The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Judicial System" ...
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Bail Bondsmen: Working the Numbers
A year-long investigation into the bail bond industry by the Dallas Morning News focused on the relationship between bail bondsmen, the judicial system, and the county government. The investigation uncovered corrupt practices, sweetheart deals, and dysfunctional oversight that cost taxpayers many millions of dollars.
Tags: Bail Bondsmen; County Government; Judicial System; Sweetheart Deals
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Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice
As part of a collaborative effort with the Investigative News Network, the Center for Public Integrity finds that students responsible for sexual assault on college campuses often receive no punishment, yet their victims' lives are turned upside down. Even when the perpetrator is a repeat offender, college judicial systems rarely expel the student.
Tags: sexual assault; rape; victim; perpetrator; sex crime; rapist; rape victim; rape on campus; rape in college
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Missing from the Bench
WVUE tracked a local judge who was living hundreds of miles from her judicial bench. The series helped prompt a Federal Grand Jury investigation.
Tags: judge; judicial system; court; justice; elected official;
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Vanishing Act
“Nine-year-old Christian Ferguson went missing one summer morning in 2003 while in the custody of his father”. At first the story received a great deal of coverage, but as the years passed only a few stories covered the disappearance. Further, the public hadn’t heard the account from the police and that they had a suspect in custody, until now.
Tags: cold case; vanish; detectives; law enforcement; investigation; mystery; family; judicial system
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The Mysterious Death of Janie Ward
This hour-long report is a result of a five-year investigation into the death of a 16-year-old girl 20 years ago in a small town in the Ozarks. It's about two daughters -- one wealthy and popular (a cheerleader and beauty queen); the other poor and self-conscious. It's about two fathers -- one a powerful judge who allegedly shielded his daughter from the law he's sworn to uphold; the other a bail bondsman who is trying to avenge his daughter's death. And it's about one family's fight for justice against what they believe is a corrupt judicial system that closed ranks around the powerful judge to cover-up a murder. When 16-year-old Jamie Ward fell off a 9-inch porch in the woods near Marshall, Ark., on September 9, 1989, her parents refused to blieve that the fall had killed their healthy teenager. Instead, they began to suspect to suspect she was murdered by the judge's daughter. After years of demanding an investigation into her death, an independent medical examiner associated with Parents for Murdered Children exhumed Janie's body a second time for an extremely rare third autopsy. Because the case was 20 years old, most of the files were not digital; rather, the investigation focused on old-fashioned reporting: finding and interviewing eyewitnesses (all of whom had not been reinterviewed since the original investigation); analyzing inconsistencies in the witness statements, double-checking the forensics with independent experts.
Tags: autopsy; unsolved death; forensic science; criminal justice system; reopened cases; Arkansas
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Lawless Lands: The Crisis in Indian Country
"This four-part series uncovers the systemic failure of the federal judicial system to investigate and prosecute serious crime on America's Indian reservations and charts the cost of that failure to indigenous communities. The series presents the first detailed picture of the gap between reported crime, criminal investigation, and felony prosecution on American Indian lands under federal jurisdiction."
Tags: crime; Native Americans; federal government; Indian Affairs
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A Life Sentence
The Post-Dispatch looked at prisoners in Missouri and Illinois who had been paroled in the last decade after originally receiving long prison terms -- some in excess of 100 years. Many of those were sentenced before laws imposing mandatory minimum prison terms, and the luckiest served a small fraction of their sentences. No one in Missouri did more than 36 years, including those who were sentenced to multiple, consecutive life terms.
Tags: law enforcment; parole; jail; inmates; judicial system; courts; Missouri Board of Probation and Parole; prisoners
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Jury Not Of Their Peers
The reporters investigated the lack of Black participants in the judicial process, from being disproportionately under-represented on juries to a startling lack of Black prosecutors, defenders and judges.
Tags: Department of Justice; DOJ; courts; jury service; lawyers; judges; racial representation; legal system; disproportionate representation; Blacks; African-American communities; Administrative Office of the Courts; racism
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Altar Ego
This investigation examines a murder that occurred 45 years ago, committed by a priest. At the story's heart is a study of the profound difference between the Roman Catholic Church's view, especially the church of 1960, and that of the American judicial system, regarding the nature of justice.
Tags: murder; church; state government; local government; crime; priest; clergy
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Premium Pensions
Three stories examine the abuses of California's generous public pensions system. "Chief's Disease," reveals that the highest ranking officers of the California Highway Patrol often made injury claims as retirement drew near, so their pensions were supplemented by workplace injury settlements. "Workers' comp judges cash in," showed that judges who decided worker's comp claims were themselves six times more likely to claim job related injuries than their judicial colleagues in other parts of the system. "How state law fattens pensions," deals with California's law that allows pensions to be calculated based on the single highest year of salary a public worker achieves. California is the only state in the country that has such a law. There is also supplemental material that followed the publication of the series.
Tags: public pensions; workman's compensation; fraudulent claims; state government; local government; public servants