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Gun crime plea deals common in Del.

Mike Chalmers of The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal analyzed 115,000 felony cases overseen by Attorney General M. Jane Brady during her 11-year tenure, to show that plea deals involving gun crimes are common in Delaware. The newspaper found that "of the nearly 16,000 weapons-related cases filed from 1994 through 2004 — years Brady served as the state's top prosecutor — three-quarters ended without a felony-level weapons conviction. ... A third of the 16,000 cases ended with a conviction on another felony. " To examine how Brady's office handled felony cases, The News Journal reviewed computerized records, obtained after a six-year legal battle from the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System, or DelJIS, which tracks criminal cases from arrest through prosecution and punishment. Of the nearly 9,000 cases involving the charge of possession of a deadly weapon, only 6 percent ended with a conviction on that charge.

Stephanie Hooper of The Telegraph examined records obtained from the Nashua Police Department, as part of their six-day "Gangs of New Hampshire" series, to show the budding gang activity in Nashua and southern New Hampshire. The report that comes in three installments, unraveled the workings of a local chapter of one of the nation

Pam Louwagie and Dan Browning of the Star Tribune report on the growing problem of young Hmong girls who are raped and prostituted by Hmong gangs. A preliminary analysis found that "these girls were six times more likely than other victims to have been raped by five or more males ". The newspaper used an FBI list of Hmong surnames to extract data on prosecutions of these crimes. The stories explore the clash of cultures that hampers investigation of the crimes and allows them to continue with increasing frequency. See how this story was reported.

Adam Liptak of The New York Times , examined information about prisoners serving life sentences in all 50 states, finding "that about 132,000 of the nation's prisoners, or almost 1 in 10, are serving life sentences. The number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade, far outpacing the overall growth in the prison population . Of those lifers sentenced between 1988 and 2001, about a third are serving time for sentences other than murder, including burglary and drug crimes." Janet Roberts of The New York Times' computer-assisted reporting unit led the research for this series. The story includes a sidebar about how the story was reported.

Dave Moore of the Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle finds Denton County might have paid more than $350,000 more that it was required in court-appointed attorney fees. "The source of most of the non-mandatory legal bills to the county has been 393rd District Court Judge Vicki Isaacks, who has been appointing those attorneys mostly for children in civil divorce cases," though state law only requires the count to pay for the defense of indigent people charge with crimes and for those involving Child Protective Services. "Because Vicki Isaacks' husband, Bruce Isaacks, is the Denton County district attorney, her cases infrequently deal with Child Protective Services or criminal matters, to reduce conflict of interest claims."

Center for Investigative Reporting's Dan Noyes finds that "After a long career spent representing blue chip corporations and resource industries, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, Jr. brings more potential conflicts of interest to the bench than any justice of his generation." The investigation looks at "rules governing conflicts of interest and reveals cases already on the docket for the Supreme Court that may cause conflicts for Roberts."

Jeremy Kohler of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that St. Louis police have failed to file official reports on many sex crimes over the past 20 years, instead writing informal memos on cases that would not be counted in the city's crime statistics. "The Post-Dispatch analyzed many of these cases and found police often discounted claims by women who were reluctant to testify, easy to discredit or difficult to locate." The paper fond that "Memos were a symptom of greater problems in the city's handling of rape cases." Many records were obtained only after a lengthy FOI battle.

Bryan Chambers of The (Huntington, W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch used local crime data for a story about the city’s effort to clean up a blighted area. “Between September 2003 and May 2004 nearly 21 percent of the city

An investigation by Dallas Morning News reporters Steve McGonigle, Holly Becka, Jennifer LaFleur and Tim Wyatt found that prosecutors and defense attorneys in Dallas County exclude jurors on the basis of race, despite Supreme Court bans on discrimination in jury selection. The findings were based on an analysis of information from juror cards, transcripts of juror questioning, court records and interviews with more than 100 current and former prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, jury consultants, social scientists, jury scholars, law professors, jurors and prospective jurors and community activists. The package, continuing through Tuesday, includes Supreme Court decisions and trial transcripts, as well as the paper's methodology.

Roma Khanna and Rosanna Ruiz of the Houston Chronicle analyzed police shootings to find that "Harris County sheriff's deputies have turned to deadly force during car chases four times since 2002, killing one and wounding four ... Among the people they pursued and shot were a man driving with his headlights off and another who had stolen DVDs from a drugstore." Although the number is small, "the Houston Police Department and most other Harris County agencies have not used deadly force to end a car chase in more than six years."

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