Equal Justice Initiative

Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama, has been ranked as one of the ten worst prisons in the country.

On April 29, 2013, the Florida Senate sent Governor Rick Scott a bill that would speed up appeals in cases where the death penalty has been imposed, despite Florida's troubling record of making mistakes in death penalty cases.

On Friday, May 3, 2013, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Jeffery Riggs's capital murder conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial because the trial court failed to properly instruct the jury.

Sixteen-year-old Kiera Wilmot was working on a science project at Bartow High School in Bartow, Florida, before school last Monday when she went outside to mix common household chemicals in an eight-ounce plastic water bottle that caused the bottle's top to pop off and produced some smoke. The school decided to have her arrested and charged with a felony.

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley today signed into law a bipartisan measure that abolishes capital punishment in the State of Maryland, making it the 18th state to abolish the death penalty, and the sixth in the last six years.

As lynching declined in the 1940s, court ordered executions increased, especially in the South, where very clear racial patterns were evident. Almost 87% of the people executed for rape from 1930 to 1972 were black men convicted of raping white women. Many trials that produced death sentences were unreliable and accompanied by community pressure for an execution.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Kuntrell Jackson, who was originally sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for an offense at age 14, is now entitled to a new sentencing hearing.

Gun control measures failed in the United States Senate last week despite polls showing that nine in ten Americans support expanded background checks for most gun sales. Recent reports have shown a strong relationship between the strength of gun laws and the level of gun violence.

A group of researchers, analysts, and advocates focused on ending mass incarceration in the United States issued a paper this week that concludes the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI) has fallen short of its original intent to reduce corrections populations and costs in order to reinvest savings in proven public safety policies.

Lawyers with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice were at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama, last week as part of a formal inquiry into widespread sexual abuse of women prisoners by male guards.