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 "insane" ...
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The Forgotten Floor
The Miami-Dade Pre-Trial Detention Center has hundreds of inmates that are being kept in conditions that violate state law. Inmates suffering from mental illness are kept in overcrowded, freezing plexiglass sealed cells along with other unimaginable conditions.
Tags: prison; jail; mentally ill; insane; condition; miaim-dade; detention center; inmate; criminal
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American Taboo: A murder in the Peace Corps
In this book, the author unravels the truth behind a 25-year-old murder in the Peace Corps. The investigation chronicles how a male Peace Corps volunteer posted to a small island in the South Pacific stalked and killed a female volunteer who had rejected his advances. The man was found to be insane, but when he was returned to the United States under assurances he would be hospitalized for his crime, he went free in a matter of days because he refused to go to the hospital. The investigation also discloses how the Peace Corps tried to suppress the incident at the time.
Tags: BOOK; murder; Peace Corps; Tonga
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Kentucky's longest serving inmate
The Courier-Journal reports that "Kentucky's longest serving inmate -- the nation's sixth longest prisoner -- is a mentally retarded and mentally ill man who has spent 50 years behind bars and whom experts say never should have been prosecuted because he was incompetent for trial and insane at the time of the crime."
Tags: mentally retarded; mentally ill; longest-serving inmates; crime; prisoners; incompetent; sentencing; Corrections Department
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Defenses Down: Insanity Pleas Fail A Lot of Defendants As Fear of Crime Rises
The Wall Street Journal looks at the insanit defense and how "over the past decade or so, some states have rewritten their insanity laws to severely limit the availability of the defense, and a handful have abolished it outright."
Tags: insanity pleas; crime; Du Pont murder case; convictions; insanity defense; murder cases; violent crime
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The Yates Odyssey
When Andrea Yeates drowned her five children in the bathtub, the country was shocked at what she had done. Time uncovered how this could happen and who is responsible for missing the warning signs.
Tags: murder; crime; child killing; psychosis; psychiatry; psychiatric; mental hospital; therapy; insanity
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Cult of Madness
The Dallas Observer reports on a woman whose therapy made her insane. Martha Hurt sought psychiatric help for marriage problems and depression, what she would up with were memories of sexual abuse and over 200 personalities. The article follows hurt through the dissolution of her relationship with her parents, husband and children to her lawsuit against the therapists she now believes made her sicker than when she came to them. Martha Hurt is just one of many women who have found themselves in similar situations after multiple personality disorder and repressed memories became psychological fads.
Tags: psychology; multiple personality disorder; repressed memories; International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation; False Memory Syndrome Foundation
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The Early-Decision Racket
The Atlantic Monthly examines how the early-decision programs offered by most universities "have added an insane intensity to middle-class obsessions about college." The reporter reveals that these programs "distort the admissions process, rewarding the richest students from the most exclusive high schools and penalizing nearly everyone else." One of the findings is that "the incentives fro many colleges and students are as irresistible as they are perverse."
Tags: education; universities; students; Princeton; Harvard; MIT; Georgetown; the University of Chicago; Notre Dame; Cal Tech; University of California; Yale; University of Pennsylvania; Washington University
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Call Me Crazy
"When the accused refuse an insanity plea, Colorado's liberal law suffers a break down." Westword reports on Colorado's decision to impose NGRI (Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity) on unwilling defendants. "The reasoning behind such a law is that in some cases a defendant doesn't realize- or refuses to acknowledge- that he or she is mentally ill." But some argue that mentally ill people have the right to decide their destiny with a guilty or not guilty plea and that insanity should not be forced upon them even if there is evidence. In addition, the article discusses the various interpretations of insanity pleas over the last thirty years and how they have effected court and jury decisions over the years.
Tags: law; lawyers; insanity defense; crime; court; judge; mental illness
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A Hole In The Ground
The article attempts to assess the possiblity that convicted murdered, Hadden Clark, was a serial murderer whose victims had not all be found or identified. According to one cellmate, "[Clark's] just not the normal person you meet in prison who killed somebody... he should be locked up in a mental hospital for the ciminally insane." Clark also showed signs of having other personalities including two female ones, a mother and a daughter. The author presents evidence from interviews with Clark that he is responsible for at least two other unsolved murders.
Tags: Hadden Clark; murder; Wellfleet; cadaver dogs
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Lives in the Balance.
A two-year look at battling mental illness in the maximum-security Biggs unit. The Biggs unit, a component of Fulton State Hospital, is called a "forensic" center because many of its inhabitants have committed criminal acts, in many cases shocking acts of violence against family members or loved ones. Hope for the "Sickest of the Sick." The Inner Battle. Reaching the Unreachable. Silencing the Voices. Pleading Insanity.
Tags: sex offender; insane; insanity; mental illness; mental health; Schizophrenia; prison; rape; molest; religion; drug; security; reform; medicine; hospital.