Justice Issues

Justice Issues

New: One Murder, Two Victims: The Wrongful Conviction of Ryan Ferguson by Jane Alexander (7/22/07).
In a case rife with DNA and other physical evidence, not one shred of evidence linked 17-year-old Ryan Ferguson to the murder of Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune sports writer Kent Heitholt in 2001. Ferguson's conviction in 2005 proved only how far the police and prosecution would go to close Columbia's only unsolved murder.

New: A User's Guide to the Polygraph Exam by Daniel B. Young (7/22/07).
If you're ever asked or forced to take a polygraph exam, get ready for an assault. Here's some of what you need to know before being wired up.

The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping by Lona Manning. (3/04/07)
More than seven decades after his execution for committing "the crime of the century," Bruno Richard Hauptmann still has his defenders and sympathizers.

Updated: Cold Case: The Murder of Emmett Till by Denise Noe. (11/27/06; updated 3/12/07)
The brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 galvanized the fledging civil rights movement like no other killing of a black by white racists before it. After an all-white, all-male jury acquitted Till's two killers, the case festered for 49 years until the U.S. Justice Department reopened it in 2004. In late February of 2007, a Lefore County, Miss. grand jury declined to issue any new indictments, effectively bringing the case to an abrupt and ignoble end.

Updated: The Shame of Lorain, Ohio by Lona Manning. (updated 3/03/07)
The ritual abuse hysteria that swept across the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s resulted in hundreds of innocent people being wrongfully convicted of committing a bizarre concoction of sexual acts on preschoolers. Most of those convicted were eventually freed from prison on appeal, but some innocent people remain behind bars. One of the most blatant cases of wrongful conviction occurred in Lorain, Ohio. There a politically ambitious prosecutor’s office coaxed and manipulated a few Head Start preschoolers into testifying that they had been sexually abused repeatedly over a six-month period by their bus driver and some stranger -- two people who never even knew each other, but who are now serving life prison terms for crimes that never occurred in the first place.

Updated: Nightmare at the Day Care: The Wee Care Case by Lona Manning. (updated 01/14/07)
The Wee Care case that sentenced Kelly Michaels to prison for 47 years was typical of the child-abuse hysteria that gripped the United States in the 1980s. At the peak of the frenzy of the great day-care witch hunt, it was the day-care workers, not the preschoolers, who were at risk. As the preschoolers, urged on by overzealous social workers, child therapists and prosecutors, told their incredible stories of sexual abuse and satanic rituals in courtrooms across the United States, scores of innocent people were sent off to prison. Some are still there.

Updated: Nixon's Greatest Trick: Orchestrating His Own Pardon by Don Fulsom. (08/30/04; updated 01/14/07)
On the eve of the release of the "smoking-gun tape," President Nixon cut a blanket pardon deal with Vice President Ford that would put Ford in the Oval Office eight days later.

Updated: The Forgotten Innocent Man by Lona Manning. (Updated 10/16/06)
The courtroom testimony of twin 8-year-old boys – a concoction of fantasy and fear – led to a life sentence for Robert Halsey in 1993. In 2004 the National Center for Reason and Justice took up his case, but all of its appeals have been denied and the Massachusetts Supreme Court has denied Halsey’s Application for Further Appellate Review. Now in his 70s and in failing health, the former bus driver will most likely die in prison, a victim of the child sexual-abuse hysteria that put him there.

Updated: The Murder of JonBenet Ramsey by J.J. Maloney and J. Patrick O'Connor. (Updated 08/30/06)
Astoundingly, this highest of high-profile murder case goes unsolved. John Mark Karr's arrest and subsequent exoneration served only to demonstrate anew how inept JonBenet's investigation has been from the beginning.

9/16: Terrorists Bomb Wall Street by Lona Manning. (01/15/06)
Long before 9/11 became the date most identified with terrorism, New York's Wall Street District suffered through a massive bombing on September 16, 1920 that shocked the world. Italian anarchists orchestrated the bombing five days after Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were indicted on charges of first-degree murder.

The Lynching of Leo Frank by Denise Noe. (03/14/05)
Virulent anti-Semitism led directly to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and lynching of the innocent, but Jewish, Leo Frank. Police and prosecutors fabricated evidence to win a death by hanging verdict. When the governor of Georgia commuted Frank's sentence to life in prison, a resurgent Klan mob stormed the prison and re-imposed the original sentence.

The Truth About J. Edgar Hoover by Mel Ayton. (07/19/05)
Since his death in 1972, J. Edgar Hoover's reputation has plummeted for the wrong reason -- a false charge about cross-dressing. He should be reviled for what he was: an egomaniacal, self-righteous subverter of the Bill of Rights.

