In 2000, Corey Williams, a Black teenager with an intellectual disability, was tried and convicted in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, for the murder of a pizza delivery man at his friend’s house.

Williams was just 16 years old at the time and due to his disability, still wet himself, sucked his thumb, and ate odd things like dirt and paper. Despite these factors, Caddo Parish prosecutors still sought and obtained the death penalty for Williams, though his guilt was not supported by much of the evidence, which they never turned over to the teenager’s trial lawyers. Williams’ plight is a horrifying example of the awesome power of prosecutors, who can not only take someone’s freedom — but life itself.

Williams wasn’t even a suspect at the outset of the investigation. Rather police officers first focused their attention on two older men, who were present during the crime. Police recorded witness statements on the night of the homicide that were never given to Williams’ defense. On these recordings, one witness told police that he saw a man nicknamed “Rapist” with the murder weapon prior to the homicide. Another witness, the brother of one of the likely culprits, insisted that it would make no sense for Williams to have killed the pizza delivery man, implicating his own brother and “Rapist” instead.

Even when other witnesses suggested to police that Williams was the perpetrator, the police pushed back, as they suspected the older men were pushing these witnesses to frame Williams for their actions. After an all-night interrogation, however, Williams confessed to the murder despite evidence pointing to his innocence. Rather than question the confession due to his youth, obvious disability, and the circumstances under which it was taken, the police stopped investigating the likely culprits and charged Williams. The prosecutors’ decision to then charge Williams with first-degree murder destroyed his life, and the state of Louisiana was set to snuff it out completely.

Thanks to two intervening decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court — first forbidding the death penalty for those with intellectual disability, and later against those who were under 18 at the time of a crime — Williams’ life was spared. But today he still remains incarcerated for life in Louisiana for a crime he almost certainly did not commit.

Prior to his trial, Williams’ defense attorneys asked repeatedly for all information in the prosecutors’ possession that showed their client was not responsible for the crime — information the prosecutors were required to disclose under the Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland. The prosecutors were not forthcoming, likely because they knew the information they possessed would undermine their case against Williams.

In fact, they were more concerned with a conviction than justice. Rather than turning over the recorded statements suggesting Williams’s innocence, the prosecution team, led by Assistant District Attorney Hugo Holland, gave the defense summaries of the statements. These summaries grossly misrepresented the witnesses’ accounts and omitted entirely the fact that the witnesses had pinned the crime on the other two men.

Louisiana courts have so far rejected Williams’ Brady claims, finding that the evidence would not have made a difference in his trial in light of his confession. Williams’ attorneys have now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, which it should.

The plot, however, thickens from there, showcasing the prosecutorial corruption in Caddo Parish.

Several years ago, Holland was forced to resign after he was caught faking documents to obtain M-16 military rifles through a Pentagon program. Yet even after losing his job in Caddo Parish, he continues to try death penalty cases as a contract employee with prosecutors’ offices all over Louisiana. If that weren’t bad enough, Holland is also working with the Louisiana District Attorneys Association to lobby legislators against much-needed criminal justice reform in the state.

The Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office’s decision to seek the death penalty against a teenager with severe mental health impairments — especially when substantial evidence, never shared with the defense, pointed to other culprits — underscores the substantial power of prosecutors. It’s a power that must be checked by holding prosecutors accountable, through elections, through engagement with district attorney offices, through litigation, and through legislation.

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Given these troubling practices, it’s no wonder that until recently Caddo Parish was leading the country in death sentences per capita. Dale Cox, the former acting district attorney, maintained that rather than limiting the death penalty to the most violent offenders, consistent with national trends, we should instead “kill more people” — a staggering and revealing statement about the state of criminal justice in the parish.

Fortunately, in 2016, the people of Caddo Parish sent a clear message at the polls, rejecting the Cox administration. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that countless victims of prosecutorial misconduct are locked up in prisons throughout the state. With Williams v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court has an opportunity to hold Louisiana prosecutors accountable while also sending a strong message that such prosecutorial misconduct is intolerable in any state of the union. The court should review Williams’ case and end the 20 years of injustice he’s endured.

While the CIA has been trying to salvage Gina Haspel’s rocky nomination to lead the agency with a series of gushing tweets and by making public only flattering bits of her record, the American people have to reckon with a nominee whose role in torture and the destruction of torture evidence is still shrouded in secrecy.

The CIA wants us to know positive stories about Haspel, hailing her as a trailblazer, consummate professional, dedicated agent, and Johnny Cash fan. At the same time, the agency won’t release full information about the most important and contentious parts of Haspel’s record.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to the CIA this week, protesting that it has continued to hide Haspel “behind a wall of secrecy” while suppressing “disturbing facts about her record.” Sen. Heinrich also said that the agency appeared to be “running a full-on propaganda campaign” in support of her nomination, while “withholding” key information.

While the CIA has said that it is “committed to transparency,” it has so far only granted senators — and not the public — access to some classified information about Haspel. Last week, the CIA disclosed a 2011 memo — written by a former CIA official with a record of excusing torture — which supposedly cleared Haspel of responsibility for the destruction of evidence documenting the brutal torture of a man in CIA custody in 2002. But the CIA shouldn’t get to cherry-pick which documents it will declassify — while hiding the most important torture records.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has also pushed back against the agency’s handling of Haspel’s nomination and requested a copy of a special prosecutor’s report that addressed the destruction of evidence of torture.

In fact, what we already know is disturbing enough: Haspel’s role in supervising the CIA’s torture program — and participating in the cover-up of torture videos — is not in question.

