Justice (courts/crime/law)
New evidence casts doubt on convicted killer’s guilt
Scott Glover and Matt Lait of the Los Angeles Times use scores of documents shedding doubt on the guilt of a man convicted of killing his mother over 20 years ago. Among the evidence discovered was a bloody footprint found at the scene that didn’t match the convicted killer’s shoes and a mysterious phone call…
Read MoreExtreme speeders get off easy
Scott Powers of The Orlando Sentinel used county traffic ticket data to show that “last year Florida Highway Patrol troopers, Orange County deputies and police ticketed 342 high rollers for driving at least 100 mph.” Those who are caught typically are young, white men and many were traveling on the Central Florida GreeneWay. “And though…
Read MoreThousands erasing convictions due to murky law
Jason Riley and Kay Stewart of The (Louisville) Courier-Journal used Kentucky court records to show that “thousands of Kentuckians are erasing their arrests and convictions every year by taking advantage of expungement laws that make it cheap and easy to bury their past mistakes.” Variances in the process and the lack of a tracking systems…
Read MoreN.C. judges influenced by local lawyers
Ames Alexander of The Charlotte Observer, working with database editor Ted Mellnik, investigated the relationship between lawyers and judges in the North Carolina’s judicial district that is most lenient on drinking and driving. “District judges there acquitted suspects in more than 87 percent of the DWI trials in which they rendered a verdict. Statewide, the…
Read MoreLAPD spends millions over overtime budget
Jason Kandel of the Los Angeles Daily News obtained overtime expenditures from the Los Angeles Police Department and used Excel to analyze the data. He found that the LAPD has already overspent their overtime budget by $8 million with two months still remaining in the fiscal year. “The Los Angeles Police Department spent $62.8 million…
Read MoreConvicted youths escaping custody
Sheila Burke of The Tennessean used state data to show that “children convicted of crimes escaped from state custody more than 4,400 times during the past five years, often by simply walking away from foster homes or other unsecured facilities where they had been placed by the Department of Children’s Services.” Tennessee’s rate of escapes…
Read MorePolice fail to report missing children
Thomas Hargrove of Scripps Howard News Service analyzed data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to find that “dozens of police departments across the nation failed to report at least 4,498 runaway, lost and abducted children in apparent violation of the National Child Search Assistance Act passed by Congress in 1990. Seventeen…
Read MorePolice failing to prevent false identifications
Bill Moushey and Nathan Crabbe of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in conjunction with the Innocence Institute at Point Park University, investigated potential wrongful convictions in Pennsylvania, finding that “police failed to follow the steps that can help prevent false identifications.” Many police agencies in the state either were not aware of federal guidelines for eyewitness identifications…
Read MoreDomestic violence suspects avoid jailtime through pretrial program
Rick Brundrett of The (Columbia, S.C.) State studied records from pretrial intervention programs to find that South Carolina “prosecutors accepted more than 1,800 suspects accused of criminal domestic violence into a program that allows their charges to be dropped over the past five years.” Violent offenders aren’t supposed to be eligible for the program, but…
Read MoreCourt concealed lawsuits involving rich and famous
Dave Altimari of The Hartford Courant used documents released under a federal lawsuit by the paper to show that Connecticut’s “judicial branch began an organized effort in the 1990s to hide the existence of some lawsuits involving the rich and famous, years before court officials claimed those so-called super-sealed cases were merely the results of…
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