Justice (courts/crime/law)
Low-income residents less likely to appear for jury duty
Hurst Laviana of The Wichita Eagle used local court records to show that “less than half of the Sedgwick County residents summoned report to the courthouse in any given week. And low-income residents — many of them minorities — are far less likely to report for jury duty than residents of white middle-class neighborhoods.” Poor…
Read MoreO.C. sheriff’s office falls short of averages
Tony Saavedra, Monica Rhor and Aldrin Brown of The Orange County Register analyzed eight statistical categories for Orange County’s police agencies and found wide disparities in way police prevent and solve crime. The categories analyzed included response times on emergency calls, the success rates for solving homicides and other violent crimes, officer-to-resident ratios and the…
Read MorePolice helped hide sexual abuse cases involving priests
Joe Mahr and Mitch Weiss of The (Toledo) Blade reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed dozens to find that Toledo-area police helped the local Catholic diocese hide cases of sexual abuse by priests. “Beyond past revelations that the diocese quietly moved pedophile priests from parish to parish, The Blade investigation shows that at least once…
Read More20 percent of fired teachers accused of sex crimes
Pamela Hamilton of the Associated Press used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain records showing that “one in five educators sanctioned by the state for bad behavior in South Carolina in the past three years had been accused of sexual misconduct such as molesting or having sex with students or other children.” Nearly…
Read MoreDrunken driving cases often end in dismissals
Brad Branan of the Tucson Citizen used databases from two courts to analyze about 33,000 drunken-driving cases filed from 1999 to last year. He found that “thousands of motorists are charged with drunken driving each year in metro Tucson, giving the area one of the highest DUI arrest rates in the country. But nearly half…
Read MoreWeapon seizures increase at airports
Lee Davidson of The Deseret Morning News used the federal Freedom of Information Act to obtain data on weapon seizures at airports, finding that “daily for the past three years, passengers at U.S. airports surrendered an average of 14,000 potential weapons. That is enough to arm every passenger on 33 filled-to-capacity Boeing 747 jumbo jets…
Read MoreState provided child counseling contracts to felon
Susan K. Livio and Mary Jo Patterson of The (Newark) Star-Ledger investigated the background of Corey Davis, who got nearly $700,000 in state contracts to provide child counseling services despite the fact that “the budding entrepreneur had a felony drug conviction and owed thousands of dollars in child support to two women. Some of the…
Read MoreDisgraced deputy beats system
Eric Nalder and Lewis Kamb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer report in a three-part series on how a disgraced sheriff’s deputy beat the system. The report details the allegations made against the deputy, including drug use, theft, attempted stalking, conspiracy to promote prostitution and official misconduct. “For 14 years, the detective worked on his own, rarely…
Read MoreDWI record worse than known
Liz Chandler, Ames Alexander and Danica Coto of The Charlotte Observer used driving records from several states to show that “an illegal Mexican immigrant in North Carolina was charged with drunken driving at least five times before a July 16 wreck that killed a Gaston County teacher.” North Carolina authorities were unaware of Ramiro Gallegos’…
Read MoreAdoption deal raises concerns over surrogate program
Kevin Corcoran of The Indianapolis Star investigates a child welfare case involving a surrogate mothers program. The program granted an adoption to a 58-year-old, single, schoolteacher who was approved, despite “the absence of a legally required study of [Stephen F.] Melinger’s New Jersey home or a period of preadoption supervision by an Indiana-licensed agency, court…
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