One former CIA official told The Daily Beast that Haspel “ran the interrogation program.” Haspel was also present for the torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a CIA black site in Thailand. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee torture report, al-Nashiri was “subjected to the waterboard at least three times.” Furthermore, The Daily Beast confirmed that Haspel “was in a position of responsibility” — even if not physically present — during the earlier interrogations of Abu Zubaydah.

The horrific details of what took place in the CIA prison in Thailand can — and should — be read by everyone. They are detailed in a lengthy Senate report of the CIA torture program that can be found here. Page after page describes the sadistic crimes perpetrated by the CIA on Abu Zubaydah, using the CIA’s own emails and cables, including this from a CIA email:

In at least one waterboarding session, Abu Zubaydah ‘became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth. According to CIA records, Abu Zubaydah remained unresponsive until medical intervention, when he regained consciousness and expelled ‘copious amounts of liquid.’

In all, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times over the course of a month. That was in addition to being regularly stripped naked, slammed face first into a wall, denied sleep, and stuffed into a coffin-like box for hours on end. In a program in which Haspel reportedly was a supervisor, Abu Zubaydah’s torture became a template for the torture program going forward.

When the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the two psychologists who designed the torture program, the defense asked the judge to order Haspel “to provide a deposition discussing her allegedly pivotal involvement in an episode the CIA has tried repeatedly to put behind it.” The federal government, supported by a statement from then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, stepped in to assert “state secrets” and blocked Haspel from being deposed.

Even the internal CIA memo released by the CIA last week, which excuses Haspel for her role in the destruction of 93 videotapes documenting Abu Zubaydah’s torture, confirms that she drafted the cable ordering the destruction of the tapes. According to then-acting CIA general counsel John Rizzo, Haspel was one of the “staunchest advocates inside the building for destroying the tapes,” lobbying Rizzo on a near weekly basis for their disposal.

This is the history that the CIA needs to tell us more about. Rather than selectively picking documents and anecdotes, the agency must declassify and come clean about Haspel’s complete role in the torture program — and its cover-up.

This week, Congress is set to begin consideration of the annual defense bill, also known as the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA sets spending priorities for the Department of Defense and is one of few pieces of legislation that Congress takes up every year. Legislators haven’t failed to pass an NDAA in 57 consecutive years.

Its “must-pass” status makes the NDAA an attractive vehicle for members to try to attach proposals they personally favor, but that may not get consideration as a stand-alone bill. Such is the case this year for a proposal to turn Impact Aid, a long-standing federal education program, into a voucher scheme.

The Impact Aid program has existed since 1950 and provides funds to school districts that lose local tax revenue due to the presence of tax-exempt federal land, like military installations, Native American reservations, or national parks. It also funds school districts that have higher expenses because they enroll federally connected students, like those who reside on Indian lands, military bases, and other federal properties.

But the Education Savings Accounts for Military Families Act of 2018 (H.R. 5199), introduced last month by Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), would undercut that support by taking Impact Aid funds and turning them into a voucher. As a consequence, communities with an already low level of local tax revenue would face reduced funding for school districts at which the vast majority of the nation’s school-age military children are enrolled. While this legislation purports to help military families, it would actually damage the schools educating military children while excluding many military children from eligibility.

It’s not just detrimental to military families either. H.R. 5199 would likely have important consequences for Native American children and other students who are federally connected and would lose out on the reallocation of resources.

Affected stakeholders have been vocal in their opposition. The National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, the National Military Family Association, and the National Indian Education Association oppose the idea. Joining them is The Military Coalition, a group of uniformed services and veterans associations representing more than 5.5 million current and former service members, their families, and survivors. Instead, many military service organizations, including some of those mentioned above, have urged Congress to preserve the Impact Aid program and continue its funding.

A primary supporter of this legislation is the Heritage Foundation, which supported the idea last year and has continued to push for the legislation in 2018. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has expressed general support for ideas like H.R. 5199, which is no surprise given her history of support for vouchers and policies that damages public schools.

For these groups, the NDAA represents an attractive opportunity to hitch a ride. But the circumstance can’t change the fact that, like all voucher schemes, this bill would funnel taxpayer dollars to private, unaccountable education providers that do not have an obligation to serve all students equally. Voucher program schools can and do deny admission to students because they or their parents are LGBTQ, promote religious education with taxpayer dollars, and fail to notify students with disabilities and their families that they lose educational rights when attending private schools.

And in the case of this legislation, the details reflect an intent to keep these taxpayer dollars as far from oversight as possible. It would, for instance, allow funds to be used for a broad array of educational services, but the proposal does not establish any procedure to determine what a “qualified educational service provider” is. Instead it defines a provider as simply an “entity or person that provides educational services” — no accreditation requirement, no public reporting, no accountability.

This is hugely concerning.

For example, the bill could lead to funds going toward the virtual school industry, which has a suspect track record in terms of educational achievement and financial management, while targeting students of color and low-income students. In one recent example, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, an online K-12 school in Ohio, abruptly closed in January after being ordered to repay millions of dollars for overstating enrollment. Allegedly the company used software to intentionally inflate attendance figures. The lack of oversight could also lead to federal funding of tutoring services that discriminate against students because of their LGBTQ status or programs that claim they are designed to serve students with disabilities but hire staff without sufficient training.

No amount of accountability measures can undo inherent problems with vouchers. But this legislation’s lack of them is egregious and does a disservice to all federally connected students by damaging their public schools and forcing those left behind to carry the burden of under-resourced districts.

The NDAA’s passage might be an inevitability, but legislators should reject amending it with this stealth proposal, which hurts educational equity for military-connected children, Native Americans, and other federally connected students.