Human Rights Law

Buffalo Jail With a Grim History Agrees to Suicide-Prevention Steps

Posted on June 22, 2010
by Mosi Secret, ProPublica - The U.S. Justice Department has settled a long-running dispute with a jail in Buffalo, N.Y., over whether the facility's failure to prevent inmate suicides violated federal civil rights law. Under the agreement announced Friday, administrators of the Erie County Holding Center admitted no constitutional violations, but pledged to implement a host of reforms and physical improvements under the oversight of a court monitor...

Gitmo Judge Recuses Self After Complaint Based on ProPublica Interview

Posted on June 17, 2010
by Chisun Lee, ProPublica - A federal judge recused himself yesterday from a case challenging the detention of a Guantanamo prisoner after the detainee’s lawyer complained that views he expressed in a ProPublica interview meant he couldn’t be fair...

Gitmo Judge Recuses Self After Complaint Based on ProPublica Interview

Posted on June 17, 2010
Chisun Lee A federal judge recused himself yesterday from a case challenging the detention of a Guantanamo prisoner after the detainee's lawyer complained that views he expressed in a ProPublica interview meant he couldn't be fair. In a January article exploring the court's role in policing indefinite detention, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U...

Colleague Says Anthrax Numbers Add Up to Unsolved Case

Posted on April 23, 2010
by Gary Matsumoto, Special to ProPublica - A microbiologist who supervised the work of accused anthrax killer Bruce E. Ivins explained to a National Academy of Sciences panel Thursday why the arithmetic of growing anthrax didn't add up to Ivins' mailing deadly spores in fall 2001...

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As Gitmo Detainees? Legal Victories Mount, Obama Administration Resists Orders to Release

Posted on April 21, 2010
by Chisun Lee, ProPublica - The government is failing in more and more cases to produce evidence that the men it has imprisoned at Guantanamo belong there, according to ProPublica's latest look at the lawsuits that some 100 captives have filed in federal court to seek their freedom...

As Gitmo Detainees? Legal Victories Mount, Obama Administration Resists Orders to Release

Posted on April 21, 2010
Chisun Lee The government is failing in more and more cases to produce evidence that the men it has imprisoned at Guantanamo belong there, according to ProPublica's latest look at the lawsuits that some 100 captives have filed in federal court to seek their freedom...

Top Washington Lawyer, Holder Friend to Be Next Deputy Attorney General

Posted on April 19, 2010
by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica - The Obama administration is preparing to announce the nomination of James M. Cole to serve as deputy attorney general, according to two individuals with first-hand knowledge of the appointment. Cole, a partner at Bryan Cave, is a top white-collar criminal defense attorney in Washington, D...

Add-on to Health Care Bill Gives Feds More Power to Investigate Jail Conditions

Posted on April 15, 2010
by Mosi Secret, ProPublica - Among the many lesser-known provisions tucked into the lengthy health care reform bill passed last month is one that expands the U.S. attorney general's power to look into the abuse and neglect of those living in institutional settings...

New Clues Emerge in Post-Katrina Vigilante Shooting at Algiers Point

Posted on April 12, 2010
by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica, and Brendan McCarthy, Times-Picayune - Three days after Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a ghost town, somebody shot Donnell Herrington twice in Algiers Point, ripping a hole in his throat. Herrington, who is African-American, says he was ambushed by a group of armed white men who attacked without warning or provocation...

FRONTLINE Video: Terri Benjamin

Posted on April 12, 2010
by ProPublica FRONTLINE Video: Terri Benjamin Return to main story.

FRONTLINE Video: Donnell Herrington

Posted on April 12, 2010
by ProPublica FRONTLINE Video: Donnell Herrington Return to main story.

New Clues Emerge in Post-Katrina Vigilante Shooting at Algiers Point

Posted on April 12, 2010
by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica, and Brendan McCarthy, Times-Picayune - Three days after Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into a ghost town, somebody shot Donnell Herrington twice in Algiers Point, ripping a hole in his throat. Herrington, who is African-American, says he was ambushed by a group of armed white men who attacked without warning or provocation...

