Beenish Ahmed
Criminal Justice ReporterBeenish Ahmed is Michigan Public's Criminal Justice reporter. Since 2016, she has been a reporter for WNYC Public Radio in New York and also a freelance journalist. Her stories have appeared on NPR, as well as in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, VICE and The Daily Beast. Additionally, Beenish spent two years in Islamabad, Pakistan, working with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, covering the country’s first democratic transition of power as well as Pakistan's education system.
Much of her reporting has focused on covering under-reported stories and adding nuance to major headlines. That included covering stories related to DACA and the #MeToo movement as well as reporting on the personal challenges Muslims in metro Detroit faced in taking a public stand against President Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban.”
She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and has a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. She was also a Spencer Fellow at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, and an NPR Kroc Fellow.
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Heightened emotions and incendiary rhetoric following the attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens earlier this month have stoked fears that violence will spill over into local Muslim and Jewish communities. -
Michigan sentenced over 360 minors to life without parole — more than any state except Pennsylvania. Half of them have now been released and 90% have been resentenced, in most cases to a finite length of time. -
Life without the possibility of parole will be among the sentencing options for the teenager who killed four students at Oxford High School nearly two years ago, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Kwamé Rowe said on Friday. Teenager Ethan Crumbley will be sentenced on December 8. -
Michigan Radio has obtained previously unreleased footage through the state’s Freedom of Information Act. It shows how officers moved from shooting Burks 19 times to loading his unresponsive body into a squad car and driving him to a hospital. -
Tomorrow, there will be a Miller hearing at the Oakland County Circuit Court to determine whether or not the Oxford school shooter will be sentenced to life without parole. Beenish Ahmed covered the factors that will be considered in the hearing. -
The United States Supreme Court has said life without parole should be reserved for “the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption" and set standards to determine when it's an appropriate sentence. A hearing this week will determine if Ethan Crumbley should be one of those rare cases. -
We asked experts to analyze the police response to Porter Burks, which began with a calm introduction and ended with 38 shots fired.
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Mental health advocate Kevin Fischer describes two very different encounters between his son, Dominique, and the police. -
Following the police killing of a young man with schizophrenia several months ago, Michigan Radio collected resources to find support for people in mental health crisis. -
After a year in the Wayne County Jail, Darrell Ewing filed a lawsuit against the jail administration, claiming the denial of in-person visits is unconstitutional.
