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The Marshall Project
Some St. Louis Detectives May Have Botched Homicide Investigations
In the summer of 2019, a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officer named Ronald Vaughan was assigned to the overnight homicide squad supervised by Sgt. Heather Taylor. Vaughan had somewhat of a checkered past. — Two years before, he allegedly shoved and pepper-sprayed a pastor and shocked a local activist with a Taser during a peaceful protest, according to a lawsuit.
In St. Louis, a Racial Disparity in Whose Killings Get Solved
On Shulte Avenue on the northside of St. Louis, the sites of the killings are just steps away from each other. Terrell Hall, 47, was killed near a brick one-story home at the intersection of Shulte and Mimika avenues in 2020. About 90 paces down the street, Andre Brookfield was shot to death in a car parked in the alley in 2012.
How We Reported on Homicide Investigations in St. Louis
Getting and interpreting homicide clearance data involved litigation, complex analysis and patience. In February 2021, St. Louis Public Radio and APM Reports began an investigation — later joined by The Marshall Project — into the struggles of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to solve homicides. While St....
Why 1,000 Homicides in St. Louis Remain Unsolved
In one of America’s deadliest cities, police have struggled to solve killings due to staffing shortages, shoddy detective work and lack of community trust. By Alysia Santo, The Marshall Project; Tom Scheck and Jennifer Lu, APM Reports; Rachel Lippmann, St. Louis Public Radio. Maps by Anna Flagg and Katie...
How abortion's legal landscape post-Roe is causing fear and confusion
The Marshall Project reports on how reproductive rights lawyers, advocacy groups, abortion providers and their patients are responding to the new legal reality of the post-Roe landscape and what new risks they face.
I Recorded a Whole Hip-Hop Album on a Death Row Telephone
Alim Braxton, 50, has been behind bars in North Carolina since he was 19 years old. The Raleigh native went to prison in 1993 for taking two lives during a robbery spree. He went to death row in 1997, after killing a fellow incarcerated person. — But way before Braxton was sentenced to death, his life was dedicated to hip-hop culture. Herecalls breakdancing in 1983, writing his first rap in 1986, and competing in his first rap battle two years later. His first and only concert? The Fat Boys. And his fashion was ’80s fresh: suede Pumas with fat laces, a Kangol hat and a gold cap on one tooth.
A Legal Doctrine That Shields Police From Many Lawsuits May Be Losing Support
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters. Desmond Green spent nearly two years in a violent Mississippi jail awaiting trial for a murder he did not commit. The...
The Marshall Project Wins Prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Criminal Justice
The award recognizes our 2023 investigation exposing lax prison discipline for abusive guards in New York state prisons. The Marshall Project has won the 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Award for Criminal Justice reporting for articles on prison guards who violently assault incarcerated people in New York prisons, and the failure of the corrections department to discipline the officers.
Police Tactics at Some Pro-Palestine Protests Ignore Past Lessons
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters. A police sniper stood watch on the roof at Indiana University. An officer fired beanbag rounds at UCLA. Protesters at Emory...
Susan Chira to Step Down as The Marshall Project’s Editor-in-Chief in January
Under her stewardship, the news nonprofit more than doubled in size, opened local newsrooms and won its second Pulitzer Prize. Susan Chira will step down early next year as editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project, the award-winning nonprofit criminal justice newsroom that marks its 10th anniversary this fall. During her tenure, The Marshall Project won numerous journalism accolades, more than doubled its staff and expanded into local communities stripped of resources to investigate criminal justice. The organization substantially diversified staff and leadership, launched its first hit podcasts and multi-episode video series, and deepened its commitment to reach the incarcerated and their families.
When Bad Cops Become Private Security Guards
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters. Private security guards are present in nearly every facet of public life, from schools and hospitals to public transit agencies, and...
A Rare Bright Spot for a Canine Lover Doing Time: Raising Puppies to Become Service Dogs
Christmastime 2022 saw me getting up on another wall in Fishkill Correctional Facility. As in, painting another mural, the seventh since early November — when my pup Lexi left. I was staying busy to avoid spinning too adrift in a spacey dark void of loss. “That's why I couldn’t...
The Marshall Project Wins the Dart Award for “The Mercy Workers”
Our feature on mitigation specialists who help save people from the death penalty was recognized for making “significant contributions to public understanding of trauma-related issues.”. The Marshall Project has won the Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma with “The Mercy Workers,” a feature investigation by staff writer...
Weinstein Ruling Poses Quandary: Can #MeToo Coexist With Protections for Defendants?
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters. New York’s highest court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes conviction last week, to cries of anguish from women despairing that the...
Mississippi Lawmakers Considered Modest Public Defense Reforms. They Rejected All of Them.
A little over a year ago, Michael Ardizone complained to jail officials in Pike County, Mississippi, that he’d been locked up for more than a year with no attorney and no indictment on his drug possession case. “I feel that I am being denied my right to legal counsel,”...
In This Police Youth Program, a Trail of Sexual Abuse Across the U.S.
STOUGHTON, Mass. — The last known person to see Sandra Birchmore alive was a police officer. He stopped by her apartment days before the elementary school teacher’s aide, 23 years old and newly pregnant, was found dead in February 2021. The medical examiner later ruled her death a suicide.
How Campus Protests Could Shape the 2024 Elections — And Not Just the Presidency
Student protesters are camping out and taking over buildings, demanding that their universities divest from companies connected to Israel’s war in Gaza. Police have already arrested hundreds, and university leaders are deciding whether to forcibly eject them ahead of graduation ceremonies. Seeking their own advantage from the moment, politicians are pushing university presidents to resign, calling for more arrests and deportations of foreign students and demanding that President Joe Biden call in the National Guard.
They Killed Their Abusive Partners. Now Their Sentences Could Be Reconsidered.
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. This week, Oklahoma came closer to passing a law allowing judges to reduce criminal sentences for some domestic violence survivors...
What Being Trans in Prison Is Really Like
Amid a wave of anti-trans legislation, and the violence that often follows, four people share their experiences in the criminal justice system. Design and development by Aithne Feay and Katie Park. The last few years have brought a wave of anti-trans legislation. Hundreds of bills have aimed to prevent trans...
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The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system.
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