The Doe Network: Naming the Nameless Dead by Lona Manning. (03/23/04)
There are thousands of unnamed corpses in the United States, so-called John and Jane Does who have turned up over the last few decades in woods, rivers, alleys and dumpsters without any identification. An Internet-based group of volunteers who call themselves The Doe Network is working to name the nameless.

Part Two: The Mysterious Death of CIA Scientist Frank Olson by H. P. Albarelli Jr. (05/19/03)
In 1996, Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau opened a new investigation into CIA Scientist Frank Olson's 1953 "suicide," assigning the case to a special Cold Case Unit staffed by two veteran prosecutors. Details about the activities and findings of that ongoing inquiry have never before been revealed. Investigative journalist and writer H.P. Albarelli Jr. conducted his own seven-year examination into Olson's death. In Part Two, he reports his findings about one of the U.S. government's greatest conspiracies and unsolved mysteries.

Part One: The Mysterious Death of CIA Scientist Frank Olson by H. P. Albarelli Jr. (12/14/02)
When CIA Scientist Frank Olson plunged to his death from the 10th floor of a New York hotel in 1953, his death was ruled a suicide. Twenty-two years later a special Presidential Commission investigating the CIA's development of potent drugs for use in biological warfare and assassinations revealed shocking new details about Olson’s death. In 1996 Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau opened a new investigation into Olson’s death based on startling discoveries uncovered by forensic sleuth James Starrs that put to lie the CIA’s version of how Olson died.

Exclusive: Solving the JonBenet Case by Ryan Ross. (04/14/03)
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens could crack the JonBenet case wide open by appointing a special prosecutor to determine if John and Patsy Ramsey conspired to cover up their daughter's tragic death. Secret forensic evidence not in the public record implicates the Ramseys in such a cover up.

Updated: The Death Penalty by J.J. Maloney. A primer on the battle over the death penalty in the 20th Century covering historic cases in the 20th century, arguments for and against the death penalty, and how the death penalty can motivate people to kill.

Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne. The FBI's vaunted crime lab is a scandal of atrocious forensic science. Its "junk science" permeates the U.S. criminal justice system as it bogus "findings" routinely punish the innocent and set the guilty free, affecting thousands of lives in the process.

Updated: The Execution Photos. (Updated 6/20/07)
When the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair was a constitutional form of execution, an outraged justice of the court attached three photographs to his dissent. The photographs show the agonized and contorted face of a recently executed Florida prisoner, his shirt-front drenched in blood. It is said a photograph is worth 1,000 words. Some are worth more. Be forewarned that photograph #3 is particularly gruesome.

The American Gun by J.J. Maloney. An in-depth look at the "gun problem" in the United States, along with suggestions for sensible new laws.

DNA Exonerations is based on a 1996 study by the U.S. Department of Justice that details 28 cases in which men convicted of sex crimes, including murder, have been released as a result of subsequent DNA testing. It will challenge your assumptions about such things as the reliability of eye-witness testimony. Because of its length, we've broken the study up into three parts. But it is a must read, for many reasons.

Firefighters Case Part I and Part II by J.J. Maloney Five innocent people were convicted in February 1997 in the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters in 1988. These two stories run a total length of 20,000 words, and won the Missouri Bar Association's annual "Excellence in Legal Journalism" award. On Oct. 30, 1998, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the appeal in the Kansas City Firefighters case. Read the full opinion here and our analysis of the opinion. On Oct. 4, 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in the case.

American Lynchings These photos of whites torturing and lynching black men present a side of U.S. history that most history books ignore. They provide one of the many reasons why blacks (and Indians) hold a different view of U.S. history than whites. Notice the carnival atmosphere prevailing as these crowds of U.S. citizens watch the completely lawless and most inhumane executions imaginable.

Updated: To Live And Die In Belton U.S.A., by J.J. Maloney, is the story of Jeffrey Gardner, a young man sentenced to prison for shooting an abusive husband who was threatening his wife with a knife. After the printing of this story, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, on March 2, 1999, overturned the conviction of Gardner -- who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the shooting. Gardner was a boarder in the couple's home at the time of the shooting. On Dec. 7, 1999, the Missouri Supreme Court did overturn the appellate court opinion. Gardner is serving his sentence at the state penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo. Click here to read the Missouri Supreme Court decision. Additional update 12/19/2007.

Convenient Excuses, by Bonnie Bobit, examines the deadly occupation of convenience store employee -- and how the convenience store industry is fighting to prevent the implementation of federal rules that would make those jobs safer.