Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear.

A federal appeals court has struck down Mississippi's lifetime voting ban for people convicted

of certain crimes.

NPR's Debbie Elliott reports the ban was put in place during the Jim Crow era in the

attempt to disenfranchise black voters.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals says Mississippi's felony disenfranchisement law amounts to

unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling says the ban automatically denies the precious right to vote to a large class

of its citizens with no thought given to whether it's proportionate and calls the law out of

step with a clear and consistent national trend against permanent disenfranchisement.

Civil rights groups sued on behalf of former felons who had completed their prison sentences

but could not vote because of the crimes they committed.

The crimes, including bribery, theft, arson, and bigomy, were outlined in the state's

1890 Constitution, adopted to quote, secure to the state of Mississippi white supremacy.

Debbie Elliott, NPR News.

The Russian court has sentenced the country's jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny to

an additional 19 years in prison.

The NPR's Charles Mainz reports from Moscow, the trial unfolded in unusual circumstances and

marks Navalny's fifth conviction to date.

Judges moved about 150 miles east of Moscow to conduct a close trial inside the very prison

where Navalny is already serving out a nine-year sentence for fraud and embezzlement.

With its ruling, the court convicted Navalny on a slew of new extremism-related charges

...