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 Senate has confirmed Merrick Garland to run the Justice Department. He's vowed to crack down on violent domestic extremists and reduce racial disparities in the justice system.
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Two more of President Biden's nominees to lead the Justice Department will be questioned by the Senate this week as Merrick Garland prepares for confirmation as attorney general.
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The newly disclosed documents give a window into the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan after a judge started asking questions about a case that the Justice Department won but then abandoned.
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A new study of diversity on the bench reports that judges who worked as prosecutors and corporate attorneys are significantly more likely to rule in favor of employers in workplace disputes.
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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.
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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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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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The scholarship program, sponsored by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, intends to support the next generation of civil rights advocates working in the South.
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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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"Our job, we know, has never been more important, more significant, or more challenging than it is right now," says Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.