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 "indigent" ...
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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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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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Lawyers' bills to state don't add up
"The stories revealed that North Carolina's system for paying appointed lawyers is vulnerable to financial errors and abuse. One lawyer had repeatedly double-billed. On more than 50 occasions, he submitted multiple bills for expenses such as travel time, mileage and parking for what records indicated were single jail visits. Other lawyers had charged for visits that don't appear in jail records."
Tags: False report; Indigent Defense Services; Mecklenburg Country Sheriff; fraud; state appointed lawyers
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Judge criticized for giving cases to one lawyer; Bench practice of appointing poses conflict
The story reveals how Cuyahoga county's judges have become heavily dependent on campaign contributions from the hundreds of lawyers assigned to represent the poor- and who share millions of dollars in tax refund fees for doing it. The Dealer also details one particular story of a judge who diverted scores of cases over the past three years and authorized more than $1,000 in questionable fees to a single lawyer.
Tags: criminar arraignment; indigent-fee assignments; Richard Agopian; Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold; Cuyahoga County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association
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Struggling at Bottom of Welfare System: A schizophrenic, a crack addict and an ex-con try to cope with the county's cut in general relief. They've made hard decisions--and some missteps.
This story vividly describes the lives of three different people struggling to survive on their welfare check each month. The author explains in detail how desperate the three people have become. Most get $212 or less a month to live on.
Tags: Welfare; money; struggles; poor; indigent; paycheck; cash
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Offshore Assets. How Floating Hospital used Medicaid to steer course toward profit. As a ship, New York clinic got fat reimbursements, then expanded on land. Contracts and lovers in suit.
According to the article, "The Floating Hospital traces its origins to the 1860s when a group of New York Times editors decided that ailing newsboys would benefit from a dose of fresh sea air. Today, the 187-foot, four-deck vessel, usually moored near the southern tip of Manhattan island, provides health care to the uninsured and to people on Medicaid. Dogged by financial troubles in the early 1990s and wanting to reach more of the indigent, it developed a plan to become a year-round clinic, and in the process, was able to wangle a large Medicaid reimbursement because of substantial capital costs for the ship."
Tags: M
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Unclogging Gideon's trumpet: Mississippi suits are the latest to attack state defense funding.
The National Law Journal examines the state of criminal defense spending by states, most notably Mississippi. David E. Rovella writes "defense lawyers contend that budgets for already-overtaxed indigent defense systems are flat or have been cut. And in states without a public defense system, they argue, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright, which guarantees state-funded indigent criminal defense, is ineffective." The National Law Journal writes about "three lawsuits filed in a recent weeks have challenged the way Mississippi provides criminal defense to the poor. They are the latest in a handful of suits nationwide attacking what defense lawyers say is the hidden price of war on crime: the erosion of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel."
Tags: Gideon v. Wainwright; right to counsel; Sixth Amendment; U.S. Supreme Court; Mississippi; public defense; public defender; law; legal; public defense system; lawsuits; poor; crime
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Mental Breakdown
An investigation into real and perceived problems caused by closing a state mental health hospital and changing the way that the indigent mentally ill receive services.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; Grand Lakes Mental Health; Craig General Hospital; Eastern State Hospital; Vinita; Oklahoma; mental health; state mental hospitals; mental illness; indigent mentally ill
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Tax Exempt!
U.S. News & World Report investigates various tax-code violations by nonprofits. Many nonprofits look and act like normal companies, the story finds. They operate numbers of successful ventures, make profits, and report exorbitant executive compensations that have caught the eye of the Internal Revenue Service. Many big names, including National Geographic, NASDAQ, and the National Rifle Association, enjoy tax-exempt status along with more than 1.1 million nonprofits. Some of the key findings are: many nonprofits spend huge dollars on lobbying the Congress; hospitals for indigent patients are not much different from hospitals operating for profit; nonprofits usually report their businesses as related to their main activity, consequently to their tax-exempt status.
Tags: Alta Bates Medical Center; National Football League; charities; lobbying; lobbyists; Congress; IRS; 501(c); Internal Revenue Code; associations; deductions
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Used Mattress Investigation
An Extra investigation of a New York retailer revealed that they "were buying used, urine-stained, semen-stained, and vermin-infested mattresses from indigents. These organized criminals were rewrapping the old mattresses, sewing new labels on them and selling them as new mattresses in New York retail stores." Extra found victims of skin rashes caused by covered used mattresses.
Tags: TAPE TRANSCRIPT Mattress USA fraud business product safety false advertising