The abolitionist’s smoking-gun case?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Mark Obbie

Andrew Cohen’s new piece at The Atlantic credits “an astonishing blend of narrative journalism, legal research, and gumshoe detective work” for a newly published study that proves the execution of a wrongfully convicted inmate. I have to take his word for it at this point, because I have not yet read the underlying work that Cohen explains in a compelling and lengthy argument. But here’s my summary of his summary:

Back in 2006, the Chicago Tribune‘s Steve Mills and Maurice Possley included in their groundbreaking work on wrongful convictions this story about a case from Corpus Christi, Texas, casting serious doubt on the conviction of Carlos DeLuna for a robbery-murder. Texas executed DeLuna in 1989. That reporting broke new ground on a case investigated by a team led by Columbia law professor James Liebman. Now, in what Cohen calls “a Karmic game of leapfrog,” Liebman and team have published, with the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, a book-length monograph and website on the case, with still more new evidence. Remarkably, the website, “Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution,” strikes a “you decide” tone with questions rather than bald statements (other than that subtitle) at the outset. But Cohen will have none of that. After summarizing the evidence compiled in the new study, he concludes: “No one can ever say again with a straight face that America doesn’t execute innocent men. No one.”

Military justice as both model and follower

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Mark Obbie

The AP’s Allen Breed wrote this ambitious story about evolving notions of justice in the military. Breed pegs the story to a logical angle: how military courts, like some of their civilian counterparts, are beginning to recognize battlefield trauma as justification for mercy and treatment, rather than harsh punishment for crimes linked to military service. I see another equally good policy theme: how sentencing sanity is taking hold in yet another conservative stronghold, much as I noted other such inroads in this post last month.

It’s not too big a leap from the mentality reflected in Breed’s article to a recalibration in social and justice policies that says to people: When you commit lesser crimes and pose little likely safety threat, you must be punished, but you also need help to get on your feet and avoid trouble in the future. Doesn’t that make more sense, in general, than treating every miscreant as a lost cause, to be locked up for long periods without treatment for drugs or mental problems and then turned loose with no real hope of a decent, law-abiding life? If we can see the logic of a rehabilitative approach for damaged service members, maybe we’ll see it for others as well.

Wrongful convictions’ other victims

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Mark Obbie

Dallas Observer‘s Anna Merlan tells an important story in this narrative about wrongful convictions. Rather than focus on the exonerated, and on the legal effort to free an innocent inmate, this story zooms in on the victim’s perspective: what it’s like to be convinced the man who raped you has been set free.

Merlan tells the story movingly and clearly. The facts are compelling: a 19-year-old rape victim near Dallas identifies the man whose face she stared into as he raped her. She makes the ID from a photo lineup and then in court, where during the trial, she says, the accused rapist threatens to kill her. After 23 years in prison, the man wins his freedom when a DNA test — performed shortly before the rape kit would have been destroyed — proves someone else raped her. She refuses to believe it at first, but she gradually accepts the truth, and even grows fond of exoneree Thomas McGowan, once the real rapist is tracked down and confesses. The real rapist is in prison for another crime and cannot be prosecuted because the statute of limitations has tolled. All along the way, the case’s original police detective remains involved and candidly discusses his mistakes and regrets.

The story’s greatest value is its descriptions of the victim’s feelings of confusion, fear, and betrayal; of her horror upon realizing the real rapist committed at least one more rape because he’d remained free. Merlan even addresses the broader policy question: what can be done systematically to help victims in these all-too-common situations. But that’s the story’s weakness, as well. Although the print and online headlines clearly signal the more general theme, the story itself doesn’t telegraph that near the start of the story. And when it does finally address it, more than halfway through, it barely touches on the lack of standards for helping victims cope with reliving their crimes, whether or not they ultimately agree the wrong person was convicted. Call me a policy wonk, but I would have expanded that angle considerably.

Still, the anecdotes drive home the point that more must be done for victims in cases reopened with new, contradictory evidence. One of the most memorable comes after the victim meets McGowan for the first time since his imprisonment. Merlan writes:

After their conversation, Craig Watkins, the Dallas County district attorney who’s made his name aggressively pursuing exoneration cases, came in to talk with her and McGowan. “He commended both of us for our bravery,” Jones says. “Then he looked right at me and he said, ‘I don’t want to ever hear you say you feel guilty about this, because it’s not your fault.”

(Hat tip, Wrongful Convictions blog)

Do we really need to hear 911 calls?

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Mark Obbie

The Chicago Tribune‘s Eric Zorn makes a well-reasoned, victim-compassionate case for why crime reporters should resist the impulse to turn 911 calls into dramatic stories. I disagree — but it’s one of those times when I know my stance can easily be dismissed as hypocrisy. And it’s a close enough call that I have lots of doubts.

Here’s the heart of Zorn’s argument, which was prompted by the airing of the 911 call in the killing of Jennifer Hudson’s family members:

I’ve long felt that it’s close to obscene to play the most intimate, raw sounds of shock and pain experienced by those experiencing the effects of crime, given how little news value the recordings have.

And the fact that we can — that 911 recordings are part of the public record — doesn’t mean we should.

