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+14 +1
Man wrongly convicted of murder freed after 15 years, victim's sister knew he was innocent
For the first time since Aaron Salter was wrongly convicted of murder in 2003, he celebrated his birthday as a free man. It was a gift that federal defenders Colleen Fitzharris and Jonathan Epstein helped pick out for him. "I think that birthday present right there makes up for the whole 15 years that I was locked up and missed my birthday," Salter said.
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+7 +1
DNA on napkin leads to charges in 32-year-old cold case
Gary Hartman was charged with first degree murder and first degree rape in the death of Michella Welch, who was babysitting her siblings when she went missing on March 26, 1986. Investigators made the arrest after collecting his DNA from a napkin he used at a restaurant.
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+19 +1
Researchers Want to Find Biomarkers for Violent Criminals. But What About White-Collar Offenders?
Done right, this research could help us vet those vying for the most powerful, and therefore potentially most dangerous, positions in society. Back in 2000, a man known only as Mr. Oft began to grapple with an unwanted realization: He was becoming a pedophile. In fact, it wasn’t long before he was charged with child molestation. But the day before his prison sentence, his head felt like it was about to burst, and a few brain scans later, an egg-size tumor was found burrowing through his brain.
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+2 +1
Dutch to close four more prisons as crime rate continues to fall: AD
The cabinet is considering closing a further four prisons because of falling prisoner numbers, the AD said on Wednesday. Sources told the paper prisons in Zoetermeer, Zeist, Almere and Zwaag in Noord-Holland are set to be shut down by justice minister Sander Dekker, in the first major cuts since 2013, when 19 jails were earmarked for closure.
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+31 +1
Prison Is Already Scary. It's Even Worse During a Blackout.
As darkness fell, nerves got rattled and rumors spread.
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+3 +1
Drug dealer caught by WhatsApp photo
A pioneering fingerprint technique used to convict a drugs gang from a WhatsApp message "is the future" of how police approach evidence to catch criminals.
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+28 +1
Drug Use Is Detectable on Your Fingerprints
Should law enforcement be able to test them?
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+17 +1
Should people be punished for crimes they can’t remember committing?
In 1985, Vernon Madison murdered a police officer, Julius Schulte, in Mobile, Alabama. Madison was due to be executed by lethal injection in January this year, but was given a last-minute stay of execution. After several strokes, he suffers from dementia and memory impairment, and can no longer remember committing the crime.
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+1 +1
Senators advance criminal justice reform bill
Senators of both parties on Thursday moved forward their long-odds legislation to enact some degree of reform for the federal criminal justice system. By a vote of 16-5, and amid protests from some senators that the bill would likely face hurdles too high to pass, the Senate Judiciary Committee backed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act...
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+18 +1
Bail Algorithms Are As Accurate As Random People Doing an Online Survey
Algorithms that assess people’s likelihood to reoffend as part of the bail-setting process in criminal cases are, to be frank, really scary. We don’t know very much about how they work—the companies that make them are intensely secretive about what makes their products tick—and studies have suggested that they can harbor racial prejudices. Yet, these algorithms provide judges with information that is used to decide the course of somebody’s life.
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+16 +1
Trump claims crime is on the rise. So why did the FBI delete key crime data?
Criminologists say they can't properly analyze crime trends without the missing data. By Pima Levy.
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+13 +1
“Don’t name them” – Criminologist asks journalists to help stop mass shootings
It’s too familiar in America: Breaking news, another mass shooting, old pictures of the suspects, their names splashed across cable news. Instant celebrities. In an article this year for the journal American Behavioral Scientist, Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama, and a colleague argue that journalists should not report the names or picture the faces of mass shooting suspects. Journalists should, however, continue to report every other detail so the public gains a better understanding about these tragedies.
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+40 +1
Why Aren’t Any Bankers in Prison for Causing the Financial Crisis?
If hotheaded online commenters ran the Justice Department, would America's prisons be full of traders responsible for the financial crisis? It is tempting to think so—that the lack of corporate prosecutions is due to a lack of will rather than a lack of way. But convicting bankers—or any other white-collar workers whose decisions at work have ostensibly damaged the economy—is difficult because while it is easy to identify systematic wrongdoing, it's much harder to pin blame, at least in the way a court might approve of, on an individual within that system.
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+13 +1
Shell-Shocked
Who's to blame when the violence of war comes home? By Elliott Woods.
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+24 +1
The Serial-Killer Detector
A former journalist, equipped with an algorithm and the largest collection of murder records in the country, finds patterns in crime. By Alec Wilkinson.
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+19 +1
'Toto' Riina, feared godfather from Corleone, dies behind bars at 87 - France 24
Gangster "Boss of bosses" Toto Riina, who has died at the age of 87 according to Italian media reports, was one of the most violent and feared Godfathers in the history of the Sicilian Mafia.
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+23 +1
Briton jailed for drinking in Dubai faces three years for 'touching man's hip'
A British man facing a possible three-year jail sentence in Dubai over claims that he touched a man on the hip in a bar has in the meantime been sentenced to a month in jail for making a rude gesture and drinking alcohol. The campaign organisation Detained in Dubai (DiD) said Jamie Harron has been sentenced in absentia to 30 days in prison for the action and drinking alcohol. His representatives said he is to appeal against his conviction.
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+13 +1
A Most American Terrorist: The Making Of Dylann Roof
In June 2015, he shot and murdered nine black church-goers in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to ignite a race war. Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah spoke with Roof's family, friends, and the victims' families to unlock what created one of the coldest killers of our time.
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+14 +1
No Country For Ye Olde Men
Britain’s practice of transporting convicts to American colonies was a fearsome punishment, but not for the chronic criminal James Dalton. By Christine Ro.
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+17 +1
What Does an Innocent Man Have to Do to Go Free? Plead Guilty.
A case in Baltimore — in which two men were convicted of the same murder and cleared by DNA 20 years later — shows how far prosecutors will go to preserve a conviction.
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