Carrie Johnson
Carrie Johnson is a justice correspondent for the Washington Desk.
She covers a wide variety of stories about justice issues, law enforcement, and legal affairs for NPR's flagship programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as the newscasts and NPR.org.
Johnson has chronicled major challenges to the landmark voting rights law, a botched law enforcement operation targeting gun traffickers along the Southwest border, and the Obama administration's deadly drone program for suspected terrorists overseas.
Prior to coming to NPR in 2010, Johnson worked at the Washington Post for 10 years, where she closely observed the FBI, the Justice Department, and criminal trials of the former leaders of Enron, HealthSouth, and Tyco. Earlier in her career, she wrote about courts for the weekly publication Legal Times.
Her work has been honored with awards from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the Society for Professional Journalists, SABEW, and the National Juvenile Defender Center. She has been a finalist for the Loeb Award for financial journalism and for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for team coverage of the massacre at Fort Hood, Texas.
Johnson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Benedictine University in Illinois.
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The former Supreme Court nominee will face the Senate this week as President Biden's pick to lead the Justice Department. If confirmed, he'll inherit a department reeling from political scandals. -
The Evans brothers are now home in Philadelphia after decades in prison. Convicted of second degree murder, they had few options for release in Pennsylvania under current law.
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Jarring audio and video dotted arguments in Day 2 of former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial. House impeachment managers recounted, at times minute-by-minute, the violence of Jan. 6.
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More than 1,000 people are serving life sentences in Pennsylvania, even though they never intended to kill anyone — 70% of them are Black. A lawsuit calls the concept cruel and unconstitutional.
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President Biden has signed executive orders designed to promote equity in housing, phase out some private prisons and promote respect for Native American and Asian American communities.
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They say new police and surveillance powers could, if history is a guide, be used against Blacks and other people of color in the justice system, not the white rioters who stormed the Capitol.
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Officials say they're weeks away from a full understanding of how rioters may have planned to storm the U.S. Capitol. Dozens of people have been arrested, but the security threat may be far from over.
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President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Judge Merrick Garland to become attorney general in the new administration, NPR has learned.
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The federal appeals judge was spurned when Democrats supported him as a Supreme Court justice. Now the incoming Biden administration wants him to lead what it calls reform at the Justice Department.
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Executions and new death sentences in the U.S. reached historic lows, with only 17 people executed this year. The pandemic and longer-term trends are moving away from capital punishment, experts say.
