criminal justice

March 13, 2014 - This week Glenn Ford, a black man wrongfully convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana, was freed after spending 30 years on death row at the state's notorious Angola penitentiary. What did he endure in a place where a federal judge has ruled conditions amount to "cruel and unusual punishment"?

December 17, 2013 - The private prison industry is fueling high incarceration rates in Mississippi and elsewhere in the United States. It's a way to keep an indentured class in a state and nation built on slavery.

January 11, 2013 - The Koch brother from another mother overseeing the state budget. A man found guilty of assaulting children running the Department of Public Safety. A science skeptic chosen to protect the environment. What is Gov. Pat McCrory thinking?

July 12, 2012 - Before its purchase by Wells Fargo, North Carolina-based Wachovia laundered over $378 billion for illegal drug organizations -- and paid just $160 million in fines. It's part of a broader and disturbing trend in the U.S. banking industry.

May 14, 2012 - Louisiana locks up its population at a rate triple that of Iran and seven times that of China. How did it become the world's incarceration capitol? Follow the money.

April 25, 2012 - The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that a BP engineer deleted messages he sent to company executives suggesting the amount of oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon site was much greater than they were telling the public.

December 27, 2011 - On September 21, 2011, Troy Davis was executed in Georgia by lethal injection, capping a 20-year legal battle. In our countdown of Facing South's top stories of 2011, we look at the case that galvanized a national movement and forced questions about race, the death penalty and criminal justice into the national debate.

September 22, 2011 - Georgia executed Davis for the murder of an off-duty police officer based on the testimony of eyewitnesses -- most of whom later recanted. How differently might the case have ended if the state had implemented a set of common-sense reforms promoted by criminal-justice advocates?

September 22, 2011 - The Troy Davis case has thrust the death penalty into the national debate. But the media and lawmakers may be overlooking the two biggest factors driving executions: region and race.