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Tags

Trials

Best Article Crime

The Incredible Story of the Collar Bomb Heist

In 2003, a man robbed a bank with a bomb around his neck. It exploded shortly thereafter, taking his life and leaving authorities to try to figure out who had put it there.

Rich Schapiro Wired Dec 2010 20min Permalink

Best Article Crime

Trial By Fire

The arson case that may have led Texas to execute an innocent man.

David Grann New Yorker Sep 2009 1h5min Permalink

Best Article Arts Crime

In the Ashes of Ghost Ship

He helped build an artists’ utopia. Now he faces trial for 36 deaths there.

Read more

Max Harris was acquitted this week of charges of involuntary manslaughter.

Elizabeth Weil New York Times Magazine Dec 2018 45min Permalink

Crime

Commonwealth v. Mohamed

A car crash in Kentucky left a 13-year-old girl dead. A Sudanese refugee was charged with her killing. The story of the trial that followed.

Margaret Redmond Whitehead The Atavist Magazine Apr 2019 40min Permalink

Crime

Guilty

“In 1998, I helped convict two men of murder. I’ve regretted it ever since.”

Seth Stevenson Slate Mar 2019 40min Permalink

Best Article Crime

In the Face of Death

There was no doubt: Jeremy Gross had brutally murdered a convenience store clerk. All that was left to decide was his punishment. Death or life without parole? The story of a capital murder trial, as seen from the jury box.

Alex Kotlowitz New York Times Magazine Jul 2003 35min Permalink

Best Article Crime

Nightmare on Elm Drive

A comprehensive history of the case against the Menendez brothers, built primarily on secret audio recording made by their self-promoting therapist.

Dominick Dunne Vanity Fair Oct 1990 55min Permalink

Best Article Crime

Trouble in Paradise

Pitcairn Island is impossibly remote, populated by descendants of a ship of British mutineers. Their population would not be revealed to the outside world until allegations of a culture of child molestation and rape that led back generations.

Laura Parker, William Prochnau Vanity Fair Jan 2008 45min Permalink

Crime

Justice

Dominick Dunne’s account of the trial of his daughter’s murderer.

Dominick Dunne Vanity Fair Mar 1984 1h Permalink

Crime

A Made-for-Tabloid Murder

A young, pregnant woman named Laci Peterson disappears, her husband begins to act strangely, and one of the largest media circuses in history descends on the sleepy community of Modesto, CA.

Maureen Orth Vanity Fair Aug 2003 15min Permalink

Best Article Crime

See No Evil

Three Dallas prostitutes were found dead in as many months. Charles Albright might be the last person you’d suspect–unless you knew about his lifelong obsession.

Skip Hollandsworth Texas Monthly May 1993 50min Permalink

Crime

Do We Not Bleed? - Inside the Stephen Lawrence Trial

In 1993 a black teenager in London was randomly stabbed to death by a gang of white youths. Twenty years later, they would be at the center of the trial of the decade.

Ed Caesar GQ UK May 2012 35min Permalink

Crime

A Grand Juror Speaks

Even an “obstructionist bloc” can’t resist handing prosecutors the indictments they want.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus Harper's Mar 2015 10min Permalink

Crime

The Fire on the 57 Bus in Oakland

A black 16-year-old lights a white, agender 18-year-old’s skirt on fire while riding the bus. Is it a hate crime? And what’s the appropriate punishment?

Dashka Slater New York Times Magazine Jan 2015 25min Permalink

Crime

Defending Those Accused of Unthinkable Crimes

On the lawyers who defend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Jared Loughner and Whitey Bulger.

Scott Helman Boston Globe Jan 2015 15min Permalink

Crime

Framed By Forensics

Junky, out-of-date science fuels jury errors and tragic miscarriages of justice. How can we throw it out of court?

Douglas Starr Aeon Dec 2014 15min Permalink

Crime

Death by Deadline

How bad lawyering and an unforgiving law cost condemned men their last appeal.

Ken Armstrong The Marshall Project Nov 2014 20min Permalink

Crime

Double Jeopardy

A jury recommends life in prison; the judged orders a death sentence.

Paige Williams New Yorker Nov 2014 35min Permalink

Crime

Before the Law

Sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder was accused of taking a backpack. He spent the next three years on Rikers Island, without trial.

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Jennifer Gonnerman on the Longform Podcast.

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Jennifer Gonnerman New Yorker Oct 2014 30min Permalink

Crime

The Prosecutor and the Snitch

In 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for starting a fire that killed his three daughters. The case hinged on the testimony of a jailhouse informant named Johnny E. Webb. Today, Webb says he lied.

Read more

Previously: "Trial By Fire," David Grann's 2009 article on the Willingham case.

Maurice Possley The Marshall Project Aug 2014 20min Permalink

Crime

This Man Is About to Die Because an Alcoholic Lawyer Botched His Case

“Which is how, despite the drinking, the stealing, the racist outburst, the abysmal courtroom performance, the disbarment, and the ultimate imprisonment of his lead attorney, an intellectually disabled man has ended up on the verge of execution.”

Marc Bookman Mother Jones Apr 2014 20min Permalink

Arts Movies & TV

Anatomy of a Commercial Interruption

A filmmaker goes to court to fight the television commercial break.

Lillian Ross The New Yorker Feb 1966 1h30min Permalink

Crime

A Dangerous Mind

The case of Gilberto Valle, “The Cannibal Cop,” and the line between criminal thoughts and action.

Robert Kolker New York Jan 2014 20min Permalink

Crime Sex

The Innocent and the Damned

Allegations of child sexual and Satanic ritual abuse overtake an Austin suburb.

Gary Cartwright Texas Monthly Apr 1994 55min Permalink

Crime

Virginia Larzelere: Sentenced to Death for a Murder She Didn't Commit

How a series of lies and an incompetent lawyer led to a Florida woman’s wrongful conviction.

Terrence McCoy New Times Broward-Palm Beach Sep 2013 20min Permalink

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