punitive model, the logical question arises: What do you replace it with? It's a fair question and one activists and thinkers have been struggling with for decades. One such person, our guest Danielle Sered of Common Justice, has been implementing alternative justice systems in New York City for years. Today she joins us to talk about what another world looks like––and how justice and safety are possible without throwing people in cages.

Facing legal challenges and a shortage of drugs for lethal injections, Oklahoma was the first state to announce a plan to use nitrogen to execute prisoners on death row. Mississippi and Alabama soon followed, though none of the states has tried it yet. Critics say the science behind using nitrogen to kill people is spotty at best, and there's no way to know if it will be as "painless" as advocates presume. Today we are joined by Appeal staff reporter Lauren Gill to discuss the questions around nitrogen gas and the continuing search for ways to end human life behind bars.

There's a growing acceptance of the idea that we need to overhaul our system of mass incarceration. But methods for doing so vary enormously––and some are causing more harm than good. Today's guest, Civil Rights Corps founder Alec Karakatsanis, has written a new book, "Usual Cruelty," that explores how even self-proclaimed "reformers" can be part of the problem and prevent true reform from taking hold.

In nine states, police officers are permitted to act as prosecutors and arraign people for misdemeanor charges. In Rhode Island, the practice is the norm, meaning that thousands of people face potentially life-altering criminal charges without a public defender at their side. Advocates say allowing police to act as prosecutors presents an inherent conflict of interest. Today, we are joined by Appeal contributors Julia Rock and Harry August to discuss the practice, and how reformers hope to change a system they view as unfair and undemocratic.

Many states pay incarcerated workers just 20 or 30 cents per hour--and some don't pay them at all. But incarcerated workers also have virtually no labor rights or civil rights when it comes to battling discrimination based on race, religion, gender, and other protected classes. Today we are joined by journalist Sessi Kuwabara Blanchard who explains why this disparity exists and what's being done to fight it.

Jailhouse informants are a fixture of pop culture, helping TV prosecutors secure convictions in exchange for leniency or other favors. But the public—and by extension, juries—are largely ignorant of just how common, and how damaging, jailhouse informants are to the criminal legal system.This week, University of California, Irvine School of Law professor Alexandra Natapoff joins us to discuss how and why the reform movement is pushing back on the use of jailhouse informants in criminal cases.

In addition to being unique among Western nations in executing people, the U.S. keeps many of its death row prisoners in prolonged solitary confinement, which is known to inflict physical and psychological harm. Today's guest, Appeal staff reporter Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, discusses advocates' push to change that practice in Oklahoma, a state whose notorious H Unit has taken death row conditions to new lows.

As cannabis use is legalized in more and more jurisdictions across the country, child protective systems aren't always keeping pace. Allegations of drug use are still raised in family court, particularly against parents of color, and those who admit using cannabis are often subject to heightened surveillance. We are joined today by Miriam Mack and Elizabeth Tuttle Newman, staff attorneys from the Bronx Defenders, to discuss the lessons to be gleaned from states like New York and Colorado.

Progressive prosecutors have swept into office across the country, winning district attorney seats in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, and beyond. But what does it mean to be a "reform prosecutor"? What is the ideology of the movement and those who lead it? To answer these questions and more, we are joined this week by Chesa Boudin, a public defender running for San Francisco district attorney. He'll discuss his vision for the city and what being a reform DA means to him. 

Earlier this year, lawmakers in New York proposed a bill that would bar people convicted of multiple sex offenses from ever using New York City's subway system again. The plan, which would inflict a form of banishment in the name of public safety, has echoes elsewhere in the criminal legal system. Sex offender registries increasingly include children under the age of 18, and some states permit children as young as 7 to be registered. But a growing body of evidence suggests that our reliance on registries—not just for sex crimes but also for terrorism, gun, and drug offenses—may allow politicians to look like they're taking action while actually doing little to curb abuse. To discuss the rise in registries, we are joined by Appeal contributor Guy Hamilton-Smith and Elizabeth Letourneau, professor and director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Thanks for all your support! We'll be back in September. 

In recent years, lawmakers and the media have dusted off the 1980's War on Drugs script to respond to an uptick in overdoses caused by a new, potent, heroin-like substance called fentanyl. Military officials are considering classifying it as a "weapon of mass destruction," and highly regarded media outlets like 60 Minutes have spread the fable that police can be badly harmed from merely touching the drug. This week's guest, Appeal contributor Maia Szalavitz, explains how medical professionals and reformers are pushing back against this media-fed panic.  

