Business Insider exposed how a series of Supreme Court decisions and laws have made it nearly impossible for incarcerated plaintiffs to seek redress in the courts for violations of the Eighth Amendment – a constitutional protection for prisoners against “cruel and unusual punishments.” Business Insider detailed its findings in a seven-part series. The reporting took over two years and is ...
With support from the Fund, Judith Matloff spent a year investigating a group of white investors who promised to give a tribe in northern Nevada their windfalls from a legal marijuana farm. The venture with the impoverished Ft. McDermitt nation fell apart amid mismanagement and lack of transparency. The story, co-published in The Guardian and High Country News, chronicled how ...
For A News Café, an independent news site in rural Shasta County, California, R.V. Scheide revisited the sidelining of the county’s sheriff and assistant CEO two years ago and found that complaints against him had been investigated and were not substantiated. Scheide’s reporting, supported by the Fund, involved reviewing hundreds of pages of documents and interviewing more than 30 sources. ...
Journalist Alex Caudros spent six years of immersive reporting and research, with support from the Fund, for his new book, “When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon,” published by Hachette in the U.S. and excerpted in The Guardian. The book tells the story of the Cinta Larga, an Indigenous group that had ...
Over the last year and a half, reporter Sammy Sussman has filed more than 700 records requests and obtained 27,000 pages of police misconduct files from across New York State, with support from the Fund. Reporting for New York Focus and MuckRock, Sussman found that some police departments falsely claim they have no records of misconduct complaints – and some ...
The Buckeye Flame, a statewide LGBT news outlet in Ohio, revisited the case of a Dayton man who was arrested and convicted for felony assault because he had oral sex without disclosing his HIV status. With support from the Fund, Cid Standifer reported that the man was taking antiretrovirals and had an undetectable viral load, which would make it impossible ...
In its continuing coverage of nursing homes that primarily served Japanese Americans in Southern California, AsAmNews reported this month on a facility that evicted dozens of residents three years ago – and hasn’t been demolished or redeveloped since. With support from the Fund, Randall Yip looked into claims from Pacifica, the corporation that owned the facility, and found that the ...
A major Republican donor funded a campaign to pass three ballot initiatives in Dallas that would cripple the city’s capacity for self-governance – and, in the process, he may have violated multiple laws, according to an investigation by Steven Monacelli, with support from the Fund. Monacelli reported for the Texas Observer that Monty Bennett, a Republican “megadonor,” hired a company ...
A new documentary film, produced with the Fund’s support, examines the politics of parole through the case of Ronnie Carrasquillo, who was convicted of killing a plainclothes police officer 47 years ago. Dan Protess, producer and director of the film, filed public records requests, dug through documents, interviewed sources, and filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department, in order ...
With support from the Fund, EcoRI News Reporters Rob Smith and Colleen Cronin combed through Rhode Island’s environmental laws for months to get a first-of-its-kind comprehensive look at which laws are unenforced, identify which public bodies are destitute and track how little money the state spends on its own environmental goals. They discovered that a 2021 law mandating that all ...