Search Results for: Prison

The Guilty Man

Longreads Pick

Michael Morton, who spent 25 years wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his wife, takes the stand again, against the real killer:

“The jury regarded him with what appeared to be both sympathy and fascination. One of the many strange aspects of The State of Texas v. Mark Alan Norwood was that at no point during the eight-day trial would the jurors hear that Michael himself had previously been found guilty of the crime, or that he had spent nearly 25 years behind bars. Before the trial, state district judge Burt Carnes had granted a request from the prosecution to exclude testimony about Michael’s conviction. Because his exoneration had wiped his record clean, he no longer had a criminal history, and the prosecution argued that any mention of his wrongful conviction might unfairly prejudice the jury against its star witness. To the people in the courtroom who were familiar with Michael’s odyssey, however, it was a mind-bending omission.”

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Jun 7, 2013
Length: 26 minutes (6,667 words)

Our Longreads Member Pick: Letter from Kufra, by Clare Morgana Gillis

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This week’s Member Pick is “Letter from Kufra,” a story by Clare Morgana Gillis, first published in the summer 2012 issue of The American Scholar. Gillis, who was featured on Longreads for her report after being captured in Libya, explains:

I first arrived in Libya at the end of February 2011, less than ten days after the uprising began when peaceful protests were attacked by Col. Qaddafi’s forces. I spent a few months there on that trip and witnessed the beginnings of the armed conflict and the NATO intervention and, accidentally, the inside of the Libyan prison system.  In September of 2011 I returned to report on the final phases of the war and the eventual execution of Qaddafi by rebel forces.

Like nearly every journalist who covered the conflict, and over 90% of the Libyan population, I had spent all my time in Libya on the Mediterranean coast. When I returned in February 2012 for the one-year anniversary of the uprising, I was determined to see more: the vast southern deserts had always fascinated me with their promise of oil-fields, tribal peoples, camels and oases. That month an age-old friction between the Tubu and Zwaya ethnic groups broke out into open battle in Kufra, some hundred miles north of the Chadian border. Despite claiming around 100 lives, it got almost no media attention, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to go south. 

We—my Ukrainian colleague Vadim Naninets (whose photographs were in the piece), our driver and I—set out before the break of dawn to make the 620-mile drive south from Benghazi. Fully stocked with bread, cheese, dates, and many cigarettes and bottles of water for the trip, the only real concern we had was bandits on the road. Since fighting in the city had ended, and it was fully ‘liberated,’ under the control of anti-Qaddafi rebels, we didn’t worry about politics in town. That was our first mistake…

On arrival we were immediately taken to the military council headquarters, where the questioning started off fairly innocuously (‘where are you from,’ ‘what are you doing here?’). Within an hour or two we were being questioned separately, our answers transcribed. Local newspapers wrote of our detention, prompting anxious Facebook discussions and phone calls from the temporary consulate in Benghazi. Ten hours later we were released into the custody of the National Army, the Benghazi-based outfit which had come south to quell the battles. 

I quickly understood that in the Sahelian region of Libya—where lighter-skinned Zwaya and darker-skinned Tubu live together—the revolution had a very different meaning from the straight politics of the coast. Pro- and anti-Qaddafi factions were largely based on ethnicity and the history of relations between each ethnic group and the onetime Leader.

The ride home was much swifter and livelier than the ride down: National Army gave us a night-time lift in a C-130. In flagrant violation of any extant aviation law, we rode in the cockpit (I took a turn in the pilot’s seat), each of the ten or so men in the flight crew chain-smoking and explaining what all the dials were for, and pointing to distant red flares burning in the darkness which marked locations of oil fields. 

I was struck yet again by the unimaginable vastness of the deserts, and the sense that we can never fully know what goes on there.

Read an excerpt here

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Xmas in Hawaii

Longreads Pick

In 1982, author Linda Spalding served as a juror on Maryann Acker’s murder trial. She believed Maryann was innocent, but was dismissed from the jury after arriving late to the courthouse one morning. Acker ended up being convicted and has spent the next 30 years in prison. Spalding, whose feeling of guilt hasn’t subsided in the intervening years, writes about time, memory, and her quest to help Maryann regain her freedom after three decades.

Source: Brick
Published: May 27, 2013
Length: 38 minutes (9,692 words)

Peter Worthington in His Own Words

Longreads Pick

The founding editor of The Toronto Sun died on Monday. He wrote his own obituary:

“It was nerve-wracking in 1967 to be mistaken for an Israeli prisoner by a Cairo mob and punched and battered until rescued by a brave Egyptian who defied the mob.

“There were the lethal streets of Algiers, where daily assassinations took place, and occasionally the French army opened fire on civilians. One afternoon a bullet went through the sleeve of my jacket and I didn’t know it until others pointed it out.”

Source: Toronto Sun
Published: May 13, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,083 words)

The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Longreads Pick

[Three-part series] The firsthand account of a prisoner detained in Guantánamo:

“Suddenly a commando team of three soldiers and a German shepherd broke into our interrogation room. [ ] punched me violently, which made me fall face down on the floor, and the second guy kept punching me everywhere, mainly on my face and my ribs. Both were masked from head to toe.”

“‘Motherfucker, I told you, you’re gone!’ said [ ]. His partner kept punching me without saying a word; he didn’t want to be recognized. The third man was not masked, he stayed at the door holding the dog collar, ready to release it on me.

“‘Who told you to do that? You’re hurting the detainee,’ screamed [ ], who was no less terrified than I was.”

Source: Slate
Published: Apr 30, 2013
Length: 63 minutes (15,890 words)

Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.

