injustice Archives - Longreads https://longreads.com/tag/injustice/ Longreads : The best longform stories on the web Wed, 10 Jan 2024 16:35:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://longreads.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/longreads-logo-sm-rgb-150x150.png injustice Archives - Longreads https://longreads.com/tag/injustice/ 32 32 211646052 The Neighbors Who Destroyed Their Lives https://longreads.com/2024/01/10/the-neighbors-who-destroyed-their-lives/ Wed, 10 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000 https://longreads.com/?p=202341 On Christmas Eve, 1991, a woman named Dana Ireland was raped and murdered on the Big Island of Hawaii. Two brothers were wrongfully convicted of the crime and exonerated 25 years later. Now they live among people who once maligned them, and some who actively participated in the injustice perpetrated against them:

Wrongful convictions can result from any number of cascading errors, blatant oversights, and outright slipups—some conscious and deliberate, some structural and circumstantial. Over 32 years, the investigation and prosecutions of the Schweitzers seem to have incorporated every possible one of them. There was intense media attention putting pressure on police to make an arrest—the “dead white girl” phenomenon. There was cultural bias against Native Hawaiians like the Schweitzers—the legacy, well known to Hawaiians, of lynchings of native men for alleged attacks on white women. There was investigative tunnel vision—going after the Schweitzer brothers even after the facts failed to support that case. There was blind faith in jailhouse informants—a slew of them, all hoping for special favors from prosecutors in return for their testimony. There was junk science—about teeth marks, and tire treads. There even may have been prosecutorial misconduct—a state lawyer misleading a judge about the outcome of one of the brothers’ polygraph tests.

Now that Ian has been exonerated, he needs to reacclimate to life in the world. He had to get a driver’s license and learn how to use a smartphone. He needs to get comfortable around people again. These towns were small enough already. For decades the Schweitzers were the area’s greatest villains; now they run into people and those people are nice. At the market and at restaurants, they congratulate Ian and ask if they can give him a hug. It’s weird. He can’t help but think: Where were those people for the past 30 years? But he knows there are others out there too—people who benefited from accusing him of a crime they knew he hadn’t committed. Chief among them is John Gonsalves.

As our conversation meandered over a sunny afternoon, Ian allowed himself to wonder about Gonsalves. What must it be like for him now, to know that the lie didn’t hold? If the brothers ever did confront him, what would he say?

]]>
202341
In Her Defence https://longreads.com/2022/12/19/in-her-defence/ Mon, 19 Dec 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://longreads.com/?p=182903 In the fall of 2020, Helen Naslund was sentenced to 18 years in prison for killing her abusive husband Miles on their Alberta farm. The sentence angered people across Canada, and is a clear example of how an outdated justice system views women and treats domestic violence cases. Through interviews and letters from prison, Naslund opened up to journalist Jana G. Pruden about the decades of abuse she endured, the day of Miles’ death and the cover-up that followed, and her fight for freedom. Pruden’s portrait of Naslund is tragic but ultimately hopeful, and shines a harsh light on how we fail to protect, and even punish, victims of domestic abuse and violence.

From then on, Helen understood without question that if she left Miles, many people would die. She would die, the kids would die, and others – police or neighbours or whoever else Miles could take down – would die, too. Of that, she had absolutely no doubt.

Helen’s case was tough. She’d been charged with first-degree murder, and if a jury could be convinced the shooting was planned – even if that meant getting the gun and loading it moments before – she’d spend 25 years in prison before she could even apply for parole. Her conduct after the shooting, in disposing of Miles’s body and reporting him missing, wasn’t particularly sympathetic. And despite being a victim of severe physical and mental abuse for nearly 30 years, a psychologist who assessed Helen didn’t diagnose her as having battered woman syndrome. Her memory could be poor, and it was difficult – even impossible – for her to open up about the things she and her sons had endured.

]]>
182903
I Was Given a House – But It Already Belonged to a Detroit Family https://longreads.com/2022/10/25/i-was-given-a-house-but-it-already-belonged-to-a-detroit-family/ Tue, 25 Oct 2022 18:09:10 +0000 https://longreads.com/?p=180096 Anne Elizabeth Moore was gifted a house in Detroit’s BanglaTown neighborhood for free by Write a House, an organization that awarded homes to low-income writers. An American dream, right? Well, not really. Soon after moving in, she realized the home needed urgent repairs, and what was supposed to be “free” had become extremely expensive. When Moore put the house on the market, she learned that she didn’t actually own the house, as her name wasn’t on the title. Technically, the house had belonged to a woman named Tomeka Langford. “This isn’t a story about gentrification – at least, not how we usually think about it,” writes Moore. “It’s a story of a Black woman losing her home to municipal greed, and a white woman benefitting from her loss.” Moore seeks out Langford, and in this piece for BridgeDetroit, investigates what happened.

