The Confessions of Innocent Men
Unpacking a false confession 20 years later.
Unpacking a false confession 20 years later.
Marc Bookman The Atlantic Aug 2013 25min Permalink
Jurors from the Emmett Till trial revisit the case 50 years later.
Richard Rubin New York Times Magazine Jul 2005 20min Permalink
Twenty-six years after he was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his wife, Michael Morton sees the real killer brought to justice in a Texas courthouse.
Pamela Colloff Texas Monthly Jun 2013 25min Permalink
“Five years, four judges, six lawyers, $400,000 in attorney and expert fees and costs, a child yanked back and forth, [and] petty arguing.” Chronicling the slow end of one American marriage.
Leonora LaPeter Anton The Tampa Bay Times Apr 2013 25min Permalink
A participant in a deadly shooting spree decides to snitch on his friends.
Kevin Charles Redmon Washingtonian Mar 2013 30min Permalink
A profile of Max Wade, a Marin County teenager on trial for stealing Guy Fieri’s Lamborghini and using it in the first drive-by in the history of Mill Valley, California.
Chris Roberts San Francisco Magazine Feb 2013 25min Permalink
The story of Thor Holm Hansen—”Norwegian country singer, a former Outlaws motorcycle chieftain, and an ‘ambassador at large’ to a rebel Haitian government”—who claims to be back in Florida to locate his missing daughter.
Terrence McCoy New Times Broward-Palm Beach Feb 2013 20min Permalink
Almost five years ago, the author’s 13-year-old niece was murdered in her bedroom in suburban New Delhi. Since then, both of her parents have spent time in jail. Evidence, bungled by police, points to another possible killer. The trial has not yet begun.
Shree Paradkar The Toronto Star Jan 2013 25min Permalink
How an obscure Australian judge and a hard-charging lawyer put the S&P on trial for the global financial collapse.
Bernard Lagan The Global Mail Dec 2012 20min Permalink
Putting killer animals on trial.
Drew Nelles Maisonneuve Sep 2012 15min Permalink
On the O.J. Simpson verdict and the Million Man March.
Henry Louis Gates New Yorker Oct 1995 30min Permalink
When U.S. customs law met abstract art in the form of a bird, “shimmering and soaring toward the ceiling while the lawyers debated whether it was an ‘original sculpture’ or a metal ‘article or ware not specially provided for’ under the 1922 Tariff Act.”
Stéphanie Giry Legal Affairs Sep 2002 15min Permalink
Two men named Nathan committed murders. Only one received a death sentence.
Natasha Gardner, Patrick Doyle 5280 Dec 2008 35min Permalink
John MacNeil was convicted by the state of Massachusetts of second-degree murder. He was given a life sentence. He escaped. He was caught. Through an incredible feat of jailhouse lawyering, he somehow got himself paroled and exiled to Canada. Then he came home.
David L. Yas Boston Magazine Nov 2001 15min Permalink
The anatomy of a wrongful conviction in Texas.
Andrew McLemore The Williamson County Sun Oct 2011 1h10min Permalink
She survived an evil, gruesome attack. Her partner did not. An account of a victim, a widow, telling her story on the witness stand.
Update, 4/16/12: This piece was just awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
Eli Sanders The Stranger Jun 2011 20min Permalink
On a Victorian-era murder case, and the novel it inspired.
Rachel Cooke The Guardian Apr 2012 10min Permalink
A Supreme Court Justice revisits a rape trial from the 1950s.
A report from the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk—a.k.a. “The Last Nazi”—who died on March 17.
Lawrence Douglas Harper's Mar 2012 Permalink
A profile of the world’s most notorious weapons trafficker.
Nicholas Schmidle New Yorker Mar 2012 35min Permalink
What really happened between the plaintiffs in Lawrence vs. Texas, the case that ended anti-sodomy laws?
Dahlia Lithwick New Yorker Mar 2012 15min Permalink
The hunt for rare 1933 Double Eagle coins:
The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the nation’s currency, has been pursuing them for nearly 70 years, through 13 Administrations and 12 different directors. The investigation has spanned three continents and involved some of the most famous coin collectors in the world, a confidential informant, a playboy king, and a sting operation at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. It has inspired two novels, two nonfiction books, and a television documentary. And much of it has centered around a coin dealer, dead since 1990, whose shop is still open in South Philadelphia, run by his 82-year-old daughter.
Susan Berfield Businessweek Aug 2011 15min Permalink
Steven Donziger, an American lawyer, headed up a successful lawsuit against Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorans. Then the legal tables turned on him.
Patrick Radden Keefe New Yorker Jan 2012 35min Permalink
When your family is murdered, and the home you had made together is destroyed, and you yourself are beaten and left for dead — as happened to Bill Petit on the morning of July 23, 2007 — it may as well be the end of the world. It is hard to see how a man survives the end of the world. The basics of life — waking up, walking, talking — become alien tasks, and almost impossibly heavy, as you are more dead than alive. Just how does a man go about surviving such a thing? How does a man go on?
Ryan D'Agostino Esquire Jun 2011 50min Permalink
How mitigation specialists are changing the application of the death penalty:
In Texas, the most prominent mitigation strategist is a lawyer named Danalynn Recer, the executive director of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center. Based in Houston, GRACE has represented defendants in death-penalty cases since 2002. “The idea was to improve the way capital trials were done in Texas, to start an office that would bring the best practices from other places and put them to work here,” Recer said recently. “This is not some unknowable thing. This is not curing cancer. We know how to do this. It is possible to persuade a jury to value someone’s life.”
Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker May 2011 20min Permalink