Posts on Criminal Justice and Prison Reform

Some mysteries are buried deep, but they never truly disappear. For the past year, I’ve been immersed in the cold, hard details of a case that’s haunted me since I first started researching it three decades ago. Bringing The Jacklighter to life has been an exercise in reconstruction—sifting through old boxes of evidence, documents, and now ...

The Washington Post’s George Will was out with an important op-ed this week that shines a spotlight on the legal loophole of “qualified immunity,” a principle that gives lawsuit protection to government workers acting in an official capacity. Will’s piece centers on a U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that prevented a family from ...

Welcome to my digital home! This space is devoted to tidbits about my book in progress, Chained Birds: A True Crime Memoir, my publishing safari, anything that catches my fancy in the true crime world, and posts about prison reform and the criminal justice system — a central theme to Chain Birds’ story. More than ten ...