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Criminal Justice Reform
Why Prosecutors Hold the Most Power in American Criminal Justice A forged check worth less than a hundred dollars became a life sentence in 1978. That case explains how charging and plea bargaining put prosecutors at the center of the system. Attica in September 1971 and the Prisoners' List of Demands What the men who took D Yard at Attica asked for in September 1971, how the state answered with gunfire, and why the lawsuits and cover-up fights lasted into this century. Bryan Stevenson and the Memorial to Lynching Victims in Montgomery How a death penalty lawyer in Alabama came to build a memorial to thousands of lynching victims, and why he insists the history of racial terror and today's prisons belong in one story. Furman, Gregg and the Four Years the Death Penalty Stopped How Furman v. Georgia emptied America's death rows in 1972, how states rewrote their laws in four years, and why the questions Gregg v. Georgia claimed to answer in 1976 never went away. George Floyd's Murder and the Police Reform Laws That Followed From a Minneapolis street corner on May 25, 2020, to statehouses and a stalled Senate deal: what changed in American policing law after George Floyd, and what was left by 2026. Gideon v. Wainwright and the Handwritten Petition From a Florida Cell How a drifter's pencil petition from a Florida prison led a unanimous Supreme Court in 1963 to promise every poor felony defendant a lawyer, and why that promise is still unfinished. How Exonerations Happen and What DNA Evidence Changed How wrongful convictions are discovered and overturned, what DNA testing revealed about eyewitnesses, confessions and forensic science, and the reforms that make mistakes less likely. How Illinois Became the First State to Abolish Cash Bail How the Illinois Supreme Court's July 18, 2023 ruling cleared the way for the end of money bail, what pretrial detention hearings look like now, and what other states can learn from it. How the First Step Act Shortened Federal Sentences A plain guide to the 2018 First Step Act: the sentencing changes, earned time credits and good-conduct fix that cut federal prison terms, and the limits and fights that followed. Miranda v. Arizona and the Warning Every Officer Learned to Recite How a 1963 Phoenix confession produced the 1966 Miranda warnings, how they work in an interrogation room today, and how a long line of later rulings narrowed what they protect. New York's 2020 Bail Law and the Fight Over What Happened Next How New York ended cash bail for most lower-level charges in 2019, what the evidence says happened after it took effect in 2020, and why the state rolled parts of it back three times. Qualified Immunity, the Court-Made Rule That Shields Officers How a 1967 case about clergymen arrested in a Jackson bus station grew into a doctrine that blocks civil-rights suits, and why critics on the left and right want it gone.