Report looks at colleges with highest violent crime rates

ABC News used data reported by the country's universities and analyzed reports of campus crime to determine which colleges had the highest reported violent crime rates. The analysis divided the schools into four categories — largest to smallest and were available from 2002 and 2003. "In the smallest category, schools with 2,100 students or fewer, Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, reported the highest violent crime rate, with 29 robberies and aggravated assaults in 2002 alone." The report found that forcible sexual assaults was the most common type of violent crime on campuses throughout the country. Among large schools, those with between 4,400 and 11,000 students, Texas Southern University in Houston topped the list, the only university on the list in a major city. (Editor's note: Other reporters can do similar stories using the same campus crime data. Contact the IRE and NICAR Database Library for more information: 573-884-7711 or jeff@ire.org.)

Lise Olsen of the Houston Chronicle reports that a witness now says he was influenced by police to identify Ruben Cantu, then 17, as the killer in an alleged murder-robbery. Cantu, who claimed to have been framed in the capital murder case, was executed in August 1993. "A dozen years after his execution, a Houston Chronicle investigation suggests that Cantu, a former special-ed student who grew up in a tough neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio, was likely telling the truth." The judge, prosecutor, head juror and defense attorney have acknowledge that Cantu's conviction seems to have been built on omissions and lies.

David Jackson, with contributions from Ray Gibson, Todd Lighty and John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, reviewed thousands of pages of land and court records and interviewed more than 100 people to show that a white-collar crime wave is raking Chicago's poorest communities, robbing vulnerable families of their homes and draining billions of dollars from the U.S. economy. During the past five years, mortgage fraud has surged as home loans become easier than ever to get and identity theft has blossomed. The five-part investigation found that blending face-to-face scams with computer forgery, fraud crews typically include home loan executives, appraisers and scouts who troll for victims. "Mortgage swindling has helped drug-dealing gangs, including Chicago's Black Disciples, solidify their control over street corners, launder money and gain safe houses to launch operations. " The story has prompted Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to call for an investigation into mortgage fraud.

Evelyn Larrubia, Jack Leonard and Robin Fields of the Los Angeles Times examined records of more than 2,400 cases handled by California's professional conservators since 1997 to produce a detailed four-part series on the state's failure to protect its senior citizens from those hired to handle their affairs. More than 500 seniors were entrusted to for-profit conservators without their consent at hearings that lasted minutes. Some conservators misuse their near-parental power over fragile adults, ignoring their needs and isolating them from loved ones. One withheld the allowance that a disabled man relied on for food, leaving him to survive on handouts from a church. Another abruptly moved a 95-year-old woman to a care home and for a month refused to tell her daughter where she was. The investigation found that in most cases, evidence of these abuses was in the courts' own files. "An online registry created six years ago to identify and track problem conservators has proved a failure. The reason: Most county courts have ignored it, even though participation is mandatory"

Mc Nelly Torres of South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that, despite an engineer's independent study showing workmanship and materials that did not meet standards in a hurricane-prone area, homeowners have been waiting 10 years for their homes to be fixed. Torres reviewed hundreds of records, including a grand jury report, two independent studies, and other construction-related documentation to show that Arvida/JMB Partners and Disney World Co. failed to design and construct homes using the materials and workmanship required by the 1979 South Florida Building Code. Independent study by an engineer found evidence of shoddy construction with firewalls missing, no wall reinforcements and with roofs attached with staples instead of nails. The home owner's association filed a class-action lawsuit in 1995 against Arvida/JMB Partners and Disney.

Brad Schrade of The Tennessean analyzed three years of the patrol's promotions and proposed promotions to show that two-thirds of Tennessee Highway Patrol officers tapped for promotion under Gov. Phil Bredesen gave money to his campaign or had family or political patrons who did. Among those with such connections, more than half were promoted over troopers who scored better on impartial exams or rankings. "Sixty-two of the promoted officers — 49 percent — contributed or had close family members who contributed to the governor's campaign before they were promoted ". The newspaper demonstrated how the THP is using a promotions loophole to let lesser-qualified candidates advance, a practice now being reviewed by the state personnel department in response to the newspaper's investigation. See web extras which include previous highway patrol coverage, documents online, and a 1966 Tennessean story reproduced to show the history of politics in the Highway Patrol.

Bill Burke and David Gulliver of The Virginian-Pilot used local court data to show that " from 2000 to 2004 in Hampton Roads, 42,606 people were convicted of driving on a suspended or revoked license, according to an analysis of court records." More than 4,600 people were found guilty three or more times, and some had more than 10 convictions. Though more than a dozen states have recognized the problem in recent years and taken actions to remove violators from the road, Virginia has no such initiatives, instead eliminating judges' most powerful weapon for punishing chronic suspended-driving offenders — the state

Students from the Missouri School of Journalism led by Steve Weinberg, a former director of IRE, spent months researching DNA testing, digging up court testimony and interviewing witnesses to report on a St. Louis case which had been controversially re-opened in 2003. The report is a detailed account of the 1982 murder of JoAnn Clenney Tate and the subsequent conviction of the accused, Rodney Lincoln. "The 23-year-old murder case is controversial because of inconsistent witness testimony and a three-year feud between the daughters of the victim and the convicted murderer, with the former wanting to re-open the case and the latter opposing the motion. " The students gathered background information, chronologies, photographs and more to produce a story that ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg Markets analyzed Federal Election Commission records to find the Republican Party's $190,000 in donations to seven Texas politicians in 2002 is five times more than any of the other contributions the national party made to state legislative races that year. "The charges may bolster a prosecutor's accusations that Tom DeLay, who has now been indicted on charges of money laundering, channeled funds through the party to skirt a Texas law banning corporate contributions to political races." The money was distributed by Delay's political action committee, two weeks after the national party got $190,000 from the PAC.

Rick Anderson of Seattle Weekly examined King County's internal jail records to show that deceptive administrative tactics hid a spike in local jail deaths this year, including what turned out to be two preventable suicides. Record requests showed that among the 13 deaths in a 27-month period were that of a man who died from flesh-eating disease and another who had a wad of gauze shoved down his throat; both deaths were ruled "natural." Jail guards and nurses revealed that officials were covering up deaths and poor health care at 1,700-bed King County Jail. A woman who committed suicide the day she was arrested had hanged herself on an easily-accessible six-foot TV power cord in a holding cell. Another inmate, who had once asked a court to kill him rather than sentence him to life — and who had once tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by hoarding his jail antidepressants — succeeded the second time after again hoarding his pills. "To some jail health workers and custody officers, these critical cases raise more questions about downtown jail operations.">"