On Friday, California Gov. Jerry Brown essentially decided that a woman who received a life sentence for killing her abusive pimp in 1994 would be allowed to keep her impending freedom.

Maria Alekhina, member of persecuted Russian feminist punk group Pussy Riot, was hospitalized Tuesday after the seventh day of a hunger strike spurred by months of predictably vicious treatment by prison officials.

Ready for a trip to the frightening Twilight Zone episode that is Russian punk band Pussy Riot’s continued incarceration? After being refused permission to appear at her own parole hearing and subsequently forbidding her lawyers to further represent her during the hearing, Maria Alyokhina, one of the band’s two…

In the '70s, Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 50 years in prison for kidnapping a woman and keeping her in a storage shed, where he repeatedly raped her. He was let out after only 11 years. From 1988 to 1999 he was on federally-supervised probation, yet he managed to kidnap Jaycee Dugard and keep her in his backyard…

A report released Wednesday shows the many lapses by California parole authorities that allowed Phillip Garrido to hold Jaycee Dugard in his yard for 18 years — and the changes that need to be made so others avoid her fate.