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An officer stands in a control room with cells visible beyond the windows.
The Lowdown May 26
The 1990s Law That Keeps People in Prison on Technicalities
How the Supreme Court expanded the most important law you’ve never heard of.
By Keri Blakinger and Beth Schwartzapfel
Feature March 24, 2021
A Bestselling Author Became Obsessed With Freeing a Man From Prison. It Nearly Ruined Her Life.
After the success of her novel Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen spent years trying to prove a man's innocence. Now she’s “absolutely broke” and “seriously ill,” and her next book is “years past deadline.”
By Abbott Kahler
Photographs by DeSean McClinton-Holland
Life Inside March 4, 2021
How I Keep Hope Alive While Serving 150 Years in Prison
In those moments when I feel like a puppet tied up in strings, I draw on my Muslim faith to stay hopeful.
by Tariq Maqbool
Life Inside April 30, 2020
A Juvenile Lifer Finds Peace in the Prison Garden
Bobby Bostic was sentenced to 241 years at age 16. Gardening, he writes, keeps him growing.
By Bobby Bostic
Feature January 6, 2019
The Volunteer
More than a year ago, Nevada death row prisoner Scott Dozier gave up his legal appeals and asked to be executed. He’s still waiting.
By Maurice Chammah
Lamont McKoy at Central Prison in 2008.
Analysis October 20, 2015
Why is a Man Serving Life for a Murder that Feds Say Someone Else Committed?
The unusual case of Lamont McKoy.
By Andrew Cohen
The Lowdown August 13, 2015
‘For $12 of Commissary, He Got 10 Years Off His Sentence.’
What it takes to be a jailhouse lawyer.
By Beth Schwartzapfel
News August 10, 2015
The Woman Who Spent Six Years Fighting a Traffic Stop
Getting caught in a speed trap in a small Louisiana town.
By Ken Armstrong
News June 25, 2015
Ohio Gets a Third Chance to Kill Michael Keenan
A case so messy one judge says it’s an argument for abolishing the death penalty.
By Ken Armstrong
Feature June 9, 2015
The Burnout
Missouri keeps killing Jennifer Herndon’s clients. So she invented an alternate life.
By Ken Armstrong
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