Longreads Pick

Deinstitutionalization moved thousands of mentally ill people out of hospitals and into the prison system. States are cutting mental-health funding. A look at America’s mental health care crisis:

“‘Homelessmentallyilldeinstitutionalized was one noun in the media at the time,’ says SAMHSA’s Roth, who is the source of the oft-cited data point that a third of America’s homeless people are seriously mentally ill (helping to rebut the misconception then that they all were). In 1984, Dr. John A. Talbott, then president of the American Psychiatric Association, apologized for the association’s role in the disaster. ‘The psychiatrists involved in the policymaking at that time certainly oversold community treatment,’ he said, ‘and our credibility today is probably damaged because of it.’

“‘Think of it as haircuts,’ says Roth, who watched deinstitutionalization unfold in her 37 years as chief of evaluation and research at the Ohio Department of Mental Health. ‘In the age of the great gothic castle on the hill, mentally ill patients had everything taken care of. Health care, sleeping, eating, etc. When they got out, they were supposed to have everything. They got Medicare and Medicaid, but [policymakers] didn’t think about food. And haircuts. Clothes. How to find a place to live.’ How to do laundry; how to grocery shop. How to ensure people who need meds take them. What to do with people who had too many behavioral problems to avoid being evicted six times in a row.”

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Apr 29, 2013
Length: 33 minutes (8,317 words)

Celebrating Four Years of Longreads

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Longreads just celebrated its fourth birthday, and it’s been a thrill to watch this community grow since we introduced this service and Twitter hashtag in 2009. Thank you to everyone who participates, whether it’s as a reader, a publisher, a writer—or all three. And thanks to the Longreads Members who have made it possible for us to keep going. 

To celebrate four years, here’s a rundown of some of our most frequent #longreads contributors, and some of their recent recommendations: 

#1 – @matthiasrascher


#2 – @hriefs


#3 – @roamin


#4 – @jalees_rehman


#5 – @LAReviewofBooks


#6 – @TheAtlantic


#7 – @nxthompson


#8 – @faraway67 


#9 – @PocketHits


#10 – @legalnomads


#11 – @brainpicker


#12 – @LineHolm1 


#13 – @Guardian


#14 – @stonedchimera


#15 – @MosesHawk


#16 – @James_daSilva


#17 – @chrbutler


#18 – @eugenephoto

#19 – @jaredbkeller


#20 – @morgank


#21 – @dougcoulson


#22 – @LaForgeNYT


#23 – @stephen_abbott

#24 – @venkatananth

#25 – @weegee

When Drug Cops Become Criminals

Longreads Pick

An undercover officer for the Drug Enforcement Administration ends up in prison when the drug war becomes personal:

“‘A lot of people disappear in Mexico,’ he says. ‘They are buried where no one will find them. Some are eaten by tigers and some by sharks. There are also big tanks with acid in them.’ He pauses for a long time between the sentences.

“‘We didn’t manage to catch all the bad guys. In those cases, we gave the Mexicans their names and said, ‘Do what you need to do.’ The Mexicans made those people disappear.’

“Martinez sits in his car, holding the steering wheel firmly with both hands. He looks frightened by the memories of his own life. ‘Come on, let’s go to the cemetery,’ he says.”

Source: Spiegel
Published: Mar 1, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,247 words)

Resurfaced: Peter Perl's 'The Spy Who's Been Left in the Cold' (1998)

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We’re excited to introduce a recurring series in which we work with publishers to dig up notable stories from their archives that were previously unpublished on the web. And we’re especially excited to kick this off with The Washington Post

Today’s piece is “The Spy Who’s Been Left in the Cold,” a 1998 Washington Post Magazine story by Peter Perl, who just announced he’s retiring from the paper after 32 years. Here’s more from the Post’s Marc Fisher:

“In the Washington Post newsroom in recent years, Peter Perl has been the official mensch, the go-to guy both for reporters trying to figure out their career paths and for editors struggling with how to keep aggressive and smart journalism at the fore even in an ever-tougher economic environment. But beyond his avuncular manner and wise counsel, what made Perl one of the newsroom’s most respected figures was what he’d done for the first quarter century of his time at the paper: Perl, who is retiring from The Post shortly, was a master storyteller, a specialist in the art of profiling people who didn’t want to be profiled and public figures who were assumed by journalists and readers alike to be overexposed. Perl drilled down to the psychological roots of former Washington Mayor Marion Barry’s struggle between the morality of fighting for the poor and the amorality of doing whatever it took to get his way. He discovered and sensitively revealed the hurt child beneath D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams’ oddly distant public persona. And in this finely-etched, subtly-shaded profile of a man he didn’t even get to meet, Perl shows us the many facets of Jonathan Pollard, the American intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel and is serving a life sentence in a federal prison. It is a story of deceit and betrayal, but also of devotion and righteousness. It is a typical Peter Perl tale, ignoring the easy conclusions and trusting that readers will come with him on a journey into the grey zone where all the most fascinating stories live.”

Read the story here. 

Flynt Family Values

Longreads Pick

Jimmy Flynt has had a falling out with his infamous brother Larry, and is now striking out on his own:

“Jimmy doesn’t sugarcoat his time with Larry. His brother is narcissistic, a micromanager, and a publicity hound, he says. Does he feel liberated to no longer have to deal with such a difficult personality? He pauses for a few seconds and then says, ‘I miss him. I enjoyed that brotherly connection.’

“Theirs is a complex relationship, forged under extreme duress during years that encompass Larry’s struggles with drugs, prison, paralysis, and mental illness. Sure, Larry was a piece of work, Jimmy says. But his brother also was his hero. ‘When he cut me off,’ Jimmy says, ‘he cut off his best friend. He cut off his number-one fan.'”

Author: Dave Ghose
Published: Feb 1, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,968 words)