The Appeal

By The Appeal

What's The Appeal about?

The Appeal is a podcast, hosted by Adam Johnson, on criminal justice reform, abolition and everything in between. Each week we will feature fascinating interviews with those covering, working in, and most affected by the American criminal system; from lawyers to activists to reporters to the formerly incarcerated. The Appeal will unpack the latest efforts to shine a light on––and radically rethink––the largest prison state in the world.

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LAST EPISODE

Episode 65: The Cruel Rise ...

02.27.2020

In 2014, then-23 year-old Morgan Godvin sold a small amount of heroin to her friend and fellow drug user Justin DeLong who subsequently overdosed and died. Morgan was charged by the federal government for “drug delivery resulting in death” and ...

The Appeal episodes:

02.27.2020 Episode 65: The Cruel Rise of 'Drug Induced Homicide' Prosecutions In 2014, then-23 year-old Morgan Godvin sold a small amount of heroin to her friend and fellow drug user Justin DeLong who subsequently overdosed and died. Morgan was charged by the federal government for “drug delivery resulting in death” and ...
02.13.2020 Episode 64: Documenting the Death Penalty Despite hundreds of people being put to death in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, surprisingly little data exists on who exactly is killed by the government. Two reporters at The Intercept, Jordan ...
02.06.2020 Episode 62: Police Abuse In American Schools In recent years, the number of police in American schools has skyrocketed as social services have been cut. As of 2016, 1.7 million students are in schools with police officers but no counselors, 3 million students are in schools with ...
01.30.2020 Episode 62: Locking Up Women For Killing Their Rapists In 2018, Brittany Smith was assaulted and raped by a man in her Alabama home. Later that night, when the same man attacked both her and her brother, Smith shot and killed him in what she calls self-defense. Now she’s ...
01.23.2020 Appeal Podcast: Reexamining the Science of Shaken Baby Syndrome Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) bas been the subject of countless news specials, TV drama plots, and shocking tabloid headlines––horrific tales of child abuse, quickly met with the firm justice of the state. But in recent years, medical and legal experts ...
01.16.2020 Episode 60: Substandard Healthcare in American Prisons The only people in the United States the government is required by law to provide healthcare for are the incarcerated. But what constitutes a baseline standard of care is very much in doubt and many human rights activists and legal ...
12.12.2019 Episode 59: The Regressive Pseudoscience of Our "War on Opioid Addiction" On our last episode of the year we're doing something a little different: Joining us to co-host this week is Appeal contributor Zach Siegel, who’s a journalism fellow at Northeastern University Law School’s Health in Justice Action Lab, to discuss ...
12.05.2019 Episode 58: The Cruel Roadblocks to Getting Innocent People Out of Prison Last month, 106 legal scholars signed a brief supporting St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner's efforts to get a new trial for Lamar Johnson, a man convicted of murder in 1995 for a crime many––including the prosecutor's office that convicted him––say ...
11.21.2019 Episode 57: Imagining a Post-Incarceration World To those tasked with radically reimagining the U.S. legal system and moving it away from the current carceral, hyper-punitive model, the logical question arises: What do you replace it with? It’s a fair question and one activists and thinkers have ...
11.14.2019 Episode 56: States Turn To Nitrogen Gas For Executions, Despite Doctors' Concerns Facing legal challenges and a shortage of drugs for lethal injections, Oklahoma was the first state to announce a plan to use nitrogen to execute prisoners on death row. Mississippi and Alabama soon followed, though none of the states has ...
11.07.2019 Episode 55: When Criminal Justice Reform Preserves The Status Quo There’s a growing acceptance of the idea that we need to overhaul our system of mass incarceration. But methods for doing so vary enormously––and some are causing more harm than good. Today’s guest, Civil Rights Corps founder Alec Karakatsanis, has ...
10.31.2019 Episode 54: When Police Officers Double as Prosecutors In nine states, police officers are permitted to act as prosecutors and arraign people for misdemeanor charges. In Rhode Island, the practice is the norm, meaning that thousands of people face potentially life-altering criminal charges without a public defender at ...
10.24.2019 Episode 53: A Lack of Basic Rights for Incarcerated Workers Many states pay incarcerated workers just 20 or 30 cents per hour--and some don't pay them at all. But incarcerated workers also have virtually no labor rights or civil rights when it comes to battling discrimination based on race, religion, ...
10.10.2019 Episode 52: The Problem With Jailhouse Informants Jailhouse informants are a fixture of pop culture, helping TV prosecutors secure convictions in exchange for leniency or other favors. But the public—and by extension, juries—are largely ignorant of just how common, and how damaging, jailhouse informants are to the ...
10.03.2019 Episode 51: U.S. Prisoners on Death Row Endure Permanent Solitary Before Execution In addition to being unique among Western nations in executing people, the U.S. keeps many of its death row prisoners in prolonged solitary confinement, which is known to inflict physical and psychological harm. Today’s guest, Appeal staff reporter Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, ...
