Sacramento County Crime & Justice Articles

Psychedelics are having a moment. A nationwide push to bring magic mushrooms and other psychedelics into the mainstream is gaining traction, and some Californians want in.

More California police departments are deploying body cameras. A new court ruling restricts how prosecutors can use footage of witness accounts at trial.

Almost half of the jobs for doctors and psychiatrists in California prisons are unfilled. Now, their union says it’s ready to strike over pay even as the state faces a steep budget deficit.

A yearlong investigation shows that a $100 million-a-year rehabilitation program for former California prisoners grew with little oversight from the state corrections agency. It's unclear how many parolees wind up back in prison.

A Bay Area woman sued her husband's employer after she became infected with COVID-19. The California Supreme Court found that giving her workers' comp could set a precedent that would imperil the system.

The first-in-the-nation state-appointed task force report contains hundreds of recommendations for reparation, including a proposal that the state apologize and make financial amends for slavery and decades of racist policies.

In a landmark case, California's Supreme Court will decide if cities must switch their at-large elections to a voting-by-district system after hearing oral arguments the Pico Neighborhood Association v. Santa Monica voting rights case June 27.

The population of transgender inmates in California prisoners surged by 234 percent in the years since the state adopted a first-in-the-nation policy allowing gender-affirming health care.

Learn about the charismatic leaders who founded Daughters of Bilitis, Mattachine Society, ONE Inc. and other “homophile movement” groups in the Golden State.

You have to be 18 to get divorced in California, but there’s no minimum age to get married. Child marriage survivors protested at the state Capitol, but the Legislature likely won’t act until next year.

Gov. Gavin Newsom took to his Twitter account to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would regulate gun sales and use nationwide, in a way that courts cannot change.

‘You small, pathetic man,’ Gavin Newsom wrote in a Twitter post suggesting he’d pursue criminal charges against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over recent migrant flights to Sacramento.

California is unwinding the prison-building boom of the 1980s and 1990s. The cuts are falling on small towns that banked on government jobs to anchor their communities.

More than 4 percent of death penalty convicts have been wrongfully convicted, data shows. But courts including the U.S. Supreme Court have failed to provide protections for the innocent facing death at the hands of the state.

The death penalty remains legal in California, but Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium on executions in 2019. Will capital punishment end in the state? Here’s what’s happening.

The California Supreme Court has kept the state at the forefront of legal issues surrounding abortion, the death penalty and same-sex marriage, starting in its earliest days in the Gold Rush era.

Fears that violent crime is out of control on the streets of California cities rose after the murder of a well-known tech exec. But what are the facts and do they back up the rising moral panic about crime?

Three mass shootings with at least six fatalities have already taken place in California in 2023, resulting in 25 deaths. Statistically however, California has been below average for the United States in rate of mass shooting deaths.

The task force members are discussing monetary and nonmonetary reparations ideas to compensate for slavery and racism. Some say they want policies to prevent future harms against Black Californians.