Small County Jail in Upstate New York Has Big Problem With Suicides

Posted on March 29, 2010
by Mosi Secret, ProPublica - At the 680-bed Erie County Holding Facility, a small jail on the shores of Lake Erie in Buffalo, N.Y., six inmates have committed suicide in the past five years, as many as at Rikers Island, the sprawling New York City jail that typically houses about 14,000 inmates...

Court Upholds Release of Corporate Jets List Sought by ProPublica

Posted on February 26, 2010
by Michael Grabell, ProPublica - A federal district judge ruled Friday that a list of private planes whose flights are blocked from the public view should be released under the Freedom of Information Act. We at ProPublica have been seeking the list since December 2008 after the CEOs of the Big 3 automakers flew to Washington, D...

Judges Urge Congress to Act on Indefinite Terrorism Detentions

Posted on January 22, 2010
by Chisun Lee, ProPublica - Three judges on the federal trial court hearing challenges brought by Guantanamo prisoners are calling on Congress and the Obama administration to enact a law to address one of the nation's most perplexing moral and legal dilemmas: When can the United States indefinitely detain terrorism suspects? In lengthy interviews, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth and two of his colleagues on the U...

Philly Fugitives Walk Free as Courts Watch

Posted on December 14, 2009
by Alexandra Andrews, ProPublica - This is one of our editors' picks from our ongoing roundup of Investigations Elsewhere. Court insiders call it a "Philadelphia special": a case that falls apart after both witnesses and cops fail to show up at trial...

Prominent Political Fundraiser Pleads Guilty in N.Y. Pension Scandal

Posted on December 04, 2009
by Sharona Coutts, ProPublica - The Republican National Committee's former finance chairman pleaded guilty Thursday to paying nearly $1 million in bribes to officials at New York State's pension system, in exchange for a $250 million placement in his investment fund...

Justice Often Elusive for Student Rape Victims

Posted on December 03, 2009
by Alexandra Andrews, ProPublica - This is one of the editors' picks from our ongoing roundup of Investigations Elsewhere. A nine-month investigation by the Center for Public Integrity has uncovered widespread flaws in the way colleges respond to and report students' allegations of sexual assault...

Law Enforcement Agencies Still Struggling to Reduce DNA Backlog

Posted on September 08, 2009
by ProPublica .lab_table th {padding: 5px;} .in_body_table th {border-bottom: 1px solid black; background-color: #ecece4;} p.lab-header {font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.4em;} DNA Tracker: Crime Labs and Their DNA Backlog Sept. 8: This post has been updated with new backlog numbers for August...

The Deadly Choices at Memorial

Posted on August 27, 2009
by Sheri Fink, ProPublica - The smell of death was overpowering the moment a relief worker cracked open one of the hospital chapel's wooden doors. Inside, more than a dozen bodies lay motionless on low cots and on the ground, shrouded in white sheets...

How Did Organ Trafficking Scheme Stay Hidden?

Posted on August 10, 2009
by Emily Witt, ProPublica - The arrest of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, the Brooklyn resident charged last month with acting as a "matchmaker" for buyers and sellers of human organs, spotlights the issue of live donor organ trafficking in the United States...

FBI Raids New Orleans Police Department

Posted on August 07, 2009
by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica - Correction (8/8/2009): This post originally stated that five people were wounded during the Danziger Bridge incident. In fact, it was four people. For anybody who has followed our reporting on the violence that followed Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has an interesting story today...

DNA Testing of Detained Immigrants Easier Said Than Done

Posted on August 05, 2009
by Emily Witt, ProPublica and Ben Protess, Huffington Post Investigative Fund - This was co-published with the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. Seven months after the federal government gave final approval to a controversial plan to collect DNA samples from undocumented immigrants, the program has yet to launch...

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