09.26.2019 Episode 50: The War on Drugs Continues In Family Court As cannabis use is legalized in more and more jurisdictions across the country, child protective systems aren't always keeping pace. Allegations of drug use are still raised in family court, particularly against parents of color, and those who admit using ...
09.19.2019 Episode 49: Chesa Boudin and the Meaning of 'Reform' Progressive prosecutors have swept into office across the country, winning district attorney seats in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, and beyond. But what does it mean to be a “reform prosecutor"? What is the ideology of the movement and those who lead ...
09.12.2019 Episode 48: The Rise of Registries Earlier this year, lawmakers in New York proposed a bill that would bar people convicted of multiple sex offenses from ever using New York City’s subway system again. The plan, which would inflict a form of banishment in the name ...
07.25.2019 End of Season Note to Listeners Thanks for all your support! We'll be back in September.
07.18.2019 Episode 47: The Media's Misguided Fentanyl Hype In recent years, lawmakers and the media have dusted off the 1980’s War on Drugs script to respond to an uptick in overdoses caused by a new, potent, heroin-like substance called fentanyl. Military officials are considering classifying it as a ...
07.11.2019 Episode 46: Pleading Guilty Just to Go Home Approximately half a million people are currently in jail awaiting trial across the United States, the vast majority because they are unable to pay bail. A 2018 study of Philadelphia and Miami-Dade found that people being held on bail earned ...
06.20.2019 Episode 45: Qualified Immunity, A Roadblock to Reform Efforts to hold police accountable for violating civil rights frequently come up against a legal roadblock known as "qualified immunity." Invented by the Supreme Court in 1967 and widely expanded in 1982, qualified immunity helps public officials avoid liability for ...
06.13.2019 Episode 44: What's Changed Since The 2018 Prison Strike? In August and September of last year, there were prison strikes in at least 17 states marked by work stoppages and hunger strikes. But what’s happened since? How have things improved or, in some cases, been made worse by the ...
06.06.2019 Episode 43: American Cities' Growing Reliance on Surveillance In an effort to meet public demand to reduce the size of the brick and mortar prison population, some jurisdictions are doing so but reinvesting manpower and money into what activists call “digital prisons.” In addition to electronic monitoring, this ...
05.30.2019 Episode 42: Criminal Justice Reform Hits Roadblock in Arizona Dozens of states have reformed their drug laws in recent years, but Arizona remains a stubborn outlier. In Maricopa County, for example, a recent report found that drug cases represent the "overwhelming majority" of charges filed. Up against powerful County ...
05.23.2019 Episode 41: Reframing The Bronx 120 Raid In April 2016, the NYPD, in concert with the FBI, ATF, DEA, and Homeland Security, descended onto the South Bronx, arresting scores of people in what was described as the largest "gang takedown" in city history. Preet Bharara, then U.S. ...
05.16.2019 Episode 40: Generational Harm, A Hidden Cost of Mass Incarceration On this podcast––and in other coverage of the criminal legal system––we tend to focus, understandably, on the people behind bars and on parole. But in reality, this only shows part of the damage inflicted by mass incarceration. Generational harm refers ...
05.02.2019 Episode 39: NYPD-SVU's Low Clearance Rate for Sexual Assault Despite having ‎more than 35,000 officers and a massive budget of over $5 billion a year, the NYPD––and its Special Victims Unit––have a high rate of prematurely closed rape cases compared to other police departments, leading critics to accuse the ...
04.25.2019 Episode 38: Privacy and Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) have exploded in popularity. In 2000, thirteen states used PDMPs; today, they exist in every state and Washington, D.C. These programs are ostensibly designed to respond to the opioid crisis by monitoring prescribed drugs and ...
04.18.2019 Episode 37: The Baltimore Police Department's Troubled Homicide Unit A recent lawsuit accused the Baltimore Police Department's homicide unit of a long pattern of questionable police work. Our guest, Appeal contributor Amelia McDonell-Parry, joins us today to discuss the case of Jerome L. Johnson, a man just released from ...
04.11.2019 Episode 36: The Long, Troubled History of Gravity Knife Prosecution For decades, the New York Police Department has arrested people, the vast majority people of color, for carrying so-called gravity knives, meant to open with a flick of the wrist. The problem is, it's not always clear what is and ...
04.04.2019 Episode 35: The Risks of Risk Assessment As more and more states seek to abandon cash bail, a system widely seen as unjust and discriminatory, a question has emerged: What should replace it? Increasingly, the answer involves some sort of “risk assessment”––tools designed to predict an arrestee’s ...
03.14.2019 Episode 34: Pushing for Police Accountability in Sacramento In March 2018, police in Sacramento, California killed Stephon Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old, in his grandparents' backyard. A year later, District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert's announcement that charges would not be filed against the two officers responsible for his death ...
