Identity & Justice

Pittsburgh’s police department had 84 police recruits last year, and according to a yearly statistical report released last week,  only four of them were black. That’s less than 5 percent of the class, in a city where African Americans make up roughly one-quarter of the population.

Gov. Tom Wolf has commuted the sentence of the brother of prize-winning author John Edgar Wideman in a 1975 killing, clearing the way for his release.

The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is suing state police for, it says, illegally turning drivers over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Forty million.

That’s the number of criminal charges in Pennsylvania that will be eligible for automatic sealing when the second phase of the state’s Clean Slate law kicks in Friday. 

One year ago, Michael Rosfeld, a white East Pittsburgh police officer, fatally shot Antwon Rose, a black unarmed teenager. In the immediate aftermath, many blamed local officials for Rosfeld’s actions and called for the small borough to make big changes.

A Syrian refugee who came to the U.S. three years ago plotted to bomb a church this spring to inspire followers of the Islamic State of Iraq, federal authorities said in announcing the man's arrest Wednesday. 

Pennsylvania voters will decide whether to enumerate victims' rights in the state constitution, a proposal likely to appear on the November ballot.

The state Senate voted unanimously Wednesday to give its final approval, putting the state's version of Marcy's Law on the ballot as a constitutional amendment referendum.

The remains of Native American children who died while attending school in the midstate more than a century ago will soon be returned to their surviving family members.

A man who told a grand jury investigating child sex abuse that he had victimized 16 to 18 people, but who couldn't be prosecuted because the cases were too old, is now seeking to keep his name and any other identifying information from being made public.

Details of the 2018 investigation and the man's testimony were disclosed this week when the state Supreme Court unsealed documents in the dispute over the grand jury's yet-to-be-released report, with any information that could identify the man blacked out.

A Pennsylvania court has ruled that an evolving legal landscape means a woman can pursue her lawsuit claiming officials in the Altoona-Johnstown Roman Catholic Diocese worked to conceal her alleged molestation by a priest. 

The Catholic Church spent more on lobbying efforts in Pennsylvania than in seven other northeastern U.S. states combined, according to a recent report covering 2011-2018.

The analysis, called “Church Influencing State: How the Catholic Church Spent Millions Against Survivors of Clergy Abuse,” draws a connection between lobbying expenditures and inaction on proposals that give victims of sexual abuse more chances to sue.

Fifty years ago police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar frequented by LGBTQ clientele in New York City. Those inside, led by transgender women of color tired of harassment and oppression, fought back. 

Three transgender Pennsylvanians are suing the state over a law that bars people who have been convicted of serious felonies from changing their names. The law is meant to prevent fraud, but the plaintiffs say it goes too far, and that they have a constitutional right to change their names.

Lawyers for the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue say the FBI has been discouraging witnesses from talking to the defense, undermining the suspect's right to a fair trial.

A lawyer for the man charged in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre says he still wants to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

Pennsylvania corrections secretary John Wetzel remembers that when he toured prisons in Germany and the Netherlands several years ago, it was a “transformative experience.”

Earlier this month the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced it had finalized a policy that would protect health care providers against discrimination if they refuse to care for someone based on their “moral convictions.” 

The first of five parish mergers in the Pittsburgh Catholic Dioceses’ reorganization plan will go into effect July 1. 

The governor of Pennsylvania has ordered flags to fly at half-staff to honor a state trooper who died on duty over the weekend in suburban Philadelphia.

State police say other troopers responded to the westbound lanes of I-276 in Bucks County at about 11:30 a.m. Saturday after 58-year-old Trooper Donald Bracket failed to answer radio transmissions.

Police say he was found unresponsive outside his patrol vehicle after "an apparent medical episode" and was pronounced dead at Jefferson Torresdale Hospital in Philadelphia.