Her experience echoes other troubling accounts about how Alabama prison officials handle critically injured or sick prisoners and their families during medical crises, and how little they reveal about those cases, even when inmates die.
Events
Year in review: Injustice Watch’s biggest stories of 2019
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As 2019 ends, we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight stories we’ve published that have had the biggest impact and resonated the most with readers.
Projects
Anibal Rousseau: died in prison awaiting retrial after evidence of innocence emerged
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Two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigators were on their way to dinner in October, 1988, when a man armed with a handgun suddenly emerged from between cars parked in a Houston lot and robbed them.
Unrequited Innocence
Edward Elmore: Court found “grave questions” about guilt, but defendant never exonerated
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In January, 1982, a Greenwood, South Carolina resident was found dead in her bedroom closet by her neighbor, Jimmy Holloway.
Projects
Darlie Lynn Routier: Remains in prison, awaiting long-overdue DNA testing
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Responding to Darlie Lynn Routier’s frantic 911 call from her Dallas County home in 1996, police found her two sons, Devon Routier, 6, and Damon Routier, 5, dying of stab wounds.
Projects
Larry Swearingen: Executed despite defense contention “provably innocent”
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This is the first in a series of cases that Injustice Watch is featuring over coming weeks called “Unrequired Innocence.” Each of the
cases involves defendants given death sentences who have not been exonerated, despite significant evidence that emerged casting doubt on their guilt. The case of Larry Swearingen represents the only one of these cases in which the defendant has been executed.
Projects
Rodney Reed: Slated to die next month, though experts call prosecution theory “impossible”
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Eighteen days before Stacey Lee Stites was supposed to be married to a rookie police officer, her body was found in April, 1996 by a passerby in the brush on the side of a road in a rural county not far from Austin.
Projects
Ward and Fontenot: “Dream confessions” led to death sentences
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This is the third in a series of cases that Injustice Watch is featuring over coming weeks called “Unrequired Innocence.” Each of the
cases involves defendants given death sentences who have not been exonerated, despite significant evidence that emerged casting doubt on their guilt. Thomas Ward and Karl Fontenot have not been exonerated despite evidence that their “dream confessions” are proven fiction.
News
Cops around the country are posting racist and violent comments on facebook
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A review of the Facebook accounts of thousands of officers around the US — the largest database of its kind — found officers endorsing violence against Muslims, women, and criminal defendants.
Projects
Innocent of crime, but pleading guilty anyway
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Injustice Watch joined forces with other news organizations to examine why innocent people would plead guilty to crimes. At times, it is the logical choice.
Projects
Two brothers, two choices: a plea bargain’s toll on the innocent
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Henry and Juan Johnson, wrongly convicted of murder, won a new trial after 11 years in prison. The prosecutor offered to let them walk free — if they pleaded guilty.