When a Pennsylvania jury sentenced Terrance Williams with the death penalty, they didn’t know he had suffered years of violent sexual abuse at the hands of his victim. 

If Anders Breivik’s twenty-one-year sentence is shocking to Americans, it is largely because we are so uniquely punitive, whether the crime is murder or drug possession.

What will Pennsylvania do with prisoners like Sharon Wiggins, who has been locked up for more than forty years for a crime she committed at 17?

The Supreme Court waved forward the execution of Marvin Wilson despite a 2002 ban on executing people with intellectual disabilities.

Illinois has shuttered a commission formed to examine the cases of prisoners who say they were abused under Chicago’s former Police Commander Jon Burge years ago. But a truth-telling play—by the journalist who broke the story—will not let us forget.

Why did the Court limit its ruling to cases with mandatory sentences, instead of banning juvenile life without parole altogether?

Why did the Court limit its ruling to cases with mandatory sentences, instead of banning juvenile life without parole altogether?

Trina Garnett accidentally set a fatal fire when she was 14. That was in 1976. Could today’s Supreme Court ruling against juvenile life without parole finally bring her home?

Some justices hint they might limit mandatory sentences that send teenagers to die in prison.

Even after her brother, Troy Davis, was executed, Martina never stopped fighting the death penalty. Yesterday, she lost her fight against breast cancer.