In the Tribune's series on prosecutorial misconduct, we examined cases going back to 1963. In our series on the Illinois death penalty, we went back to 1977. Stories don't lose their importance or impact by reaching back in time. Besides, the kinds of systematic problems that we isolated in our reporting plagued our courts then and continue to do so now. That continuum shows how deeply ingrained such problems are.
Statistics can resonate.
In a time when anecdotal leads dominate news pages and the emphasis is often on using a single event, person or case to illuminate a larger story, we sometimes forget that numbers hold power. In announcing the moratorium on executions in Illinois, Governor Ryan relied on statistics, not individual stories. In writing about the criminal justice system, issues of fairness should not be discounted as legal esoterica. We sell readers, listeners and viewers short when we assume they care only about questions of a person's innocence. The Tribune's findings on the shortcomings of sentencing hearings in Texas' capital cases said nothing about innocence or guilt, but spoke volumes about the system's fairness.