Of course he’s right when he points out so many reports based on 911 calls are pure exploitation. And he’s right that regardless of the media motives, when victims and survivors hear the anguish and horror of a call for help, they become victims all over again.

But just because it has a cruel side effect, and just because bottom-feeders will abuse the privilege, doesn’t mean it’s always bad (fortunately, Zorn doesn’t argue the tapes should be withheld by law, though in some states — New York is one — they can be anyway). Here’s why I believe journalists need access to these: It’s much more difficult for the writer of a crime narrative, or the producer of a long-form television or film report on a crime, to tell that story without knowing exactly what happened at such a critical moment; what it sounded like, felt like. It’s a scene. And scenes make stories readable and watchable. That can be done for purely exploitative reasons. Or it can be done in the service of telling an emotional, compelling, important story about the reality of crime.

It’s tempting to dismiss all such statements as rationalizations. But if we don’t have quality stories to read and watch about crime, then all we’ll have are the lowbrow kinds — the ones designed simply to scare or disgust or anger us.

Service journalism that matters

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Mark Obbie

I’m as guilty as the next guy or gal for looking down on the lame, fluffy sameness of women’s service magazines. Except the good ones can surprise us with heavily reported narrative journalism about things that really matter. Thanks to last Thursday’s announcements of the National Magazine Awards, I read one such story: the winner of the Personal Service category, from the June 2011 issue of Glamour. Liz Brody, Glamour’s editor at large, tells a gripping and appalling story of relationship abuse, with shocking statistics (1,400 killings a year in the U.S. alone), a study commissioned by Glamour on women’s experiences, and most movingly of all, the stories of women who survived — barely — their boyfriends’ or husbands’ abuse because a friend or relative finally intervened. That’s where the service comes in: real-world advice about how to ask for help, and how to give it. Glamour used this feature package to launch its Tell Somebody campaign, advocacy that translates into life-saving advice.

An innovator expands her platform

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Mark Obbie

The editor and founder of one of the more intriguing experiments I’ve seen in crime reporting, DC’s Homicide Watch, now has an opportunity to build on her great idea. Laura Amico has been named among the latest crop of Nieman Fellows. The Nieman folks say she will “study criminal justice journalism in the digital age, focusing on best practices, useful tools and new models for crime and courts reporting.” Based on her track record at Homicide Watch, I’d bank on concrete results coming from that study. The site takes a simple premise — systematically document every homicide — and turns it into a storehouse of data on victims, crimes, criminals, and the justice system. What’s most meaningful about that is that it shatters the notion of “misdemeanor murders,” or killings deemed so predictable and meaningless that they’re forgotten. Here’s how Homicide Watch describes its mission:

As DC residents, we believe that how people live and die here, and how those deaths are recognized, matters to every one of us. If it matters how someone is killed in Cleveland Park, then it matters how someone is killed in Truxton Circle, Ivy City, Washington Highlands or Georgetown. If we are to understand violent crime in our community, the losses of every family, in every neighborhood must be recognized. And the outcome of every trial — be it a conviction or an acquittal — must be recorded.

The site’s tagline: “Mark every death. Remember every victim. Follow every case.” What a service to the victims’ families, and to the community at large. Let’s hope for more good ideas to come from Amico’s Nieman stint. (Hat tip, The Crime Report)

The Colson legacy — and challenge

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Mark Obbie

When it’s put-up-or-shut-up time for my new writing gig — it starts two weeks from now, not that I’m counting the days to the end of my last semester teaching — the big idea that serves as my polestar boils down to this: Which criminal-justice reforms demonstrate that we can reverse the worst excesses of tough-on-crime without endangering our safety or dishonoring victims? Better yet, where’s the evidence that policies derided as soft on crime might actually work more effectively?

For decades, politicians wouldn’t dare suggest that any prison sentence is too long, or any treatment of criminals too harsh — even when it becomes clear that the system has turned cruel, unaffordable, and counterproductive. The best antidote to a reflexive rejection of reform as some wimpy-lefty pipe dream? Evidence to support smart-on-crime, not tough-on-crime, remedies. Good stories, in other words.

The politics of all this are deliciously confused, as I pointed out in this recent post on conservatives leading the charge. I love the counterintuitive potential of the stories in this realm. As I tried to show in this story, unlikely methods used in unlikely places can have surprising results.

Chuck Colson’s death last week provides another reminder. In this smart, history-filled piece in today’s Times, religion columnist Mark Oppenheimer explains Colson’s and Prison Fellowship’s approach to criminal justice in the context of religious history. Colson’s life changed when he realized you can’t treat people like animals, and warehouse them without any attempt to fix what’s broken, and still call that an effective attack on crime. He improved countless lives with restorative techniques that chip away at the hopelessness we all might feel when contemplating social problems so vast and complex. I’d call that a life redeemed. I’d also call it inspiration — to tell stories about reforms that work and achieve much greater good than simply doubling down on failed life-without-parole-for-everyone policies.

