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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House Republicans are meeting this week to discuss their plans at they hold the majority in the House. They find themselves defending former President Donald Trump.
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This week marks the 60th anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court case that guaranteed criminal defendants the right to a lawyer. That guarantee has been challenged by budgets and high demand.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland has made a surprise visit to Ukraine Friday to attend a war crimes conference and to pledge his support.
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The director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives speaks out about mass shootings and what his agency is doing to help solve violent crimes.
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The Sentencing Commission is considering changing how federal prisoners can request compassionate release, a program essential to inmates with a terminally illness or other extraordinary circumstance.
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New scientific research is making it easier to detect bruises on people with darker skin, which has big implications for assault and violence cases that go to court. -
Prosecutors won convictions of four Oath Keepers on seditious conspiracy charges, while a separate jury convicted the rioter who put his feet on then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desk.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed special counsel Robert Hur, who will take charge of an investigation of classified documents found at President Biden's home and private office.
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The Senate failed to advance a bill that would have reduced one of the most persistent racial disparities in criminal justice: punishment for crack cocaine.(Story aired on ATC on Jan. 9, 2023.)
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A bill that would have erased long-standing racial disparities in federal drug crimes failed to clear the Senate, disappointing thousands of people in prison and their families.