03.07.2019 Episode 33: The Backlash Against Expanding Voting Rights States throughout the U.S. have recently expanded voting rights to millions of people with felony records previously barred from participating in elections. After a brief moment of celebration, two of them, Iowa and Florida, are now experiencing backlash from Republican ...
02.28.2019 Episode 32: Mayor of Jackson Faces Uphill Battle for Police Accountability Elected in 2017 to much fanfare from progressives, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba promised to transform Jackson, Mississippi, into the “most radical city on the planet.” But almost immediately, one of Lumumba's signature reforms—an effort to hold police more accountable for ...
02.21.2019 Episode 31: Prisoners With Disabilities Fight for Equal Rights In the public mind, incarcerated people are often better left in the dark––unseen and unconsidered. That's especially true when it comes to prisoners with disabilities, who suffer from both the routine cruel conditions of America’s prisons and a widespread non-compliance ...
02.14.2019 Episode 30: How Police Unions Are Fighting California's New Transparency Law A primary demand of the Black Lives Matter movement is more transparency into police misconduct. When an officer improperly arrests, unduly harms, sexually assaults, or kills someone, any previous record of misconduct ought to be a matter of public record. ...
02.07.2019 Episode 29: A Pattern of Jail Deaths in Upstate New York—and Across the Country About 1,000 people die in U.S. jails every year. But Erie County, New York, is an outlier, with 24 such deaths since Timothy Howard took over as sheriff in 2005. This week, we’re going to talk with Appeal contributor Raina ...
01.24.2019 Episode 28: Debunking the ‘Fake News’ About Federal Prisoners’ Steak Dinners As the government shutdown drags on, a number of media outlets––from NBC News to USA Today to the Washington Post––have run stories claiming that federal prisoners are eating elaborate steak dinners while prison guards go unpaid. This narrative, while obviously ...
01.17.2019 Episode 27: Promise and Letdown in Post-Alton Sterling Baton Rouge Following the Alton Sterling shooting in the summer of 2016, the national media briefly turned its attention to Baton Rouge—a city marked by a long history of segregation and racist policing. After the killing, local politicians promised reform but two-and-a-half ...
01.10.2019 Episode 26: The Power of Sheriffs In the past few years, criminal justice reformers have focused on city police departments and prosecutors. What might be gained from focusing on sheriffs' departments? Sheriffs wield a tremendous amount of power in our criminal justice system but largely fly ...
12.13.2018 Episode 25: How Some Cities Are Fighting Back Against ICE With the swearing in of President Trump in January 2017 came an aggressive rightward shift in America’s immigration policy, specifically with regard to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Our guest, Appeal senior reporter Debbie Nathan, has been documenting how municipalities throughout ...
12.06.2018 Episode 24: BLM Four Years On - Racism in the Criminal Justice System It's been over four years since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and the issue of racism in the criminal legal system remains as stark and urgent as ever. Our guest, professor at American University College of Law, ...
11.29.2018 Episode 23: The Pseudoscience behind Forensic Science We’ve watched the scene play out in countless police dramas: slick scientific experts with the latest gadgets and technology finding the Bad Guys with forensic pattern matching: Bite marks, fingerprints, a marking on a fired bullet or handwriting on a ...
11.15.2018 Episode 22: The Dangers of Faux-Reform “Criminal justice reform” as a general label has become trendy in recent years and, for many prospective Presidential candidates it will be a major 2020 litmus test. But what do people mean when they use the term? What are the ...
11.07.2018 Episode 21: Criminalizing Trans Lives Perhaps no group is more vulnerable to violence in our society than trans people, especially black and latino trans people. Often treated with scorn by police and judges, trans people are frequently criminalized for what would commonly be viewed as ...
11.01.2018 Episode 20: Neglect and Abuse in Our Prison Healthcare System Most people know that the healthcare situation in the United States is one of most precarious in the world, but what’s never talked about is the status of healthcare for America’s 2.2 million incarcerated persons––which is lightyears worse. One prison ...
10.25.2018 Episode 19: Prison Strikes and the Frontlines of Resistance Against Mass Incarceration This fall, thousands of incarcerated people in dozens of states went on strike to protest harsh and exploitative conditions in America's prisons. Prisons, and the cruel conditions they foster, are often the last thing with which the public wants to ...
10.11.2018 Episode 18: How Activists Brought Down the Most Powerful Man in Chicago Two pieces of news have rocked Chicago: the announcement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that he will not seek a third term and the conviction of a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke, of the killing of a black teenager, Laquan ...
10.04.2018 Episode 17: The Cruelty of Life Sentences For Proxy Crime The United States is alone in the world in pursuing two modes of prosecution: giving life sentences to children under 18, and giving life sentences for murder to people who never murdered anyone. Even if one doesn’t pull any trigger, ...