Approximately half a million people are currently in jail awaiting trial across the United States, the vast majority because they are unable to pay bail. A 2018 study of Philadelphia and Miami-Dade found that people being held on bail earned roughly $4,500 per year on average. Many of them will plead guilty just to get out of jail. On this week's episode, we are joined by Appeal reporter Joshua Vaughn to discuss how bail punishes people for the crime of being poor.

Efforts to hold police accountable for violating civil rights frequently come up against a legal roadblock known as "qualified immunity." Invented by the Supreme Court in 1967 and widely expanded in 1982, qualified immunity helps public officials avoid liability for misconduct and even flagrant constitutional violations. In the Supreme Court's own words, it protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law." Joining us today to discuss this barrier to reform are Appeal contributors Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark from the MacArthur Justice Center.

In August and September of last year, there were prison strikes in at least 17 states marked by work stoppages and hunger strikes. But what's happened since? How have things improved or, in some cases, been made worse by the forces of reaction? As we come up on the one-year anniversary of the 2018 prison strike, our guest, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak spokesperson and Right 2 Vote national coordinator Amani Sawari joins us to discuss how the unrest of 2018 is being channeled into political reforms.   

In an effort to meet public demand to reduce the size of the brick and mortar prison population, some jurisdictions are doing so but reinvesting manpower and money into what activists call "digital prisons." In addition to electronic monitoring, this increasingly involves surveillance systems that can spy on citizens in real time. One such surveillance program in New Orleans––involving an elaborate network of cameras––has run afoul of privacy and criminal reform advocates. Our guest, Appeal contributor Mike Hayes, discusses the rise of surveillance systems in dozens of American cities.

Dozens of states have reformed their drug laws in recent years, but Arizona remains a stubborn outlier. In Maricopa County, for example, a recent report found that drug cases represent the "overwhelming majority" of charges filed. Up against powerful County Attorney Bill Montgomery and a culture of tough-on-crime posturing, reformers have hit roadblocks as they push for change. Today we are joined by Arizona activist Caroline Isaacs of the American Friends Service Committee to discuss the fight to make these repressive drug laws a thing of the past.

In April 2016, the NYPD, in concert with the FBI, ATF, DEA, and Homeland Security, descended onto the South Bronx, arresting scores of people in what was described as the largest "gang takedown" in city history. Preet Bharara, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, praised what became known as the Bronx 120 raid as a victory against dangerous criminals—and the media largely parroted that narrative. The problem: Fewer than half of those arrested were ultimately alleged to be members of the targeted gangs, and most of the 120 were not convicted of violent crimes. City University of New York criminal law professor Babe Howell has spent the past three years investigating the raid and the actual charges that resulted. Today she joins us to describe what she learned.

On this podcast––and in other coverage of the criminal legal system––we tend to focus, understandably, on the people behind bars and on parole. But in reality, this only shows part of the damage inflicted by mass incarceration. Generational harm refers to the second- and third-order negative effects of incarceration and the corresponding emotional and financial toll on prisoners' families, and disproportionately on women of color. This social trauma is just now being seriously studied and reckoned with. Today we are joined by Chicago activist Celia Colon to discuss the true human cost of a system that nearly always leaves a trail of destruction.

Despite having ‎more than 35,000 officers and a massive budget of over $5 billion a year, the NYPD––and its Special Victims Unit––have a high rate of prematurely closed rape cases compared to other police departments, leading critics to accuse the NYPD of not taking sexual assault complaints seriously. Appeal contributor Meg O'Connor dug into the data and interviewed victims to find out what's behind the trend.

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) have exploded in popularity. In 2000, thirteen states used PDMPs; today, they exist in every state and Washington, D.C. These programs are ostensibly designed to respond to the opioid crisis by monitoring prescribed drugs and preventing abuse and doctor shopping. But increasingly, critics say, they are interfering with legitimate healthcare. Privacy advocates and some medical experts have demanded that states slow the rush to implement PDMPs and ask hard questions about law enforcement's involvement in personal healthcare. Today we are joined by Leo Beletsky, Appeal contributor and Associate Professor of Law and Health Sciences at Northeastern University. 

