This week, Louisiana became the first state to enact a “Blue Lives Matter” law, which makes attacking police a hate crime. Now, New York is considering a similar law. This is the inevitable political evolution of our well-intentioned but misguided hate crime laws.

This afternoon, Donald Trump released a list of 11 potential Supreme Court justices. Unless you play Fantasy Federal Judge there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of any of these people, which is good, because Trump has already shown that the sort of people who have heard of these potential justices are completely irrelevant.

On Monday, a district judge in Arkansas permanently resigned from public office after investigators discovered more then 4,000 photos of naked young men identified as former defendants on his computer, NBC News reports.

More than half a century after he says police pressured him into confessing to a crime he did not commit, 81-year-old Paul Gatling has finally cleared his name. On Monday, the Brooklyn District Attorney fully vacated Gatling’s wrongful 1964 conviction for murder, a crime for which he served 10 years in prison, The New York Times reports.

A new ACLU report shines a light on the bizarre and troubling netherworld of South Carolina’s “summary courts,” which “refuse to provide counsel to the poor at all stages of the criminal process, and force defendants who can’t afford to pay fines to instead serve time in jail.”

Solitary confinement is torture. Confinement in a solitary cell with a cellmate? That my be even worse.

Andre Hatchett was 24 years old when he was convicted of murdering a woman in a Brooklyn park. This week, he was exonerated and set free at the age of 49.

Everyone knows that in America, you have a right to an attorney. Rich, poor, no matter what. If you’re facing a criminal trial, you’ll have a lawyer to represent you, if you want one. Except, it turns out, if you live in Louisiana.

A new report compares Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Hall to a “Third World country prison.”

The Justice Department is seeking court orders that would force Apple to help it bypass the security features on at least twelve other iPhones not connected to terrorism cases, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Lee Baca was the sheriff of Los Angeles County for 15 years beginning in 1999. Soon, he could be sentenced to jail.

The good news is that Saudi Arabia has changed its mind about executing a poet for “the contents of his poetry book.” Then there is the bad news.

What happens to a writer who becomes a political prisoner? “I have nothing to say.”

The United States incarcerates a sickening and outrageous number of people. Any idea that could mitigate this crisis is worth listening to. Here’s one.

The state of California issued a report this week on conditions at High Desert State Prison. It is a nightmare.

Let’s all look at the bad man in chains.

Since our nation executed nearly 100 people in 1999, the use of the death penalty has been on the decline. In 2015, executions became even more rare.

A foolproof way to feel good about yourself this holiday season is to send a message to a survivor of prison sexual abuse.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. Spare a thought for the hundreds of veterans currently sitting on death row somewhere in America.

Are there too many police or are there too few? In the months since Black Lives Matter activists first organized protests against police violence, the concept of over-policing has become key in understanding the dynamic against which they fight, especially in dramatically over-policed places like Ferguson. Some opponents contend that black communities are actually under-policed, citing rates of violent crime and 911 response time as the reason to increase police presence. The focus on numbers, however, belies the fact that both over- and under-policing have been used to oppress black communities.