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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Advocates say defendants who go to trial face much longer prison sentences — a so-called trial penalty. It can even lead innocent people to strike plea deals. -
Closing arguments in the landmark seditious conspiracy trial against five Proud Boys focused on their own words and the words of former President Trump. -
Pras Michel faces several federal criminal charges stemming from money he accepted from a fugitive billionaire, allegedly seeking to win access to the White House.
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Jeb Boasberg is taking over as chief judge of the federal district court in Washington as grand jury investigations of former President Donald Trump intensify. -
The criminal charges — a historic first against a sitting or former president — are the culmination of an investigation into hush-money payments that Trump paid to cover up an alleged affair. -
Prosecutors allege Pras Michel illegally helped steer money from a Malaysian billionaire who helped finance The Wolf of Wall Street, a 2013 film, in which Leonardo DiCaprio starred. -
Prosecutors said musician Pras Michel collected exorbitant sums of money from a billioniare desperate to win access to two separate U.S. presidents. -
Hip-hop musician Pras Michel of Fugees faces criminal trial in Washington, D.C., for allegedly conspiring to violate election law and influence American policymakers on behalf of China. -
Public defenders operate under heavy pressure and budget constraints 60 years after the Supreme Court ruled low-income criminal defendants should be provided lawyers even if they can't pay for them. -
On his way to Ukraine for an unannounced visit last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke about upholding the rule of law inside the U.S. and overseas in an exclusive interview with NPR.