A recent lawsuit accused the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit of a long pattern of questionable police work. Our guest, Appeal contributor Amelia McDonell-Parry, joins us today to discuss the case of Jerome L. Johnson, a man just released from prison after serving 30 years for a 1988 murder he didn't commit. On this week's episode, we will discuss the allegations raised in the suit regarding the unit's discovery protocol, suppression of evidence, and lack of accountability.

For decades, the New York Police Department has arrested people, the vast majority people of color, for carrying so-called gravity knives, meant to open with a flick of the wrist. The problem is, it's not always clear what is and isn't a gravity knife, and many workers use knives on the job. Our guest, Appeal contributor Jon Campbell, discusses the latest efforts in New York State to reform the laws, and prevent this questionable offense from sending people to prison.

As more and more states seek to abandon cash bail, a system widely seen as unjust and discriminatory, a question has emerged: What should replace it? Increasingly, the answer involves some sort of "risk assessment"––tools designed to predict an arrestee's likelihood of fleeing prosecution or committing another crime. They're also being used in parole and sentencing decisions. Today we are joined by Hannah Sassaman, policy director of Media Mobilizing Project, and Matt Henry, chief technologist and legal counsel at The Justice Collaborative, to discuss this notoriously fraught topic and why relying on algorithms doesn't ensure justice.

In March 2018, police in Sacramento, California killed Stephon Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old, in his grandparents' backyard. A year later, District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert's announcement that charges would not be filed against the two officers responsible for his death became the latest flashpoint for the Black Lives Matter movement. This week, we are joined by Appeal staff reporter Aaron Morrison, who will provide the latest on the protests in Sacramento and how activists are working to hold police accountable and seek justice for Stephon Clark.

States throughout the U.S. have recently expanded voting rights to millions of people with felony records previously barred from participating in elections. After a brief moment of celebration, two of them, Iowa and Florida, are now experiencing backlash from Republican lawmakers advocating for policies that would curtail those rights. This week, we are joined by The Appeal's Kira Lerner to discuss the hurdles these movements still face and the forces pushing back against the wave of increased enfranchisement.

Elected in 2017 to much fanfare from progressives, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba promised to transform Jackson, Mississippi, into the "most radical city on the planet." But almost immediately, one of Lumumba's signature reforms—an effort to hold police more accountable for on-the-job shootings—was met with tremendous opposition. This week, we are joined by Jackson reporter and Appeal contributor Ko Bragg to discuss this conflict, the promise and limits of reform, and what lessons can be learned from the ongoing political experiment in Jackson, Mississippi.

In the public mind, incarcerated people are often better left in the dark––unseen and unconsidered. That's especially true when it comes to prisoners with disabilities, who suffer from both the routine cruel conditions of America's prisons and a widespread non-compliance in those prisons with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Our guest this week, Appeal contributor Keri Blakinger, joins us to discuss an ongoing lawsuit in New York State and the broader movement across the country to give prisoners with disabilities access to the same facilities and opportunities as everyone else.  

A primary demand of the Black Lives Matter movement is more transparency into police misconduct. When an officer improperly arrests, unduly harms, sexually assaults, or kills someone, any previous record of misconduct ought to be a matter of public record. To that end, the state of California recently passed Senate Bill 1421, legislation designed to make police records more readily available to media, civil rights groups, defense attorneys, and the public. But as our guest, Appeal contributor Darwin BondGraham explains, police unions and local governments aren't enacting the law without a fight.

About 1,000 people die in U.S. jails every year. But Erie County, New York, is an outlier, with 24 such deaths since Timothy Howard took over as sheriff in 2005. This week, we're going to talk with Appeal contributor Raina Lipsitz about what's happening in Erie County and what it tells us about the broader problem of people dying in jail.

As the government shutdown drags on, a number of media outlets––from NBC News to USA Today to the Washington Post––have run stories claiming that federal prisoners are eating elaborate steak dinners while prison guards go unpaid. This narrative, while obviously bogus, initially went unchallenged. This week, we are joined by two people who will help debunk it: Amy Ralston Povah, a prison reform advocate and formerly incarcerated person, and Craig Cesal, a federal prisoner in Terre Haute, Indiana, currently serving life.

