My long-form pieces explore some of the most vexing problems at the heart of the criminal justice system. My long-form writing has been published in The Atlantic Magazine, Slate, and Politico Magazine. My op-eds about crime and justice and my essays about ambition, relationships, and child-rearing have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, and The San Francisco Chronicle. I have been a guest on CNN, Good Morning America, MSNBC, Fox, Democracy Now, NPR’s Morning Edition, NPR’s Weekend Edition, and the Tamron Hall Show, as well as local NPR stations KPCC and KCRW, among other media outlets.
Whatever the topic, my goal is the same: to ask—and answer—hard questions and provoke discussion with stories and opinions that are immediate and accessible to any curious reader.
To learn more, check out these profiles in MM LaFleur’s Lives with a Purpose and The Sun Magazine.
At 7:45 p.m. on December 27, 1986, Faheem Ali was shot dead in the streets of Baltimore. No physical evidence tied anyone to the killing, and no eyewitnesses immediately came forward. But Baltimore homicide detectives Thomas Pellegrini, Richard Fahlteich, and Oscar “The Bunk” Requer were not going to give up easily.
I used to believe that divorce is a terrible thing, particularly when children are involved. Growing up, I absorbed cultural tropes about absent fathers in efficiency apartments, mothers struggling to support themselves, and awful stepparents and unwanted stepsiblings. To this day, divorce is portrayed as precarious and grim. Parents whose marriages break apart are made to feel they have failed catastrophically. Divorce is shameful, traumatic and Bad For The Kids.
The legal doctrine that allows people to be prosecuted for murder even if they didn’t kill anyone has fallen out of favor across the globe. In America, it remains common.
When it comes to the Supreme Court, we’ve been to this identity politics movie before.
So what if he chews the furniture and shreds my papers. He opened up our locked-down world.
More than a year after California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, issued a moratorium on executions, condemned prisoners are facing a new lethal enemy: COVID-19. San Quentin Prison, where 693 men now live under sentences of death, has been engulfed by the virus.* More than 2,100 people at San Quentin have been afflicted, including nearly one quarter of those on death row. To date, eight death row prisoners have died from complications stemming from COVID-19, comprising half the prison’s fatalities.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been praised for his swift action to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The governor’s March 19 statewide shelter-in-place order appears to have spared his constituents the fate of those in hot spots such as New York City, where thousands have died and tens of thousands more are ill.
As of April 11, the California Department of Corrections reported that the CDCR’s COVID-19 stats jumped again, with 55 incarcerated persons who have tested positive for the virus, and 77 CDCR staff members who had also tested positive, for a total of 132 affected.
Ours last 15 minutes, and it’s a daily way to let go of fear, frustration and sadness as we shelter in place
Restorative justice is an alternative we should also consider.
The police are waging an open war on St. Louis’ first black female prosecutor.
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With an acquittal all but certain, the best bet is to grab the attention of TV viewers — in 12 seconds
After he's sworn in on Wednesday as San Francisco's new district attorney, Chesa Boudin will need to get straight to work building relationships with city and law enforcement leaders if he wants a shot at turning his anti-establishment campaign promises into action.
Harris’s record as a prosecutor was representative of a politics of the past. The nation has moved on.
His victory marks a welcome shift from the “tough on crime” norms to bold positions that veer radically to the left
Research shows access to a trauma center is critical after a shooting. But as gun deaths are rising in Philly, one trauma center has closed. Experts say a rise in homicides may prompt more policing.
She entered the 2020 presidential race with promise and charisma, but is now sliding perilously close to irrelevance. What went wrong? And is it too late for her to reverse course?
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Dirty cops. A bogus eyewitness. Years in violent prisons. And a liberal politician whose star keeps rising.