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 "court filing system" ...
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Justice in the Shadows
Although immigration is one of America’s most divisive, visceral, and hotly debated issues, the public rarely gets a close look at the vast law enforcement network that every year detains more than 400,000 suspected illegal immigrants. Courts often operate inside prisons, far from view. Immigration officials play by rules that would not be permitted for the police or the FBI. Here is a system heavily shielded from public scrutiny. Reporting even routine activities is a challenge. Boston Globe reporters Maria Sacchetti and Milton J. Valencia, however, penetrated the wall of secrecy. Their three-part series, “Justice in the Shadows,” revealed a dysfunctional and largely unaccountable system that locks up people who pose little threat while releasing dangerous criminals back to US streets because their home countries won’t take them back. The results, Sacchetti and Valencia showed, at times can be deadly for Americans and foreigners alike. The reporting was anything but quick or easy. Sacchetti and Valencia filed more than 20 Freedom of Information Act requests to federal agencies that comprise the immigration system. Nearly all of them were partially or wholly denied, purportedly to protect the privacy of the immigrants. With the federal government blocking the way, Sacchetti and Valencia found other avenues to document what was happening inside this Byzantine system, investing a year to do so. The effort to shed light on the immigration system continues: The Globe has filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to force the agency to reveal the names of more than 8,000 criminal foreigners released in the US because they couldn’t be deported.
Tags: security; Department of Homeland Security; illegal immigrants; FBI
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In Their Dust
The Baltimore Sun discovered that unbeknownst to state regulators and legislators, non-profit hospitals were suing tens of thousands of patients in local courts over unpaid bills even though those bills were covered through the rate-setting system. Some of the hospitals that filed the most lawsuits were also collecting consistent surpluses on unpaid and charity care through the rate-setting formula, something that the rate-setting commission could not explain. Patients were often railroaded through the legal system. And hospitals violated state laws or contracts with insurance companies by suing patients for amounts they were not permitted to collect.
Tags: hospitals; patient billing fraud; non-profit corruption; health care; debt collection; ground rent; hospital rates; suing patients
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Dr. Brain DDS
"For decades low-income children complained to police that a local dentist criminally assaulted them...The State of Washington paid the dentist millions of tax-dollars, while encouraging families on welfare to visit his office. KIRO Team 7 Investigators not only uncovered never-before released court files, but also exposed a system that rewards disciplined dentists."
Tags: dentist; health care; assault; children; state government; low income; court cases; police;
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Slow Justice
In Forrest County, the county's justice system had all but ceased to function. The Hattiesburg American began research on the crumbling justice system in 2002. Reporters spent four months entering court records into computers from dusty ledger books and found that: the county's district attorney was "too busy" to look into instances pointed out by the newspaper where prisoners had been released in violation of the law, the district attorney's office lost case files and that a lack of working computers hindered anyone from knowing what a case's status was. In all, more than 70 articles were published on the topic throughout the year.
Tags: Justice; Inefficiency; slow; illegal
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"A Question of Trust
For years, federal officials knew that Karen Fotiou, a woman pretending to be a lawyer, was targeting disabled veterans. She was illegally charging them for filing claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Records show she illegally collected nearly $200,000 from veterans who had little or no income and who suffered from emotional and physical problems. Even though federal officials had evidence she was breaking the law, they never charged her, never warned veterans about her and even helped her continue operating. She was able to operate freely because filing claims with the VA is slow, and an often unfair process; and veterans, under the law cannot pay a lawyer to help them. When mistakes happen in the VA system, no-one is held accountable.
Tags: disabled veterans; Department of Veterans Affairs; Veterans Affairs Medical Center-Northport; VA Hospital; U.S. Inspector Genera report; state corporate records; court appeals; New York Bar Association; VA investigators; Disabled American Veterans; National Organization of Veterans Advocates; post-traumatic stress; filing claims
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Unclogging Gideon's trumpet: Mississippi suits are the latest to attack state defense funding.
The National Law Journal examines the state of criminal defense spending by states, most notably Mississippi. David E. Rovella writes "defense lawyers contend that budgets for already-overtaxed indigent defense systems are flat or have been cut. And in states without a public defense system, they argue, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright, which guarantees state-funded indigent criminal defense, is ineffective." The National Law Journal writes about "three lawsuits filed in a recent weeks have challenged the way Mississippi provides criminal defense to the poor. They are the latest in a handful of suits nationwide attacking what defense lawyers say is the hidden price of war on crime: the erosion of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel."
Tags: Gideon v. Wainwright; right to counsel; Sixth Amendment; U.S. Supreme Court; Mississippi; public defense; public defender; law; legal; public defense system; lawsuits; poor; crime
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Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
The Courier-Journal investigates inept administration and case backlog at the Bullitt County, Ky., court system. The series reveals that "more than 200 felony indictments ... either were never prosecuted or else were incompletely prosecuted between 1998 and 2000," according to the contest entry summary. The mishandling was due to clerks' errors and inept record-keeping.
Tags: crime; prosecutors; judges; rape; drug-dealing; punishment; law enforcement
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A Duty To Protect
The series consists of 5 articles about Washington state's parole system. It builds extensively on cases of criminal offenses by theoretically supervised parolees, on the parole system and its implementation by the parole officers. It also presents a comparison between the old regulations and the new laws that applies to felons arrested after July 1, 2000 and analyzes the financial burden on the state by both the application of the new regulations and the lawsuits filed by the victims or their families.
Tags: Parole; officer; Police Department; FOIA; Tacoma; Department of Corrections; Washington State Supreme Court; sex offender; criminal; Joseph Lehman.
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Justice Not served
WITI-TV reports on a breakdown in Milwaukee County's criminal justice system, which has allowed thousands of convicted criminals to escape their court-ordered punishments in the last decade. The investigation began when WITI reporters came across a number of court files that were missing the so-called "fine and cost commitment," an important part of the paperwork. Clerical errors and staffing shortages caused for the county to lose millions of dollars in uncollected fine revenue. County officials have been aware of the problem for years but did nothing to fix it. Meanwhile, thousands of drunk drivers, drug dealers, and even attempted murderers served no jail time.
Tags: courts; judges; crime; police; drunk driving; arrests; computers; software; court filing system
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How public is losing legal rights
San Francisco Chronicle investigates the loss of civil rights, resulting from mandatory arbitration imposed on employees. Many workers sign their employment contracts without reading the text in fine print, which binds them to accept the arbitration clause, the story reveals. Under the court rulings, arbitrators can be "wholly unqualified" to decide civil right cases, and "are rarely required to follow the law." Other flaws of the system include prohibitive filing fees, limited size of awards, and reluctance by most arbitration firms to enforce ethics codes.
Tags: Federal Arbitration Act; conflicts of interest; judges; courts; business; fairness standards; labor; Supreme Court; civil rights; discrimination; wrongful firing