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 "lawyers" ...
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Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper
Scapegoat is the true story of the horrific Chino Hills murders -- the highest profile crime in San Bernardino County history. It shows how law enforcement ignored eyewitness information implicating three white men as the perpetrators in order to pin the crime on Kevin Cooper, a recently escaped black prisoner from the nearby prison in Chino, California. It shows how his public defender lost the case before the trial even began and how the justice system has failed Cooper at almost every turn. It also shows the heroic work of an international law firm headquartered in San Francisco that adopted Cooper's case pro bono just three months before his scheduled execution in 2004 and won him a stay and how lawyers from this firm continue to appeal his wrongful conviction.
Tags: Murders; crime; law enforcement; police; prison; justice system; wrongful conviction
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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Locked up
A USA TODAY investigation found that the U.S. Justice Department was using its legal authority to decide who gets locked up for how long in ways that reward the guilty and punish the innocent. Our examination found that government lawyers were trying to keep dozens of men who they conceded were “legally innocent” imprisoned anyway. We found that the Justice Department had kept accused sexual predators locked up for years past the end of their prison sentences on the basis of faulty psychological assessments. And exposed a brazen pay-to-snitch enterprise that illustrated how the government rewards its informants — often hardened criminals — with shorter prison sentences.
Tags: U.S. Justice Department; lawyers; sexual predators; criminals; prison sentences
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D.C. Tax Office Scandal
The District of Columbia struck an unprecedented number of deals behind closed doors this year with prominent commercial property owners who had appealed their tax assessments, reducing the city's tax base by $2.6 billion. The settlements were kept from the public for months until The Washington Post started mining public records and filing FOIAs, which the city routinely denied until the newspaper's lawyers got involved. The Post also learned that city leaders had kept critical internal audits about the tax office in "draft" format to prevent their release under FOIA. Through sources, The Post obtained the undisclosed reports -- along with a dozen other audits that had been kept from public view -- and published the findings for the first time. The series prompted the City Council to change the law to require the tax office to immediately make public all of its reports -- bringing a new level of transparency to a once secretive agency. The Securities and Exchange Commission also launched a probe to see if the city had kept critical findings from audits used to determine bond ratings. The inquiry is ongoing.
Tags: tax fraud; taxes; taxpayers; tax office
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Crash Course
A popular Florida referral service company had been attracting customers injured in car accidents. The company had been exploiting Florida's "no-fault" auto insurance law to mislead it's customers into giving money to a network of chiropractors and lawyers that pocketed their money.
Tags: fraud; scam; auto insurance; lawyer fraud
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"Derailed - A Star Tribune Speical Report"
The Star Tribune and ProPublica revealed that the nation's "second-largest railroad company," Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), has gone to great lengths to cover up its legal mishaps and wrongdoings. In addition to losing evidence, the company and its lawyers worked to gain "unfair advantage "over opponents in "more than 20 court cases."
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Utility Ethics Flap
When the top lawyer for Indiana's utility regulatory commission suddenly quit his job to work for the state's largest utility (Duke Energy Corp.), reporters smelled a rat and demanded state records to see if the two organizations had been engaged in improper conversations. The lawyer in question, Scott Storms, had been the chief administrative law judge for the state, ruling on numerous cases involving the utility, notably its new $2.9 billion power plant. What they found was eye-opening. Mr. Storms had been in talks with the utility for many months about a job, even as he was ruling on cases involving the company, and approving huge cost over-runs for a new power plant. The matter was of deep public interest, because the state agency rules on utility rates paid by all state residents and businesses, and it's dealings were compromised by possible undue influence.
Tags: State Finances; Scott Storms; Ethics; Utility; State Records; Duke Energy Corporation
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Probate Court: A Troubled System
The investigation exposed a corrupt system within Arizona's probate courts that permitted lawyers and for-profit fiduciary businesses to take advantage of the welfare of vulnerable adults. The Arizona Republic found that in many cases, lawyers appointed to protect the welfare of incapacitated adults were actually paying themselves enormous fees out of their assets of these individuals. Judges, state regulators, and social service agencies violated court orders, disregarded procedure, and failed to keep this from happening.
Tags: probate courts; legal system; court corruption; elderly; welfare
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Cashing In
During a period of tight city finances, Memphis was outlaying a yearly average of as much as $2,300 per day on attorneys fees. Nealry $8 million across 22 law firms was payed out by taxpayers in a four year time frame. WREG-TV uncovered that many of these lawyers were personal friends of the mayor, and the station's requests for budget items were purposefully stalled and stonewalled until serious actions of litigation against the city were threatened.
Tags: Memphis; attorneys; fees; lawyers; legal; firms; contracts; mayor; friends; finance; open records; municipal; city; campaign manager
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Officer Absent, Case Dismissed
Many defendants facing felony charges were set free in 2007 because police officers, who arrested them, never showed up for court. Further, these defendants already had long criminal records and after being released were later arrested for other crimes. In some instances, cases were postponed when officers did not show up for court, instead of having the case dismissed. No matter if the case is postponed or dismissed it wastes the time of judges, lawyers, defendants, and the public’s money.
Tags: law enforcement; Louisville Metro Police Department; Jefferson District Court; absences; county attorney