Older episodes

The Appeal

What's The Appeal about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Appeal episodes:

Episode 65: The Cruel Rise of 'Drug Induced Homicide' Prosecutions

Episode 64: Documenting the Death Penalty

Episode 62: Police Abuse In American Schools

Episode 62: Locking Up Women For Killing Their Rapists

Appeal Podcast: Reexamining the Science of Shaken Baby Syndrome

Episode 60: Substandard Healthcare in American Prisons

Episode 59: The Regressive Pseudoscience of Our "War on Opioid Addiction"

Episode 58: The Cruel Roadblocks to Getting Innocent People Out of Prison

Episode 57: Imagining a Post-Incarceration World

Episode 56: States Turn To Nitrogen Gas For Executions, Despite Doctors' Concerns

Episode 55: When Criminal Justice Reform Preserves The Status Quo

Episode 54: When Police Officers Double as Prosecutors

Episode 53: A Lack of Basic Rights for Incarcerated Workers

Episode 52: The Problem With Jailhouse Informants

Episode 51: U.S. Prisoners on Death Row Endure Permanent Solitary Before Execution

Episode 50: The War on Drugs Continues In Family Court

Episode 49: Chesa Boudin and the Meaning of 'Reform'

Episode 48: The Rise of Registries

End of Season Note to Listeners

Episode 47: The Media's Misguided Fentanyl Hype

Episode 46: Pleading Guilty Just to Go Home

Episode 45: Qualified Immunity, A Roadblock to Reform

Episode 44: What's Changed Since The 2018 Prison Strike?

Episode 43: American Cities' Growing Reliance on Surveillance

Episode 42: Criminal Justice Reform Hits Roadblock in Arizona

Episode 41: Reframing The Bronx 120 Raid

Episode 40: Generational Harm, A Hidden Cost of Mass Incarceration

Episode 39: NYPD-SVU's Low Clearance Rate for Sexual Assault

Episode 38: Privacy and Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs

Episode 37: The Baltimore Police Department's Troubled Homicide Unit

Episode 36: The Long, Troubled History of Gravity Knife Prosecution

Episode 35: The Risks of Risk Assessment

Episode 34: Pushing for Police Accountability in Sacramento

Episode 33: The Backlash Against Expanding Voting Rights

Episode 32: Mayor of Jackson Faces Uphill Battle for Police Accountability

Episode 31: Prisoners With Disabilities Fight for Equal Rights

Episode 30: How Police Unions Are Fighting California's New Transparency Law

Episode 29: A Pattern of Jail Deaths in Upstate New York—and Across the Country

Episode 28: Debunking the ‘Fake News’ About Federal Prisoners’ Steak Dinners

Episode 27: Promise and Letdown in Post-Alton Sterling Baton Rouge

Episode 26: The Power of Sheriffs

Episode 25: How Some Cities Are Fighting Back Against ICE

Episode 24: BLM Four Years On - Racism in the Criminal Justice System

Episode 23: The Pseudoscience behind Forensic Science

Episode 22: The Dangers of Faux-Reform

Episode 21: Criminalizing Trans Lives

Episode 20: Neglect and Abuse in Our Prison Healthcare System

Episode 19: Prison Strikes and the Frontlines of Resistance Against Mass Incarceration

Episode 18: How Activists Brought Down the Most Powerful Man in Chicago

Episode 17: The Cruelty of Life Sentences For Proxy Crime