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 "legal expert" ...
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The Price of Protection
The first in-depth report about a troubled and secretive civil-commitment program for dangerous sex offenders in Washington state. It revealed waste of taxpayer money, unconstrained legal costs, profiteering by expert witnesses, and chronic problems with staff at the high-security facility for the offenders.
Tags: Sex offenders; taxes; taxpayers; facility staff
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The Informants
In the package, "Terrorists for the FBI," Mother Jones exposed this pattern with in-depth pieces that drilled deep into what has become federal law enforcement's No. 1 priority. As a part of an 18-month investigation, reporter Trevor Aaronson pulled court documents of all 508 federal terrorism convictions since September 11, 2001, and interviewed everyone from undercover FBI informants to street agents, top bureau officials, and legal and terrorism experts. The investigation found that following 9/11, the FBI built a massive network of domestic informants -15,000 in all- many of them tasked with surveilling and infiltrating Muslim neighborhoods and institutions.
Tags: FBI; informants; undercover; federal agents; terrorism
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Judge Me
The story summarizes the attempt by Elroy Phillips to prove he's in prison for a crime several legal experts say he did not commit. Phillips was arrested by the West Palm Beach police in 2001 for allegedly selling $50 worth of crack to an undercover cop, Phillips has spent the years since his arrest collecting evidence. Phillip's legal work appears to show that cops fabricated the evidence against him.
Tags: Elroy Phillips; West Palm Beach Police; Judge; Court
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Tobacco Underground: The Booming Global Trade in Smuggled Cigarettes
"Tobacco Underground" is groundbreaking series on the global trade in smuggled cigarettes, produced by a team of 14 journalists based in 10 countries. The illicit trafficking of tobacco is a multibillion-dollar business today, fueling organized crime and corruption, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product. So profitable is the trade that tobacco is the world's most widely smuggled legal substance. In an interactive, multimedia Web site, ICIJ published a series of nine stories, integrated with undercover footage; audio and video interviews with experts, smugglers and undercover agents; maps and charts; and extensive links to resources ranging from tobacco control groups to repositories of tobacco industry documents.
Tags: tobacco; smuggling; new media; international journalism; cigarette; tobacco
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Too Tough? Tactics in Suburban Policing
Some police departments in the Philadelphia area have been recording some of the highest arrest rates in American for minor offenses. These towns are mostly white, and the high number of arrests are made up overwhelmingly of African Americans. Legal experts say some of the arrests are unconstitutional. Furthermore, the towns with the highest arrest rates have actually seen crime go up, not down.
Tags: police; arrest; demographic; racial profiling; public records
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Unnecessary epidemic
This extensive investigation showed that Congress and the Drug Enforcement Administration could have stopped methamphetamine growth across the West during the 1990s and still can. The newspaper explained how the drug is able to be controlled because it relies on chemical ingredients produced by only a handful of factories worldwide. Two clampdowns on the legal trade of the chemicals caused meth shortages, prompting users to quit and meth-related property crime to fall. But the drug trade survived because of loopholes and lax enforcement. The scope of this story includes examinations of DEA drug seizures, DEA-registered sellers of the drug, ephedrine drug shipments, ephedrine seizures, congressional records, the federal budget, federal audits, property tax records, patents, academic studies and public policy.
Tags: drugs; meth; methamphetamine; Drug Enforcement Agency; DEA; drug control policy
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Evidence of Injustice
An exclusive i-team investigation shows how inconsistencies, mistakes and staffing problems are raising serious questions at the Maricopa County Medical Examiners Offices. This is a new forensic science center where coroners perform autopsies on people who have died on unnatural causes in this county. Investigators and legal experts rely on the information provided by this office, but the information is not always correct. Interviewees on this tape say that leads to having innocent people on trial for crimes that do not exist. In one case, the Sheriff's office began using an amended autopsy to defend a mysterious jail death. The Chief Medical Examiner changed his opinion about the jail death two years after the original autopsy, without any new information. Some Medical Examiners are doing many more autopsies per year than what is recommended.
Tags: TAPE; Chief Medical Examiner; Maricopa County Medical Examiners Office; autopsy; inconsistency; forensic; forensic science; legal; legal expert; coroner; investigator; trial; crime; jail death; kill; killing; shooting; shot; inconsistent autopsy.
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Workers: We Were Cheated Out of Pay. Restaurant Cleaning Company Says Pay Deductions Legal. Labor Experts Not So Sure.
This investigation found that "CanAmera, a Canadian-based company that cleans restaurants in four states and Ontario, violated a host of state and federal labor laws, including laws governing minimum wage, overtime, a day of rest and federal and tax withholdings. The company also illegally withheld money from workers' paychecks. The company hired worked with limited English skills with promises of a good job. But, in fact, the mostly Spanish speaking workers found themselves fighting for money they said was owed to them."
Tags: taxes; pay withholdings; wages; Wal-Mart
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Experts: Jurors erred in murder case
In the final trial of the controversial 1997 John Hartman murder case, this story reveals how the jury broke long standing legal traditions to conduct a street experiment for verifying the validity of the testimony of a key witness. This leads to the jury's handing over two sentences of 33 and 79 years each to two young men. The ruling, which one of the judges later acknowledge will strike many as unfair, is now on appeal.
Tags: George Frese; Eugene Vent; Marvin Roberts; Kevin Pease; Anchorage; Howard Luke Academy; Gary Montini
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Governor's Club
"The Governor's Club, a legally and ethically dubious fundraising practice carried out by South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow and the state Republican Party, raises several questions. Most notably, Janklow probably owes taxes on at least $400,000 he has collected in recent years, according to several campaign finance and tax experts.
Tags: Governor's Club; South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow; political fundraising; Janklow; South Dakota Republican Party; South Dakota Secretary of State; campaign finance