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: Lawbeat

Throwing the book, methodically, at a victim's betrayers

By Mark Obbie

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Here's what dogged reporting and cautious, transparent storytelling can do to shine the light of accountability on public officials -- without giving in to the natural urge to point immediate blame until the facts are in. Last month, a judge in Los Angeles released a man with a criminal history of abusing his wife. Despite repeated violent incidents and a plea from the county probation office to hold the man in jail, the judge allowed the husband out on bail before he was to start a 16-month sentence for his latest attack on his wife. Over the weekend, the husband killed his wife and then himself. Too often, such a series of events would yield screaming headlines about the judge, the most obvious target. But a trio of LA Times reporters -- Andrew Blankstein, Mitchell Landsberg and Paloma Esquivel (a former student of mine at Newhouse, I'm proud to say) -- reported on Tuesday on the many possible mistakes that led to the crime, using numerous records and human sources from a variety of agencies. They looked not only at what the judge did, but at the DA's failure to object to bail. And, importantly, they disclosed to readers in that first-day story what they didn't yet know, writing:

It was unclear Monday if Fisher [the judge] reviewed the Probation Department report or whether she was fully aware of Harris' criminal record. It was also unclear how common it is for defendants in such cases to be released before their prison terms begin.

In a followup Wednesday, Blankenstein reported the DA's office's preliminary investigation into a series of lapses, including failing to warn the woman that he husband was on the loose. There's more to come -- about authorities' failure to protect the woman when she sought help shortly before her murder, and about the original bail recommendation -- but the Times' dedication to pinning down the facts and not letting the story race ahead of those known facts serves as a model of dispassionate, fact-based reporting on a highly emotional crime. (Via Gavel Grab, the blog of judicial-independence advocates Justice at Stake.)

Full post as published by Lawbeat on January 10, 2008 (boomark / email).