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 "forensic" ...
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What Killed Arafat?
This 50-minute film was the result of a nine month long cold case investigation into the suspicious death of Yasser Arafat, Palestine's iconic, revolutionary leader. After obtaining Arafat's entire original medical files, Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, led by producer and reporter Clayton Swisher, crossed continents to track down and interview the French, Jordanian, Egyptian, and Palestinian doctors who had worked to save Arafat's life. Part I of "What Killed Arafat?" was able to easily shatter popular myths about what caused Arafat's precipitous decline from the onset of his illness on October 12, 2004 until his death on November 11th. Testimony from Arafat's doctors conclusively ruled out liver cirrhosis, cancer, even rumors of HIV. The scientific, evidence-based discoveries made in the Part II result from the work performed by a team of forensic pathologists, toxicologists, and radiation physicists from the University Center for Legal Medicine and Institute for Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland. Working without payment, they agreed to run a battery of sophisticated tests on a large gym bag containing Arafat’s last personal effects. The scientists discovered significant levels of reactor-made Polonium 210 contaminating areas of Arafat's personal effects that came into contact with his biological fluids. When the final results came back in late June, Al Jazeera hosted Mrs. Arafat in Doha to watch the Swiss explain the results on set. Upon witnessing their testimony, Ms. Arafat made a resolute, unanticipated surprise announcement, calling on the Palestinian Authority to exhume her husband's body for testing. Yasser Arafat’s body was exhumed on November 27, 2012 so that the final samples could be retrieved. Whether the causes of Arafat's death are determined to be natural, inconclusive—or even murder—suffice it to say that Al Jazeera’s "What Killed Arafat?" and the resulting investigations and exhumation will have inched the world closer to understanding what did not, and possibly for the first time, what did claim the life of this historic and controversial personality.
Tags: Science; death; biology; investigation; exhumation; testing
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Cause of Death: Negotiable
This investigation focused on the practice of a death investigator in Bosnia. Despite questions of his practice, he continued to work and was documented soliciting money in exchange for favorable cause of death findings.
Tags: forensics; death investigation; bribery; evidence tampering; Zeljko Karan;
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The Forensic Test
Dennis Lawley was found guilty of murder in 1989 but new forensic methods are calling his conviction into question 19 years later.
Tags: forensics; dennis lawley; wrongful conviction; scott kauffman; death row;
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Finger prints
For almost a century, fingerprint evidence has been a revered cornerstone of the American criminal justice system. But that may soon change. Last fall, in a Baltimore murder case, a judge ruled that fingerprint analysis is not reliable, which shocked lawyers across the country and could possibly put thousands of criminal investigations in jeopardy. CBS News spent months researching the use of fingerprints in murder trials as well as assessing the future of fingerprint evidence.
Tags: fingerprint evidence; Brandon Mayfield; court cases; criminal investigations; attorney; forensic evidence; death penalty
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Rules of Engagement
The investigation examined the incident that came to be know as the Haditha Massacre, in which a number of Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. Marines after an IED attack that killed a man in their convoy. The initial reports incorporated accounts of execution-style killings of 24 unarmed men, women and children in a rampage that media often compared to the My Lai massacre. However, the investigation found that the convoy had come under fire from the direction of the four houses, one of the houses contained weapons and forensic and ballistic evidence provided support for the Marines' accounts of what happened that day.
Tags: rules of engagement; Marine; Iraq; Haditha Massacre; civilian casualties; suicide bomber; Iraq War
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The Mysterious Death of Janie Ward
This hour-long report is a result of a five-year investigation into the death of a 16-year-old girl 20 years ago in a small town in the Ozarks. It's about two daughters -- one wealthy and popular (a cheerleader and beauty queen); the other poor and self-conscious. It's about two fathers -- one a powerful judge who allegedly shielded his daughter from the law he's sworn to uphold; the other a bail bondsman who is trying to avenge his daughter's death. And it's about one family's fight for justice against what they believe is a corrupt judicial system that closed ranks around the powerful judge to cover-up a murder. When 16-year-old Jamie Ward fell off a 9-inch porch in the woods near Marshall, Ark., on September 9, 1989, her parents refused to blieve that the fall had killed their healthy teenager. Instead, they began to suspect to suspect she was murdered by the judge's daughter. After years of demanding an investigation into her death, an independent medical examiner associated with Parents for Murdered Children exhumed Janie's body a second time for an extremely rare third autopsy. Because the case was 20 years old, most of the files were not digital; rather, the investigation focused on old-fashioned reporting: finding and interviewing eyewitnesses (all of whom had not been reinterviewed since the original investigation); analyzing inconsistencies in the witness statements, double-checking the forensics with independent experts.
Tags: autopsy; unsolved death; forensic science; criminal justice system; reopened cases; Arkansas
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Nail Gun Safety Under Fire
There were years of warnings about dangerous nail gun models that went ignored as injuries using the tool soared, especially when using the automatic firing mode.
Tags: construction; forensic engineer; trigger; projectile; rapid-fire; building homes; consumer product safety
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Silent Injustice
Through analyzing "thousands of pages of documents" and interviewing "dozens of people," 60 Minutes and the Washington Post found that "there were hundreds of defendants imprisoned, who were convicted with the help of now-discredited forensic tool... The FBI never notified them, their lawyers or the courts that their cases may have been affected by faulty testimony."
Tags: bullet lead analysis; forensic science; evidence; FBI; courts; chemical signatures; bullets; ammunition;
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Miscarriages of Justice
Freelance journalist Eamonn O'Neill tells stories of wrongful murder convictions. Robert Brown, who spent nearly 26 years in prison due to forged evidence; Stuart Gair, whose more than 15 years behind bars for a murder he didn't commit; and Raymond Gilbert, imprisoned for 26 years while continuing to maintain his innocence. While O'Neill tells of the compensation Brown and Gair were offered by the government for their hardship, he also tells of the lack of forensic evidence and bogus confessions in the Gilbert case.
Tags: wrongful convictions; murder convictions; overturned convictions; forensic science; forensic evidence
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Who Killed Her Daughter?
"The package of stories focused on the unsolved slaying of four young women within central Virginia that occurred within a seven-month span in 1996."
Tags: forensics; murder; serial killer; Richard Marc Evonitz; slaying; law enforcement; FBI lab; Darrell Rice; innocent; death penalty