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 "defense attorney" ...
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Grim Reapers
Maricopa County, Arizona, has faced economic hurdles in paying for representation of indigent defendants charged with capital crimes. In recent years, the county supplanted other jurisdictions as the unofficial “death penalty capital” of the United States. “Grim Reaper” describes how a prominent capital criminal-defense attorney committed serious ethical and potentially criminal violations over a period of five years, during which time he collected more than $2.4 million from the county, including payment for work that he never had performed. in the wake of publication, law enforcement initiated a still-ongoing criminal investigation (as did the State Bar of Arizona), and the county's presiding judge announced sweeping and immediate changes in how criminal-defense attorneys representing indigent clients would be vetted, selected and paid.
Tags: Crimes; charges; criminal justice system; capital crimes
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The Body Shop
Questionable hiring, misidentified bodies, sexual harassment charges and refusal to provide autopsies to defense attorneys are a few of the many problems facing the Adams County Coroner's office. Jim Hibbard, who heads the office, was elected to his position, but had a history of conflict as a former police officer. He appears to have brought that conflict to the coroner's office in the form of sexual harassment, ruined evidence and regulatory violations.
Tags: Coroner; Adams County; autopsy; medical examiner; Jim Hibbard; sexual harassment; identity; defense; police; problems;
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Crossing the Line
"We're coming after you." That was the Houston Police Chief's message to thieves when he launched the elite, $5 million a year Crime Reduction Unit. The problem? Some of the department's own officers alleged "we're coming after you" meant violating citizens' rights and search and seizure laws to build flimsy cases and rack up arrest numbers that ultimately did little to fight crime. KHOU-TV identified how CRU officers routinely stopped, handcuffed and interrogated citizens for petty infractions such as jaywalking or riding a bicycle without a light. The vast majority of the time these citizens were let go, but if police did make an arrest, it was usually for trace levels of drugs, which often resulted in plea bargain prosecutions for minimal jail sentences. One veteran defense attorney described the CRU as nothing more than "a mill to get convictions."
Tags: Houston; Texas; law enforcement; arrest; Texas Public Information Act; Crime Reduction Unit
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Adolfo's Story
Adolfo Davis has been in jail since the age of fourteen, sentence to life in prison without parole for murder. In Illinois, it's legal to question a fourteen-year-old without the presence of a defense attorney so long as a youth officer is present, and the child is made aware of his rights.
Tags: accountability; murder; drug territory; parole; probation officer; testimony; sentencing
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Conflicted Justice
The series found "major problems with a little-known but significant aspect of indigent defense in Nevada. When two or more indigent defendants are charge in the same case, each defendant's testimony might implicate another. To avoid conflicts of interest that would occur if co-defendants were represented by a county public defender, that office represents only one, and private lawyers are hired by judges to represent the rest. Alan Maimon's reporting revealed that some conflict attorneys claimed to work more than 24 hours in a single day. Some spent excessive time on certain cases that paid a higher hourly rate, and tended to hastily offer guilty pleas on cases that did not pay as well."
Tags: courts; legal; justice; conflict attorneys; criminal defense; court corruption; lawyers; civil defense
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Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice
"An unprecedented examination of every Santa Clara County criminal jury trial decided on appeal over a five-year period, documenting that widespread errors and misconduct in the criminal justice system have been routinely tolerated, in the worst cases [resulting in] wrongful convictions of innocent people."
Tags: judge; juror; lawyer; Miguel Sermeno; Bobby Herrera; prosecutor; defense attorney
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Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw
"Lone Wolf is an inside look at a domestic terrorism investigation and prosecution, told from multiple points of view, including those of the FBI, ATF, US Attorney's offices, local law enforcement, defense attorneys and the bomber himself."
Tags: domestic terrorism investigation; FBI; ATF; lone offenders; McVeigh; Kaczynski; PACER electronic filing system; Richard Jewell; Administrative Maximum U.S. Penitentiary; ADX; Justice Department; UNABOM; CENTBOMB; Army of God
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Judges Under the Influence
The Charlotte Observer found that prominent defense lawyers in three coastal North Carolina counties helped judges get appointed and elected; and rarely lost when they took DWI cases to trial before them.
Tags: Driving while intoxicated; judicial appointment; defense attorneys; lawyers; Department of Human Services; John Nobles; Judicial Standards Commission; buying Judges
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Striking Differences
This team of reporters spent two years gathering and analyzing jury data from felony court trials to see if racial discrimination still played a key role in jury selection. The investigation found that prosecutors tend to reject African-American jurors, while defense attorneys tended to retain them. Consequently, the number of African-Americans serving on juries in Dallas more or less mirrored the breakdown of the population.
Tags: juries; jurors; courts; law; jury selection; racial discrimination; racism; racial profiling; murder trials; felony conviction; criminal courts
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Detroit's Terror Trial
In 2003, three men in Detroit were tried on charges of terror-related crimes. They were all of Arab descent and had phony passports. After all three were convicted, reporters conducted an investigation of the trial and found that at least a hundred documents had been withheld from defense lawyers and the chief witness against the men was an international con-artist. The convictions were thrown out and the prosecutor was charged with misconduct.
Tags: war on terror; attorney general John Ashcroft; Patriot Act; sleeper-cells; terrorism; consititutional rights; civil rights; FBI; justice department; federal court