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.
-
A scholarship program named after late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to be a federal judge, is trying to foster a new generation of lawyers. -
Prisoners like Kent Clark who broke the law before 1987 should have a chance at parole, unlike more recent inmates. But there are dozens of men in their 60s and older who have little hope of release.
-
Prosecutors accuse the former officer and others of using excessive force and violating George Floyd's rights. The rare federal charges follow state charges in a trial in which Chauvin was convicted.
-
The former New York City mayor has been under investigation for years by federal authorities, who have been looking into his business dealings in Ukraine.
-
President Biden's rhetoric on criminal justice has excited longtime advocates for reforms. But action has been slow so far in the early days of the administration.
-
A major civil rights group is demanding the attorney general pause federal grants to local police until he confirms they aren't engaging in discrimination, citing more police killings of Black people.
-
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the inquiry a day after a jury convicted former officer Derek Chauvin on murder charges in the death of George Floyd.
-
Clarke faced senators in a hearing on Wednesday for consideration to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. If confirmed she would be the first woman and first woman of color in the job.
-
Current and former officials say that the executive order could mean that some pretrial detainees are housed hours away from courthouses where their cases will be heard, diverting resources.
-
Within the Federal Bureau of Prisons, inmates are asked to "voluntarily" agree to electronic monitoring in order to use the bureau's email system. But critics say there's nothing voluntary about it.
