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 "penalties" ...
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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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Grounds for Removal
The four-year investigation detailed the government oversight of the nation's largest statewide natural gas pipeline system. Regulators rarely gave penalties, even in cases of fatal gas explosions.
Tags: gas; natural gas; environment; pipeline; oversight
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Bad loans, No penalties
The state of Ohio leads the nation in failed loans, which the federal government corrects while the communities suffer. One of the biggest stories, which led to the investigation and this series, was when “Columbus developers walked away from an apartment-renovation project and $26 million in government-insured loans”. Further, there wasn’t anything that held these developers liable to repay the money.
Tags: Federal Housing Administration (FHA); tenants; neighbors; local officials; foreclosure; taxpayers; property; Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
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A Quiet Hell
This story didn't focus on one specific chemical plant; instead it focuses on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). After analyzing data for individual pollutants that were emitted during non-routine operations, a number of details were revealed. Some of these details are that "more than 20 million pounds of pollutants were emitted", TCEQ infrequently enforced the laws, some penalties were never finalized, and "the plants with the most violations paid the least percentage of their fines".
Tags: pollution; chemical plants; emissions; Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ); Houston Ship Channel; pollutants; oil industry; gas industry; air; politics; atmosphere
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Cross at Your Own Risk: Rails pose deadly threat
This investigation reveals a number of statistics from "nearly 3,000 public rail crossings" in Louisiana. Along with these statistics, it also reveals the people behind the numbers and how it has impacted dozens of lives. Some of the major statistics found are "nearly 1,500 defects statewide, some rail crossings haven’t been inspected over the 10-year period studied, few safety violations resulted in a fine or other penalty, and despite the denials drivers were not always responsible for the accidents."
Tags: FOIA; Federal Railroad Administration (FRA); Louisiana; railroads; rail crossings; safety equipment; accidents
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GMA Gets Answers
This series takes a hard look at the problems Americans are facing with insurance carriers, both public and private. In each story, Anchor Chris Cuomo profiles people fighting battles against insurance companies that are denying their claims. The investigators tried to get answers to claimants' questions about why their claims were being denied, even though they appeared to be following their insurance policy rules to a tee. They found that many consumers find themselves enmeshed in a complex and confusing system that allows insurers to wrongfully deny or delay claims with little possibility of penalty.
Tags: disease; genetic test; Medicaid; Insurance; claims; deny claims; public health
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Finger prints
For almost a century, fingerprint evidence has been a revered cornerstone of the American criminal justice system. But that may soon change. Last fall, in a Baltimore murder case, a judge ruled that fingerprint analysis is not reliable, which shocked lawyers across the country and could possibly put thousands of criminal investigations in jeopardy. CBS News spent months researching the use of fingerprints in murder trials as well as assessing the future of fingerprint evidence.
Tags: fingerprint evidence; Brandon Mayfield; court cases; criminal investigations; attorney; forensic evidence; death penalty
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Patient Privacy
Our investigation found more than 30,000 complaints nationally had been filed under HIPAA -- the health privacy law -- yet not a single hospital or doctor has been fined. The station obtained documents on hundreds of HIPAA investications in Western Pennsylvania and found all the caes were resolved through "voluntary compliance" - no fine or penalty. Moreover, the government office that oversees HIPAA actually violated patient privacy by inadvertently releasing names of some of the people who filed HIPAA complaints.
Tags: Health Information Portability and Accountability Act; HIPAA; patient rights; privacy; hospitals; health care
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Unequal Justice
An investigation into Texas's justice system revealed that at least 120 killers were put on probation instead of required to spend time in prison. Texas employs a legal system which "scholars nationwide diagnosed as broken," in which juries made sentencing decisions based "as much on likes and dislikes as on facts." Also, judges repeatedly gave freed killers a second chance on probation violations because "they viewed probation as a chance for reform, not punishment."
Tags: legal system; courts; justice; death penalty; probation; murderers; killers; probation violations; juries; sentencing
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Who Killed Her Daughter?
"The package of stories focused on the unsolved slaying of four young women within central Virginia that occurred within a seven-month span in 1996."
Tags: forensics; murder; serial killer; Richard Marc Evonitz; slaying; law enforcement; FBI lab; Darrell Rice; innocent; death penalty