Justice

March 28, 2014 - This week Amnesty International released its annual report on the death penalty worldwide, finding that the United States executes more people than just four other countries -- China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It also shows that when it comes to state-sanctioned killing, the U.S. South is an outlier among outliers.

March 26, 2014 - Watchdog groups are raising concerns about calls to move coal ash from wet impoundments into dry landfills, warning of inevitable leakage from landfills that are typically located in low-income and minority communities. Instead, they propose storing the waste above ground in concrete vaults on power plant property.

March 21, 2014 - Amid Republican-led efforts in states nationwide to shrink the early voting period before Election Day, voting rights advocates scored a big victory this week in a state where the GOP enjoys a strong majority.

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"?

March 7, 2014 - Given its tendency to contaminate water, coal ash is an obvious environmental issue. But its disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and people of color also make it a justice issue.

March 7, 2014 - The restaurant industry is the largest source of sexual harassment claims, while Florida's Coalition of Immokalee Workers says harassment of women farmworkers is pervasive.

March 6, 2014 - With a new poll finding North Carolina voters overwhelmingly want state officials to force Duke Energy to clean up its coal ash pits, a protest outside the governor's mansion that involved the Moral Monday movement leader turned up the heat on the McCrory administration, which is under federal investigation following the Feb. 2 spill into the Dan River.