{
  "id": "2000-julyaugust-case-dismissed",
  "slug": "2000-julyaugust-case-dismissed",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2000-julyaugust-case-dismissed.html",
  "year": 2000,
  "month": "July/August",
  "monthNum": 7,
  "headline": "Case Dismissed",
  "kicker": "AWARD WINNER",
  "author_name": "Gerry Lanogosa",
  "author_title": "Investigative Producer",
  "affiliation": "WTHR-TV, Indianapolis",
  "summary": "An investigative team explores if local law enforcement keeps its promise to enforce DUI laws by examining case dismissals when police fail to appear in court.",
  "keywords": [
    "DUI",
    "law enforcement",
    "court dismissals"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Crime & Justice",
    "Data & Databases"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Access",
    "Excel"
  ],
  "full_text": "Local law enforcement agencies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on public service announcements warning that drinking and driving will not be tolerated. It's pretty tough talk: \"We've been telling you, drive under the influence and you will lose your license and you will go to jail,\" said one spot that ran on local stations in Indianapolis. But do the police always keep that promise? Our team (Reporter Jeremy Rogalski, Photojournalist Bill Ditton, Investigative Producer Kathleen Johnston, and I) decided to find out. A tipster had told us a well-connected local lawyer was getting a large percentage of his DUI cases dismissed because police failed to show up in court. Sure enough, although we weren't able to prove any collusion, the lawyer turned out to be one of the top beneficiaries of police missing court dates. And our application of some very basic computer-assisted reporting principles allowed us to broaden our story by demonstrating a system-wide pattern of cases thrown out because of police no-shows.\n\nUsing a database obtained from the Marion County Justice Agency (our city's criminal justice information service), we found nearly one in 10 DUI cases dismissed in that manner. From the time we got our data, it took about three months to get our story on the air. Our dataset covered all alcohol-related cases (we separated DUI cases out later) from 1993 through 1998, including case ID numbers; charge codes and descriptions; case disposition codes; judges, attorneys and officers involved with each case, and personal data on the defendants. It took the county three months to pull it together. The law in our state allows agencies to charge for \"enhanced access\" requests like this. The local rate is a hard-to-swallow $50/hour for programming or processing. They didn't charge us for CPU time, but we ended up paying $650 for programming.\n\nThe records came to us via e-mail in three dozen Excel files containing more than a million records (about 151 MB). We imported them into an Access database for our analysis. After the initial clean-up, we had about 30,000 closed DUI cases. A few simple queries later, we determined that the number of dismissals because of police no-shows was about 25 percent. It was a tantalizing figure - and it was wrong.\n\nWe've done enough of these projects - and heard enough horror stories at IRE conferences - to know that you never go with the first set of numbers. After some sober reflection and some painful integrity checks - a process that took several weeks and numerous consultations with the county's data guru - we came up with a final number of about 10 percent. That's still a significant finding. Those integrity checks also involved going early and often to the paper files - that old-fashioned practice a dazzling database often tempts reporters to forget. By the time it was all over, we had pulled around three hundred hard-copy case files to make sure the data meant what it said. And we found that often it did not, which brings us to an overarching point that can't be overemphasized: Relentlessly question your data, and then be willing to accept the logical conclusions. Sometimes, that means throwing out cherished premises.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2000-julyaugust-case-dismissed.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2000-julyaugust-case-dismissed.json"
}