Analysis paints picture of killers, victims

Jo Craven McGinty of The New York Times analyzed homicide records over the past three years to provide a detailed description of New York killers and their victims. From 2003 through 2005, 1,662 murders were committed in New York. With crimes that were solved, men and boys were responsible for 93 percent of the murders. "They killed with guns about two-thirds of the time; their victims tended to be other men and boys; and in more than half the cases, the killer and the victim knew each other." The offender and victim were of the same race in more than three-quarters of the killings. "At least a quarter of the city's murders in these three years, were committed by strangers, and in those instances, most were the result of a dispute. " More than 90 percent of the killers had criminal records; and of those who wound up killed, more than half had them.

David E. Kaplan of U.S. News & World Report identified nearly a dozen cases in which city and county police, in the name of homeland security, have surveilled or harassed animal-rights and antiwar protesters, union activists, and even library patrons surfing the Web. The inquiry found federal officials have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into state and local police intelligence operations. Guidelines for protecting privacy and civil liberties have lagged far behind the federal money. After four years of doling out homeland security grants to police departments, federal officials released guidelines for the conduct of local intelligence operations only last year; the standards are voluntary and are being implemented slowly. The problems evoke memories of the now-discredited Red Squads that wreaked havoc against the civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s and early '70s.

Brian Charlton and Don Jordan of The State News at Michigan State University analyzed noise and party violations from 2004 and 2005, including 1,025 noise, 41 unlawful party and two nuisance party violations, and found student neighborhoods were saturated with violations. The most ticketed areas were student apartment complexes, a finding that surprised police who thought most complaints would come from where student neighborhoods adjoined areas where more permanent residents lived. "Most of the noise citations are given out after someone calls police with a complaint. There were more than 1,600 complaints in both 2004 and 2005 — three times more than the number of citations handed out." The investigation used Access to find the noisiest apartment complex, apartment, street, block, weekend, day of the week, time of the day, month of the year. They also found the police officers who issued the most tickets. The story includes an interactive map of violations and a PDF of the data.

Will Evans of the Center for Investigative Reporting, writing for Salon.com, reviewed the financial filings of Judge Terrence W. Boyle, a key circuit court nominee touted by the White House and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to show that he ruled in multiple cases involving corporations in which he held investments. For instance, Boyle bought stock in General Electric while presiding over a lawsuit in which the corporation stood accused of illegally denying disability benefits to a long-standing employee. "Two months later, he made his ruling: Boyle shot down the plaintiff's claims to long-term and pension disability benefits, granting him only a fraction of the money in short-term compensation for a debilitating mental condition." The investigation revealed that Boyle apparently violated federal law prohibiting judicial conflicts of interest — not only in the G.E. case, but in many instances since his nomination five years ago.

Julia Sommerfeld and Michael J. Berens of The Seattle Times used state records to show that Seattle's Health Department has dismissed — without any investigation — 461 sexual-misconduct complaints against health-care professionals in the past decade, or nearly one-third of the 1,494 complaints received. "These complaints include counselors accused of molesting clients, nurses suspected of fondling patients and doctors turned in for demanding sex in exchange for treatment." As a result, health-care licenses were left unblemished, and possible victims were cast aside. And sexual predators went undetected, only to harm again. The three-day series looks at how the Health Department has credentialed more than 17,000 "registered counselors" who aren't required to have training or even a high school diploma but work with some of the most vulnerable clients. Registered counselors account for the largest number of sexual misconduct complaints in Washington health care.

Patrick Danner and Dan Christensen of The Miami Herald investigated more than 100 cases kept hidden on a secret docket in Broward since 2001 and found that three Broward Circuit Court judges failed to follow the law by "sealing" cases — closing off all the information in them — without giving public notice or showing sufficient reason. "The practices of sealing cases without notice and of putting cases on a secret docket go against the basic tenet that courts funded by the public must be open to the public. " Broward judges — Victor Tobin, Ronald Rothschild and Robert Carney — did not comply with a Florida law that requires judges to issue public notice of requests to seal, so they are open to challenge. In the first case, four companies were sued alleging negligence in maintenance of the aircraft.
Tobin sealed the case in 2004 without explanation at the request of an attorney for defendants. Among other things, the companies argued secrecy was needed because other lawsuits arising from the crash were then being litigated.

Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz of the USA Today used court records and interviews with regulators, security experts and independent investigators to illustrate the mindset of the growing fraternity of hackers and cyberthieves born after 1985. "They also provide a glimpse of Cybercrime Inc.'s most versatile and profitable tool." The arrests of three young men show that the malicious-software spreaders are getting sneakier and more prevalent. The arrests underscore an ominous shift in the struggle to keep the Internet secure: Cybercrime undergirded by networks of bots — PCs infected with malicious software that allows them to be controlled by an attacker — is soaring. Despite their notoriety, these three young men represent mere flickers in the Internet underworld. More elite hackers collaborating with organized crime groups take pains to cover their tracks — and rarely get caught.

Carol Marbin Miller of The Miami Herald used juvenile justice records and found that force was used against teenage boys in spite of nonviolent behavior at a Florida sheriff's boot camp. "In only eight of the 180 instances documented since January 2003 were the teenagers described as hitting guards, fighting with other youths, threatening to escape or trying to harm themselves." In many of the cases, the guards used the tactics despite written orders by Department of Juvenile Justice chief Anthony Schembri, who in June 2004 banned the use of physical force except in extreme situations. Juvenile justice experts who reviewed the documents at The Miami Herald's request said the treatment of the youths was unjustifiable.

Carl Jones of the Daily Business Review in South Florida analyzed Miami-Dade County juror response rates and found the county actually had about a 25 percent response in 2004-05 — rather than 54 percent as reported by the Office of the State Courts Administrator. And its true average monthly percentage for the last six months was 38.4 percent, not 95.3 percent. The county's Clerk of Courts confirmed his office has used a different method for reporting jury yield than that advised by the state since late 2004. "After the state of Florida took over responsibility for funding core justice system costs in July 2004, the job of jury pool management shifted from courts administrators to the county clerks of the courts. " The jury yield statistics help clerks and court officials plan how many people they need to summon to garner large enough jury pools for judges and trial lawyers to select from. Florida, like most other states, is struggling to improve declining rates of jury service compliance.

Monica Rhor of The Orange County Register surveyed all 58 California
counties and found widespread discrepancies in how the state's restraining
order laws are being enforced. The system has become a legal labyrinth in which rules aren't the same as reality, procedures differ from courthouse to courthouse, and violators often benefit more than victims. "Eleven counties, including Orange, require the person requesting a restraining order to give advance notice to the person from whom they are seeking protection. Such a warning can inflame an already combustible relationship, or help abusers avoid being served with the order." The investigation also found that tens of thousands of restraining orders issued throughout the state are invalid because they were never served. And no county has a mechanism for seizing guns or making sure they are surrendered as required by law. The flaws in the system have led to one tragic consequence after another as detailed in this two-part series.