Following the Alton Sterling shooting in the summer of 2016, the national media briefly turned its attention to Baton Rouge—a city marked by a long history of segregation and racist policing. After the killing, local politicians promised reform but two-and-a-half years on there's been little to no progress—some say the situation has only gotten worse. This week's guests, Appeal contributors Clarissa Sosin and Daryl Khan, join us from Baton Rouge to discuss recent cases of police brutality and how reformers are working to push back, long after the national spotlight has faded.

In the past few years, criminal justice reformers have focused on city police departments and prosecutors. What might be gained from focusing on sheriffs' departments? Sheriffs wield a tremendous amount of power in our criminal justice system but largely fly under the radar. Often running on tough on crime platforms, once elected, they are largely unaccountable to city councils and other elected officials. Appeal writer Jessica Pishko has recently written an explainer on the subject, and joins to talk about county sheriffs.

With the swearing in of President Trump in January 2017 came an aggressive rightward shift in America's immigration policy, specifically with regard to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Our guest, Appeal senior reporter Debbie Nathan, has been documenting how municipalities throughout the United States, especially those in deep red Texas, are pushing back using everything from mass protests to direct action to lawsuits.

It's been over four years since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and the issue of racism in the criminal legal system remains as stark and urgent as ever. Our guest, professor at American University College of Law, Appeal contributor and author, Angela J. Davis, recently edited an anthology on race and the US criminal system called 'Policing the Black Man' that lays out, in no uncertain terms, just how wide the gap is between the experiences of white and black Americans in everything from policing to bail to conviction rates. She joins us to discuss what the data says––and  what's being done to correct it.

We've watched the scene play out in countless police dramas: slick scientific experts with the latest gadgets and technology finding the Bad Guys with forensic pattern matching: Bite marks, fingerprints, a marking on a fired bullet or handwriting on a note. But how scientific are these methods? And how much do prosecutors and judges wildly oversell their reliability? This week, we are joined by Jessica Brand, Legal Director at The Justice Collaborative and Appeal contributor to discuss some of the pseudo-science behind forensic science.

"Criminal justice reform" as a general label has become trendy in recent years and, for many prospective Presidential candidates it will be a major 2020 litmus test. But what do people mean when they use the term? What are the policies being advanced and what are some of the dangers of surface-level reformist language unattached to specific, activist-led initiatives? This week, we are joined by The Appeal's Josie Duffy Rice to discuss how one can separate real reform from the dangers or faux-reform. 

Most people know that the healthcare situation in the United States is one of most precarious in the world, but what's never talked about is the status of healthcare for America's 2.2 million incarcerated persons––which is lightyears worse. One prison in particular, Angola in Louisiana, rates at the very bottom of even this group, with mortality rates almost double the national average for prisons. Our guest, Mercedes Montagnes of the Promise of Justice Initiative, is a lawyer helping people incarcerated at Angola sue the state for alleged abuse, neglect and injury. 

This fall, thousands of incarcerated people in dozens of states went on strike to protest harsh and exploitative conditions in America's prisons. Prisons, and the cruel conditions they foster, are often the last thing with which the public wants to be confronted about. But incarcerated people throughout the country are using the only leverage they have—their personal labor—to force the issue. Our guest, Appeal staff reporter Raven Rakia, joins us to talk about these efforts and what the future holds for the prisoners' rights movement

Two pieces of news have rocked Chicago: the announcement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that he will not seek a third term and the conviction of a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke, of the killing of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald. Both events were the result of years of activism, work that often goes unseen and unsung. This week's guest, writer Kelly Hayes, talks about the lessons Chicago holds for activists throughout the country.

The United States is alone in the world in pursuing two modes of prosecution: giving life sentences to children under 18, and giving life sentences for murder to people who never murdered anyone. Even if one doesn't pull any trigger, or even have prior knowledge of a crime, they can be treated as if they are a murderer--if a killing occurs pursuant an underlying felony like robbery or carjacking. Appeal contributor Katie Rose Quandt joins us to discusses why felony murder laws are unjust and how activists are pushing back against this uniquely American brand of cruel and unusual punishment.  

"Police accountability" is a term that gets thrown around a lot in conversations about criminal justice reform. But how do we make sure police officers who break laws or department rules are held to account? The reality––even four years after Ferguson––is that little progress has been made in creating structures that discipline police officers for bad behavior. Our guest, Appeal reporter George Joseph, has been doing deep dives into police discipline in cities across America. The findings? A system that still routinely protects its worst offenders.