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How a Paid Expert Reversed His View of a Notoriously Flawed Prosecution in the Rape of a Bestselling Author

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Bennett Gershman in 2015 Andrew Sullivan/The New York Times/Redux The upstate New York city of Syracuse seems at odds with itself when it comes to a notorious miscarriage of justice. Nearly five years ago, the district attorney of Onondaga County, William Fitzpatrick, stood up in court and excoriated his county’s decision decades earlier to prosecute Anthony Broadwater for the rape of author Alice Sebold. With the DA’s support, the conviction was thrown out. Today, the same county government and that of its main city, Syracuse, continue to fight a lawsuit filed by Broadwater that seeks financial damages for the years he lost behind bars. The conflicts, it seems, aren’t simply between criminal authorities, who view Broadwater as a wronged man, and civil authorities, who defend the original prosecution. A key expert for the city and county seems to be experiencing an internal conflict of his own — or, at minimum, a dramatic change in opinion. Syracuse’s paid expert, a vete...
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Texas Democrats Ask for Investigation Into Ken Paxton After Our Reporting Found He May Have Violated Election Law

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA Dallas-area Democrats are demanding that Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton be investigated for illegal voting after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed that he has repeatedly voted while registered at an address where he appears to no longer live. In a complaint filed Tuesday, the Collin County Democratic Party asked the Texas secretary of state to investigate whether Paxton committed election fraud by voting in the May primary runoff. Paxton beat longtime incumbent John Cornyn in that race, securing the Republican Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate. Read More Ken Paxton Vowed to Crack Down on “Illegal Voting.” He May Have Violated Texas Election Law. Mary Higbe, vice chair of the Collin County Democratic Party, noted in the complaint that Paxton’s office, as recently as February, warned voters that “it is illegal to misrepresent your res...
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DHS Plans “All-Out War” on Immigration Scammers as Fraud Complaints Double

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Bloomberg/Getty Images The Department of Homeland Security is investigating a sophisticated network of scammers who target people caught in immigration proceedings, bilking them of their savings and causing some to be deported, following a ProPublica report that complaints of such fraud doubled under the second administration of President Donald Trump. Homeland Security Investigations, the subagency known for tracking international crimes such as human trafficking, has asked about specific cases detailed in the story, including the tale of a woman who, fearful of Trump’s nationwide immigration sweeps, enlisted someone she thought would help her keep her legal status. After the scammers got her money and caused her to miss a court date, she was deported to Nicaragua. Read More Fear and Opportunity: Immigration Scams Surged as Trump’s Sweeps Lured Desperate People to Eager Defrauders That was one of thousands of cases in w...
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Public Money Is Fueling an Explosion of Private Schools. States Often Don’t Care How They’re Run.

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Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images: Paul Sableman via Flickr A decade ago, the state of Florida stripped a teacher of her license for sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy. Last year, she opened a private school there with ease.  Her name and photo were on her new school’s website and details of her case were easy to find with an online search. The state also knew that a transplanted Midwesterner had been fired from her Cincinnati charter school, following felony charges related to misuse of public funds, and had been banned from teaching or running schools in Ohio. Yet Florida did not stop her from starting a private school and collecting public money. As private schools proliferate in Florida and across the country, fueled by taxpayer dollars, states are choosing not to closely regulate who is operating them or to oversee student safety and achievement, a ProPublica investigation found. The backgrounds of school founders and employees ...
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FBI Has Looked at Using Questionable AI Tech to Review Signatures on Seized Mail-In Ballots

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An FBI press officer approaches the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, Georgia. Arvin Temka/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP The FBI has explored using artificial intelligence to assess the validity of signatures on tens of thousands of mail-in ballot envelopes seized from Fulton County, Georgia, the latest push in the Trump administration’s unprecedented reinvestigation of the 2020 vote. The effort, according to internal communications reviewed by ProPublica and an agency tech specialist familiar with the work, focuses on comparing signatures on ballot envelopes with signatures on other election documents, such as registration forms. President Donald Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In particular, he has repeatedly claimed that there was voter fraud in Georgia, where he lost to Joe Biden by just 11,779 votes . In January, the FBI raided Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, collecting abou...
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This Private School Had Students Scrub Floors and Attack a Fellow Classmate. The State Still Funds It.

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Photo illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images: via Renee Johns, obtained by ProPublica from Craighead County Sheriff's Office in Arkansas At her private school just beyond the city limits of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Mary “Tracy” Morrison demanded the attention of the 19 students seated on the floor in a circle. She then directed a skinny 13-year-old boy wearing a cartoon Mario shirt to sit in the center. “Raise your hand if he’s ever been mean to you — ever,” Morrison, the owner, prompted the other middle schoolers, and some hands shot up. “Most people don’t think you’re a nice kid. You lie. You lie all the time,” she told the boy. She encouraged his classmates to name things they don’t like about him. Morrison’s voice got louder. She knelt inside the circle just inches from the boy and swatted him. On the head. On the neck. At first he flinched and started to raise his hands to block her. But she snapped at him to keep his arms down: “You don’t ...
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