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 "lethal injection" ...
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Bad to the Bone
When four executives of a medical-device company called Synthes went to jail for illegally marketing a bone cement—five patients had died after it was injected into their spines—Mina Kimes knew there had to be a compelling saga behind a case that had generated little coverage beyond local news articles. So she began digging, first with FOIA requests for never-before-published government documents, and then assembling hundreds of pages of court transcripts and internal company e-mails and reports. She used that foundation to begin the harder challenge: persuading Synthes employees, many of them terrified by the criminal case and the company’s intimidating chairman, to talk to her. With six months of grueling, old-fashioned reporting, Kimes succeeded, and “Bad to the Bone” is the masterful result. Not only did she persuade more than 20 current and former company employees to speak, but she also revealed a story whose disturbing breadth far exceeded the case presented in court. Her tour de force reporting raises profound new questions about the culpability of a key figure who wasn’t charged: Hansjörg Wyss, the reclusive and controlling Swiss founder and chairman—one of the richest people in the world—who made crucial decisions about how to sell the bone cement. This is a classic tale of corporate malfeasance: Warned by the government not to sell its bone cement for use in the spine, Synthes ignored the admonition despite clear evidence of lethal danger—a pig had died within seconds when the cement was tested on it—and encouraged surgeons to use the cement on people, five of whom died soon afterward. But “Bad to the Bone” isn’t just an exposé. It opens a window into a broader issue: how the medical system actually runs. Readers see how salespeople with no medical training advise surgeons—inside the OR during operations—on how to use their devices. They experience the tale of one surgeon who continues using the cement even after two of his patients died. Oh, and what sort of justice does Synthes itself receive? Wyss sells it, for $20 billion, to health care giant Johnson & Johnson, which praises Synthes’s “culture” and “values.” Corporate crime. Death on the operating room table. Secret e-mails. Surgeons on the edge. An imperious multibillionaire CEO. It’s a mesmerizing article, and Kimes’s reporting takes readers on a deeply unsettling journey that ensures they’ll never look at the medical system the same way again.
Tags: Medical devices; bone cement; Synthes
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Out of Time
Michael Wayne Richard was executed by lethal injection 10 hours after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a separate case, Baze v. Rees, which will decide whether lethal injection is cruel or not. Richard's life may have been spared if proper paper work could have been put through, or he could have at least earned an extra day to live.
Tags: execution; court of appeals; justice
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Uncomfortably Numb
Lethal injection procedures have been largely unchanged - and unexamined - since the method was pioneered in the mid-1970s. It is possible that a condemned inmate might awaken during the lethal injection procedure, but because of the injection's paralytic agent, no observer would notice. The combination of two of the drugs used by executioners in Missouri and many other states has been condemned by the American Medical Veterinary Association for use in animal euthanasia.
Tags: lethal injection; death penalty
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Dead Run: The Untold Story of Dennis Stockton and America's Only Mass Escape from Death Row
"Dead Run" tells the story of Dennis Stockton, a self-described career criminal sentenced to death in 1983 for murder. Stockton, who was poorly defended in court, steadfastly maintained his innocence. As a Death Row inmate, Stockton began keeping a journal of his life. In May of 1984, he recorded in his journal an account of the "Mecklenburg Six's" daring escape from Death Row. William F. Burke, an editor at the Virginia-Pilot in Norfolk, published Stockton's account of the only mass escape from Death Row in the history of the United States. The two became fast friends and Burke began publishing columns by Stockton pleading his innocence and outlining the horrible conditions on Death Row. Nonetheless, Stockton was executed in 1995.
Tags: BOOK diary wrongful imprisonment criminal justice system lethal injection