A rookie mistake

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Mark Obbie

One of the lamest and most common tactics in crime reporting comes when we provide an essential bit of context: explaining what the penalty ultimately may be. The standard but horribly flawed approach is to take all the charges’ maximum penalties, in prison time and fines, and stack them for a grand total. That’s what The New York Times has done repeatedly in the John Edwards trial, using almost identical language to what appears in today’s story:

If convicted on all six counts of campaign finance law violations related to a conspiracy to hide his affair, he could face up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines.

Yes, but of course there’s absolutely zero chance that will be the penalty if Edwards is convicted. Real reporting would reveal a likely sentence, based on the federal sentencing guidelines, which take into account all sorts of factors. If that proves too difficult, the simple solution is to explain each count’s penalty range, because in all likelihood the terms won’t be cumulative anyway.

Don’t blame just the writers of this story, William Dupre and Kim Severson. The Times has repeated the line in many Edwards stories since this front-pager on June 4, 2011, by Katharine Seelye. I’m too lazy — er, I mean busy — to do a comprehensive search through all the Edwards trial coverage for examples of the same, but I’m confident the Times is not alone in this. Nor are the reporters covering this trial doing anything different from what’s done habitually in crime reporting. Prosecutors started it, by hyping the enormity of their cases in indictment press releases. Reporters like hype, too, of course. Thirty years sounds so much scarier than, say, “Edwards likely faces a large fine and perhaps a six-month stint behind bars.” But, when you understand criminal-justice reality a bit, it’s more than just scary. It’s silly.

Neopolitan surprise

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Mark Obbie

I’ll read anything with William Langewiesche’s byline on it. So I was thrilled to see his name atop a crime narrative in the May issue of Vanity Fair. And not just any crime story, but one about organized crime. In Naples, Italy, no less. Langewiesche opens the piece in his trademark plain, direct writing, painting a dark scene of menace and murder. From there he moves to his billboard, where he sets up the rest of this lengthy story about the local drug-dealing clans locked in a power struggle among themselves, and with the government:

The Camorra is not an organization like the Mafia that can be separated from society, disciplined in court, or even quite defined. It is an amorphous grouping in Naples and its hinterlands of more than 100 autonomous clans and perhaps 10,000 immediate associates, along with a much larger population of dependents, clients, and friends. It is an understanding, a way of justice, a means of creating wealth and spreading it around. It has been a part of life in Naples for centuries—far longer than the fragile construct called Italy has even existed. At its strongest it has grown in recent years into a complete parallel world and, in many people’s minds, an alternative to the Italian government, whatever that term may mean. Neapolitans call it “the system” with resignation and pride. The Camorra offers them work, lends them money, protects them from the government, and even suppresses street crime. The problem is that periodically the Camorra also tries to tear itself apart, and when that happens, ordinary Neapolitans need to duck.

Langewiesche’s fluid, operatic storytelling whisks us through the tale of one clan’s descent into chaos, powerlessness, and imprisonment. It’s packed with the kinds of scenes and characters that bring to mind Godfather I. I’ve long devoured every piece of non-fiction narrative I could find on the American mafia, so how could I not love this — particularly because of my respect for Langewische as both a writer and deep-dive reporter?

But there’s the rub: Only if you know this writer’s sterling reputation for prodigious reporting could you possibly trust this piece of writing. Its sourcing is opaque to the point of invisibility. Langewiesche gives few clues about where he got his information. We have to take it all on faith. I’m willing to. But would it have killed him and his editors to clue in us readers about how he made himself an expert on the Camorra, its history, and its recent war?

Voice of the victim

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Mark Obbie

This year’s Pulitzer winner for feature writing makes for excruciating reading. Not because it’s poorly written. Not hardly. “The Bravest Woman in Seattle,” Eli Sanders’ feature in Seattle’s The Stranger, on June 15, 2011, is as compelling a crime narrative as I have ever read. But it packs terror in almost intolerable doses. I was exhausted when I finished reading.

This isn’t everyone’s idea of a good read. Sanders tells of a horrible rape of two women. The rapist stabbed both, killing one. Rather than play up the blood and gore, Sanders expertly builds toward the emotional high point of the story. The survivor is on the witness stand to tell the story in the rapist’s trial. Sanders quotes sparingly. Instead, he writes in her voice. He inhabits her thoughts, making us feel her joy (the women are lovers, enjoying two ordinary days together) as it turns to fear, horror, and loss.

Sanders writes in plain, direct sentences. He omits the witness’ name, identifying her only as the partner of the murder victim, Teresa Butz, but manages to handle that awkward omission seamlessly. As the narrative nears the dreadful climax, he writes:

The horror of what happened next made the court reporter’s eyes well up, made the bailiff cry, had the whole room in tears. The jury handed around a box of tissues. The prosecutor took long pauses to collect himself. The family and friends in the courtroom cried (though, truth be told, they had been crying throughout). The Seattle Times reporter seated next to me cried. I cried. The camerawoman who was shooting video for all the television stations in town cried—and later on hugged Butz’s partner as she left the courtroom for the midmorning break.

I’d put this story against a stack of policy tomes on victims’ rights. Read it if you dare.

P.S. — Nieman Storyboard provides six experts’ analyses on why this story works so well.

Mark Obbie: Writer & Editor

A writer on law, crime, and business