Violent environments breed violent men
"What is it about the environments where so many young Black men grow up that make them such breeding grounds for violence. What are the factors that contribute to a higher tendency to kill and be killed?" psychotherapist Kim Whiting asks. She and Tay Ramey are co-authoring a book, Thug: A True Story, that chronicles his journey into, through, and ultimately out of crime.
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Exonerated Maryland man spends decades trying to rebuild his life
At 17-years-old, Leslie Vass' life turned upside when he was wrongfully convicted of armed robbery. He spent nearly a decade in prison before he was pardoned by Maryland's governor in 1986. A year later he became the first exoneree to petition the state for compensation and succeed.
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Midwestern mom on a mission: bringing justice to the wrongfully convicted
Joan Treppa thought her life's path had been set but that all changed in 2009 after a chance encounter with the author of a book about six imprisoned Wisconsin men. The case so enthralled Treppa that she decided she just had to get involved. She has now detailed her quest to reveal the truth about the men she believes have been wrongfully convicted in her new book: Reclaiming Lives: Pursuing Justice for Six Innocent Men. The Reporters Inc. is pleased to present an exclusive excerpt.
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Smacked in the face with my White privilege
Autumn Lubin says there "was nothing privileged about my earliest years," but then she overheard a conversation between her Black colleagues about what they called "the talk." This wasn't about the birds and the bees; it was about how to keep their children safe when interacting with authority figures. "This was a conversation I had never even considered having with my son," Lubin writes. "All I had learned, all I had experienced, all I could discern, was from a place of Whiteness."
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Ongoing murder prosecution against Missouri man ignores facts, lacks evidence
On November 28, 2016 the retrial of a Missouri man, Michael Amick, began. The verdict? Not guilty. Reporter Devante Jax Wolfe goes in-depth on how Amick was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife's grandmother Maxine in 2008.
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He spent 20 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit
Larry Floyd claims that as a teenager he was coerced into a murder confession by his own father. After serving 10 years in Mississippi's infamous Parchman prison, Floyd made a daring escape in 1991, leading to a classic manhunt. The beating he sustained by more than 20 officers after his capture nearly killed Larry, and prompted an FBI investigation into the brutal conditions inside the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Larry miraculously survived and lives to tell his story.
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How a dangerous misinterpretation shaped U.S. gun laws
"Expect massacres of police and civilians to continue until the Supreme Court’s horrendous 2008 blunder is reversed," military veteran Kent Greene says. He claims the increasing number of mass shootings are all a tragic and direct result of an erroneous Supreme Court Decision on gun ownership rights -- and the United States must act now to reverse this violent epidemic. (more)
Why survivors like me must heal through forgiveness and compassion
"For the first half of my life I was such a trauma and pervert magnet that by the age of eight I had already labeled myself a freak. I was the one common denominator in a seemingly endless stream of situations with sexual miscreants," Kim Whiting writes. She says the sexual abuse she suffered from her early childhood to young adulthood taught her that compassion and forgiveness are crucial for recovery.
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But portrayals of urban neighborhoods as hopeless only worsen the problems
Rashanah Baldwin is proud to live in Englewood, a neighborhood on the south-side of Chicago that is well-known for poverty and crime. However, many people, like Baldwin, are actively engaged in improving their community, and she says those efforts are rarely covered in the media.
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Why wrongful conviction claims of some may never be truly believed
Mikael Deandre Webb is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Southern California for double rape and battery with severe bodily injury. When writer Kim Whiting started working on compiling stories for her book When God Shows Off Behind Bars, she unexpectedly met Webb. She shares the story of their three-year-long, non-traditional friendship.
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As legal weed grows, so do stoned driving concerns
Government studies estimate that nearly 2.5 million people in the U.S. have become regular marijuana users in the past few years since states began legalizing the drug. At the same time, questions and concerns are being raised at every turn, including the issue of "stoned driving," or "driving while high."
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Convictions of six Wisconsin men captured my attention, changed my life
Six years ago, Joan Treppa learned about a group of six Green Bay, Wisconsin men convicted of murdering their co-worker in 1995. Treppa shares how she became a "citizen advocate" to help fight to free these men--who she believes are innocent.
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How police corralled a 10-year-old boy into falsely confessing to murder
In 1994, The Reporters Inc.'s Mark Saxenmeyer reported the verdict: A 10-year-old Chicago boy had been convicted of killing his neighbor, an 84-year-old woman. Even though the boy had confessed to the crime, Saxenmeyer kept thinking to himself "This kid didn't do it."
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When police stay silent about stress, the results can be deadly
Sworn to serve and protect, police officers are taught that weakness, any weakness, could put their lives, and the lives of others, at risk on the job. And so they stay silent out of fear. Yet every year in the U.S., more police officers die by suicide than in the line of duty. In the new book Public Safety Suicide: The Human Dimension, co-author Mary Van Haute tells the story of Bolingbrook, Illinois police officer Chris Prochut, who suffered a frightening downward spiral that cost him his law enforcement career, and nearly his life. The Reporters Inc. shares exclusive experts.
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Father shares daily anguish, frustration over son's disappearance
In the fall of 2006, Jesse Opie Ross travelled to Chicago, from his home in Belton, Missouri. He was a 19-year-old college student attending a Model UN conference with classmates from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). On the afternoon of November 21, his parents received a call from one of his sponsors saying Jesse was nowhere to be found. He had literally vanished. The Reporters Inc. offers exclusive excerpts from a new book by Jesse's father, Donald Ross: Where's Opie? Life Goes On.
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