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 Supreme Court recently said police overstepped their legal authority by planting a GPS tracker on the car of a suspected drug dealer without a search warrant. The decision set off alarm bells at the FBI, where officials are trying to determine whether they need to change the way they work. -
For the first time, researchers have surveyed more than 1,600 young people serving life without the possibility of parole. The study found that many came from homes of violence and abuse. And for many young offenders, educational programs in jail are out of reach. -
Democrats Ron Wyden and Mark Udall are pressing the Justice Department to reveal more about some key provisions of the Act and how it interprets them.
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A blistering report finds the government team concealed documents that would have helped the late Ted Stevens, a longtime Republican senator from Alaska, defend himself against false-statements charges in 2008. Stevens lost his Senate seat as the scandal played out and later died in a plane crash. -
The sheer number of law enforcement officers makes it hard for big gangs to meet openly in New York City the way they did back in the 1980s, so many gang members who have left state prison have migrated north. Authorities say they brought shootings and stabbings with them. -
Rep. Adam Schiff says the law would give federal agents new tools to crack down on the flow of weapons across the Southwest border into Mexico.
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Federal prosecutors have charged five men with responsibility for some of the biggest computer hacks in the past few years. The FBI says the hackers penetrated the computer systems of businesses like Fox Broadcasting and Sony Pictures, stole confidential information and splashed it all over the Internet. -
Robert Levinson disappeared five years ago this week on Kish Island, Iran. -
In a speech at Northwestern University Law School, the attorney general said the president "may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war — even if that individual happens to be a U.S. citizen." That position bothers civil libertarians. -
Attorney General Eric Holder spoke in Chicago on Monday on the legal rationales for targeting and killing Americans suspected of terrorism overseas. Carrie Johnson talks to Melissa Block.
