Beating Addiction
40% of state prisoners were drunk when they committed their crime. Three million violent crimes are associated with alcohol each year. The need for cash drives illegal drug addicts to property crime. Meanwhile, our jails and prisons are full of the chemically dependent whose only crime was possession or use.
And yet most addicts at some point are ready to quit. What works, when, and why?
Featured
Coming soon.
Coming soon.
Videos
Virginia drug court: profile of people and issues
William Michael Dillon was released in November 2008 after more than 27 years for a murder that DNA testing proved he did not commit.
1:15 The brother who joined the Navy to escape the pain.
1:48 Dad thinks he could have played professional baseball.
2:15 What his family meant to him.
2:36 Brother fled to the navy to escape the trauma.
3:40 Pain of never having raised a family.
4:39 Brother’s survivor guilt.
Jaynelle’s story: from alcohol to crack and back
How a young single mother got in over her head, and how she climbed back out.
1:15
1:48 Dad thinks he could have played professional baseball.
2:15 What his family meant to him.
2:36 Brother fled to the navy to escape the trauma.
3:40 Pain of never having raised a family.
4:39 Brother’s survivor guilt.
Erica Beckstead: 10 years of crack, 4 years recovered
How a young single mother got in over her head, and how she climbed back out.
1:15
1:48
2:15
2:36
3:40
4:39
News
- Texas exonerees: numbers growing (1/25/2013) - With no physical evidence linking Morton to the crime and only a wildly implausible hypothesis for why he committed it, the district attorney of tough-on-crime Williamson County convinced a jury in February 1987 that Morton had bludgeoned his young wife to death in their suburban Austin home. He was sentenced to life in prison and... Read More
- Ex-LA gang member exonerated of murder, released Page 1 of 2 | UTSanDiego.com (1/20/2013) - Prosecutors told the judge they were convinced that the lone eyewitness to the 1993 shooting had lied at Smith’s trial, naming him as the gunman. Smith maintained he was at his grandmother’s house when the shooting occurred several blocks away. After Schnegg announced her decision, the courtroom erupted in applause, cheers and shouts of "We... Read More
- Brutal 15-Year-Old Crime Highlights Decades-Long Mississippi Scandal (1/20/2013) - Media investigations over the years, however, including my own for The Huffington Post and Reason magazine, have revealed that both Hayne and West have contributed critical evidence that led to the convictions of people who were later exonerated, and routinely and flagrantly flouted the ethical and professional standards of their respective fields. West, for example,... Read More
- Wrongly jailed couple relieved ‘truth came out’ in murder of retired BYU professor | Deseret News (1/20/2013) - "Due to false charges, family members and friends turned on us," Pamela Mortensen said. "Our reputations in our community and church were destroyed. We are glad that the truth has finally come out." Pamela Mortensen said she’s grateful to the people who helped reveal what really happened that night. "If it hadn’t been for their... Read More
- Exonerated man to get $25,000 from state (12/28/2012) - MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The state will pay $25,000 to a Milwaukee man who was wrongly convicted of a homicide that was later linked to a serial killer. William D. Avery served six years in prison before being released in 2010. He was seeking $30,000, or the maximum $5,000 per year allowed. But the Wisconsin... Read More
- Santae Tribble exonerated for 1978 slaying | WJLA.com (12/28/2012) - WASHINGTON (AP) – A judge has formerly declared the innocence of a Washington man who spent 28 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Continue reading Fifty-one-year-old Santae Tribble’s long fight for exoneration ended Friday when a judge granted his request for a certificate of innocence. The judge wrote that there is "clear... Read More
- Family surrounds man exonerated after 32 years in prison – Chicago Tribune (12/28/2012) - “For 32 years, Andre Davis was ignored by nearly all of his relatives and despised as a child-murderer by his fellow inmates. In July, he was released from the supermax prison in Tamms after DNA evidence led to his exoneration, a story chronicled in the Tribune in October. Davis, who had been behind bars since... Read More
- Anatomy Of A Bad Confession, Part 1 (4/23/2012) - But for a teenage girl whose baby has been dead for no more than a day and a couple of hours, who pleads and cries through much of the interview, her attorney, Ed Ryan, has another description of what the cops are doing. Ryan, a past president of the Massachusetts Bar Association, calls this the... Read More
- Prosecutor misconduct victim gets $25M for 16 year error (2/2/2012) - … Jimenez was just 13 years old when he was arrested in 1993 for a slaying on Chicago’s Northwest Side. He was released from prison in May 2009 after lawyers and students from Northwestern University’s Bluhm Center on Wrongful Convictions located two key witnesses who recanted their original claims that Jimenez was the gunman. His... Read More
- Florida Ponders Jailhouse Informants, False Conviction Problem (12/28/2011) - Chad Heins, a Jacksonville man, spent 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit based solely on the testimony of two jailhouse informants who lied to jurors, saying Heins had confessed.According to the Innocence Project, a New York nonprofit that works to free the innocent, 15 percent of all wrongful convictions later... Read More
- 21 People Exonerated by Innocence Network in 2011 (12/28/2011) - A year-in-review report released last week by the Innocence Network reveals that 21 people across the country were exonerated by Innocence Network member organizations for crimes they didn’t commit in the past year. Two men served more than 3 decades behind bars before being exonerated. The report, “Innocence Network Exonerations 2011,” provides information about each... Read More
- VA Man Exonerated After Doing 27 Years (12/28/2011) - A Virginia appeals court declared Thomas Haynesworth an innocent man Tuesday, clearing his name and acknowledging that he spent 27 years behind bars for rapes he did not commit. It is the first time the state has issued a “writ of actual innocence” in a rape case without the certainty of DNA evidence. Haynesworth, 46,... Read More
- Innocent KY Man Back Home For Xmas After 14 Years (12/28/2011) - Putting some final touches on his family’s Christmas tree last week, Kerry Porter was getting ready for a busy holiday weekend. It’s the first Christmas Kerry was able to spend with family, after 14 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now Kerry says he’s filled with “so many emotions — it’s nice... Read More
- Texas man seeks justice after false conviction (12/27/2011) - A Texas man wrongfully convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife is scheduled to be officially exonerated on Monday. That is no longer so unusual in Texas, where 45 inmates have been exonerated in the last decade based on DNA evidence. What is unprecedented is the move planned by lawyers for the man, Michael Morton:... Read More
- TX Third on Exoneration Numbers Since 1989, After IL & NY (12/12/2011) - The state of Texas comes in third behind Illnois and New York in the number of exonerations in the United States since 1989, according to data compiled by Mother Jones. With the help of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Innocence Project, reporters Beth Schwartzapfel and Hannah Levintova built a state-by-state data set of... Read More
- Robert Veal Struggles to Clear Record, Even After Freed (12/2/2011) - After serving 10 years in prison for a crime he has been cleared of, Robert Veal found out Friday there are still more roadblocks in the way to getting his conviction off his record. Veal and four other men were convicted of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Dixmoor in 1991, but... Read More
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