Even after seven years as a foster parent, Darcy Olsen still gets teary eyed talking about the children who have come into her life. Not just for those the system has failed but also for the success stories.

Only four women have served on the Arizona Supreme Court. But Justice Ann Scott Timmer found the one silver lining to the state’s gross underrepresentation at its highest court: “The good news is I’m in the top five of all time.”

The Arizona Board of Executive Clemency is requesting about $34,000 to fund a part-time position needed to conduct probable cause hearings – an obligation the board has not fulfilled since funding was cut in 2010.

Lindsay Herf’s mission in life is to find the holes in our justice system. As executive director of the Arizona Justice Project, she leads efforts to investigate claims of innocence.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ most recent data – accounting for prisoners under sentence of death as of December 31, 2015 – Arizona did see its first uptick in death row inmates in five years with the addition of two inmates in 2015. But that runs counter to the slow yet steady decline of the state’s death row.

Republican Rep. Eddie Farnsworth single-handedly ended much of the Arizona Supreme Court’s legislative efforts at giving poor people a break in the justice system.

Gov. Doug Ducey will have an unprecedented opportunity to stack the Arizona Supreme Court with his own appointments before his first term is halfway finished after signing legislation adding two new justices to the bench.

The commission that recommends salaries for lawmakers, executive officials and judges is hoping members of Arizona’s judiciary won’t have to go a full decade without a pay raise.

Relatively few private attorneys want to become judges in Arizona

Stagnant salaries and diminished retirement benefits keep private attorneys from joining Arizona’s bench, which is becoming unbalanced by increasing numbers of former government lawyers, said a lobbyist for Arizona judges.

The only state Supreme Court justice on the retention ballot is striking back at Republicans calling for his removal because of a ruling on a ballot measure to change the state’s election system.

Republican committees in Legislative Districts 12 and 18 circulated flyers calling for a no vote for Justice John Pelander, a Republican who was Gov. Jan Brewer’s first selection to the Supreme Court in 2009.