Then in spring 2012, Tomeka was at a birthday party, poking around the county’s property tax auction website with a friend. “I was helping somebody else look for houses,” she says. She was seen as an expert among her peers in making the dream of home ownership come true.

Then she saw a listing – for her own house.

The white two-and-a-half bedroom BanglaTown bungalow was listed on the Wayne County tax foreclosure auction website.

She had only owned the house for two years and knew – everyone in Detroit did then – that it was supposed to take three years before the county can foreclose on a property. She says she was on a payment plan, and making regular payments on her back taxes. She admits she’d been having trouble receiving all her mail at the new house, but wouldn’t the treasurer’s office have alerted her to the pending foreclosure when she dropped off another property tax payment?

]]>
180096
She Never Hurt Her Kids. So Why Is a Mother Serving More Time Than the Man Who Abused Her Daughter? https://longreads.com/2022/08/10/she-never-hurt-her-kids-so-why-is-a-mother-serving-more-time-than-the-man-who-abused-her-daughter/ Wed, 10 Aug 2022 22:20:58 +0000 https://longreads.com/?post_type=lr_pick&p=157825 Oklahoma incarcerates more women than almost any other state. Under its punishing, under-the-radar “failure to protect” law, mothers — even those who are victims of domestic violence — can be sent to prison because of their supposed failure to keep their children out of harm’s way. In this devastating read, Samantha Michaels tells the story of one Oklahoma woman, Kerry King, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison — but had never hurt her kids.

These laws also create an impossible dynamic that makes survivors less likely to report what’s happening to police. When someone calls 911 after being abused by a partner, some cops open a child welfare investigation if there are kids in the family. So if a mother calls 911, she risks losing her kids; if she doesn’t, she risks being prosecuted for failure to protect. As one legal expert suggests, there’s no way to win.

]]>
177983
When Innocence Isn’t Enough https://longreads.com/2022/06/24/when-innocence-isnt-enough/ Fri, 24 Jun 2022 04:00:42 +0000 https://longreads.com/?post_type=lr_pick&p=156910 Christopher Dunn has been in prison for over 30 years for a murder in St. Louis that he and others say he didn’t commit. Even though new evidence has emerged in favor of Dunn, the state of Missouri says he must stay in prison — because he wasn’t sentenced to death.

He continued, “This Court does not believe that any jury would now convict Christopher Dunn.” And yet, Missouri law prevented him from granting Dunn’s petition. Innocence alone, Hickle wrote, is grounds for relief only for a prisoner “sentenced to death, and is unavailable for cases in which the death penalty has not been imposed.” In other words: Dunn might have gone free, if only he’d been condemned to die.

]]>
177887
Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge. https://longreads.com/2021/10/08/black-children-were-jailed-for-a-crime-that-doesnt-exist-almost-nothing-happened-to-the-adults-in-charge/ Fri, 08 Oct 2021 23:12:27 +0000 https://longreads.com/?post_type=lr_pick&p=151448 “What happened on that Friday and in the days after, when police rounded up even more kids, would expose an ugly and unsettling culture in Rutherford County, one spanning decades. In the wake of these mass arrests, lawyers would see inside a secretive legal system that’s supposed to protect kids, but in this county did the opposite.”

]]>
177370
How Target Got Cozy With the Cops, Turning Black Neighbors Into Suspects https://longreads.com/2021/08/26/how-target-got-cozy-with-the-cops-turning-black-neighbors-into-suspects/ Thu, 26 Aug 2021 16:35:00 +0000 https://longreads.com/?post_type=lr_pick&p=150565 “For decades, Target fostered partnerships with law enforcement unlike those of any other U.S. corporation.”

]]>
177271
Why Do Detainees Keep Dying in This Baton Rouge Jail? https://longreads.com/2021/07/09/why-do-detainees-keep-dying-in-this-baton-rouge-jail/ Fri, 09 Jul 2021 22:44:31 +0000 https://longreads.com/?post_type=lr_pick&p=150051 “In one decade, 45 people died in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison. Most were charged with nonviolent misdemeanors. Most didn’t have their day in court. Most were Black. How did the system fail them?”

]]>
177178
Qualified Immunity: How ‘Ordinary Police Work’ Tramples Civil Rights https://longreads.com/2021/06/23/qualified-immunity-how-ordinary-police-work-tramples-civil-rights/ Wed, 23 Jun 2021 21:41:59 +0000 https://longreads.com/?post_type=lr_pick&p=149911 “There is little to no accountability behind the closed doors of police work.”

]]>
177147
Donovan Deaths: Families Kept in Dark While Inmates Die of COVID-19 https://longreads.com/2021/04/15/donovan-deaths-families-kept-in-dark-while-inmates-die-of-covid-19/ Thu, 15 Apr 2021 22:13:06 +0000 https://longreads.com/?post_type=lr_pick&p=148786 “Their stories had one thing in common: No prison officials alerted them their loved ones were seriously ill until after their deaths.”

]]>
177001