The first Trump administration launched a sprawling campaign to ferret out leakers, which targeted reporters at CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, plus members of Congress and their staff. But a watchdog report released to The Intercept shows that just days before the 2020 presidential election, senior Justice Department officials signed off on leaks to two favored newspapers with conservative reputations, both owned by the biggest name in right-wing media.

The report, which The Intercept obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, sketches the anatomy of a politically expedient leak authorized at high levels. Such leaks were frequent during Trump 1.0 — as in every other administration, in a tradition dating back to Benjamin Franklin’s days as colonial postmaster — and will certainly continue during Trump 2.0.

So will investigations of embarrassing leaks and prosecutions of disfavored leakers. Conservatives have urged Donald Trump, in the words of the Project 2025 manifesto, to “use all of the tools at [the Justice Department’s] disposal to investigate leaks.”

In late October 2020, three senior Justice Department officials leaked information and documents to the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by conservative magnate Rupert Murdoch. The leaks concerned investigations into Covid deaths at nursing homes in New York and New Jersey. At the time, state officials alleged that the investigations and the strategic leaks were politically timed.

The inspector general found that the Department of Justice officials leaked “to select reporters, days before an election, non-public DOJ investigative information regarding ongoing DOJ investigative matters,” per a high-level summary of the findings released in December.

On Tuesday, in response to FOIA requests from The Intercept and other outlets, the watchdog released its full investigative findings, including some evidence to support “partisan political motivation.”

The inspector general redacted the names of all three former officials from the report.

One of them is identifiable, however, from social media posts that the inspector general found also violated policy: Kerri Kupec Urbahn, the Justice Department’s former top spokesperson and former Attorney General Bill Barr’s “right hand,” who is now a legal editor at another Murdoch media property, Fox News. (Kupec did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.) 

The report describes and quotes from the officials’ discussions as they hashed out a press plan, which included leaking letters about the investigation before they were sent to state officials. The Justice Department officials settled on putting the letters together as a “package” and letting the New York Post “break it,” as one official, identified in the report as a senior official in the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs, wrote in a text in mid-October 2020.

“Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one.”

“Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one,” the official wrote. A week later, the officials decided not to issue a press release about the letters, but instead to “give it to a reporter ahead of time” as part of maintaining “the upper hand.” Another official replied: “Agreed.”

The inspector general concluded that these and other communications “raise questions about whether the senior officials were motivated by partisan considerations to take and announce certain actions in proximity to the then upcoming 2020 election.” The watchdog referred its findings to the federal Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether any of the officials violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government positions for partisan purposes.

The evening of October 27, 2020, the New York Post broke the story as planned, reporting that Department of Justice was demanding more data from New York about Covid deaths in the state’s publicly run nursing homes and also opening an investigation into two of New Jersey’s state-run nursing homes. The story included links to both letters.

“This information was provided to the New York Post — and the New York Post published the piece online — before the Department had even provided the letters to New Jersey and New York officials,” the inspector general noted.

New York’s then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a prominent Trump critic, called foul on the strategic leak to a friendly outlet. “It should come to no one’s surprise that we learned of this letter from the New York Post,” a Cuomo spokesperson told Politico at the time. “They should have figured this out themselves, but there’s an election in a week and this federal government is clearly seeking to deceive and distract any way it can.”

The next day, the DOJ officials leaked the New Jersey letter and non-public details about the New Jersey investigation to the Wall Street Journal, the inspector general found.

Kupec, using her official DOJ account, posted links to both stories on Twitter that evening, which the inspector general deemed an “additional violation.”

All three senior officials either declined to be interviewed by the inspector general or didn’t answer its request, according to the report, as did former attorney general Barr. The inspector general has no authority to compel testimony from former DOJ employees, and referred the misconduct findings to other department components “for any action those offices deem appropriate.”

The orchestrated leaks played out parallel to the DOJ’s efforts, with Barr’s personal authorization, to investigate leakers and journalists. As detailed in another long-awaited inspector general report released last year, between May and November 2020 Barr signed off on seizing eight reporters’ email and phone records without notifying the outlets or providing an opportunity to challenge the dragnet.

One DOJ official told the inspector general that Barr had “made it very clear leak investigations were a priority of the Department.” But as the latest report shows, the Justice Department’s concern about leaks was selective.

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Bethany Bourgeois-George unlocked the door to the aluminum mailbox of her downtown Vancouver condo on the morning of August 16, 2021, only to find the letter she had been dreading: a request from the U.S. Postal Service to pick up a package. Although the notice did not state what the package was or whom it was from, Bourgeois-George already knew — she had been expecting it for over eight months.

When Bourgeois-George later picked up the box, she was shocked by how heavy it was. Then, she looked down at her hands. They were covered with a gray, dusty substance. The ashes of her father, Alfred Bourgeois, were seeping out.

“The ashes were so heavy and I didn’t expect that. It was like a punch to the gut because it just reminded me of him as a person, like a heavy human being. And then there he was, just minimized to ashes,” Bourgeois-George said.

As she looked inside the box, she realized it was the closest she had been to her father in almost 19 years, since the day of her high school graduation dinner in LaPlace, Louisiana. They had shared a deep embrace when they said their goodbyes. Bourgeois-George didn’t think much of it, but then a month passed without hearing from him.

She would eventually learn that he had been arrested in Corpus Christi, Texas, for the sexual abuse and murder of his 2-year-old daughter, Ja’karenn Gunter, Bourgeois-George’s half sister. He was convicted on federal charges in 2002 and maintained his innocence until his death. The Trump administration executed the 56-year-old Bourgeois in December 2020, despite evidence of an intellectual disability that would make his execution unconstitutional. He was the 10th out of 13 people executed in an unprecedented federal killing spree.

Bourgeois-George is convinced of her father’s innocence. For the past four years, she has waged a sometimes-lonely battle to clear his name, pointing to myriad filings by his death penalty attorneys that cast doubt on his conviction. The filings include sworn statements from medical experts stating that Ja’karenn’s death could be explained by an internal head injury due to ingestion of salt water during a recent trip to a California beach, rather than abuse.

Her advocacy ranges from media interviews and public appearances to efforts to secure a retrial of the case. Most recently, she submitted a posthumous pardon request to President Joe Biden, whose decision late last month to commute the sentences of almost all of the men on federal death row renewed Bourgeois-George’s hope in getting justice for her father. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“The wrongful conviction and execution of Alfred Bourgeois represent a moral failure of our justice system—a failure that can and must be addressed,” Bourgeois-George wrote to Biden. “While nothing can bring Alfred back, granting a posthumous pardon would restore his dignity, acknowledge the truth, and send a message that the United States values fairness, accountability, and human life.”

A Tragic Loss

In the summer of 2002, Bourgeois took a road trip with his wife at the time, Robin Batiste, and three of his daughters, including Ja’karenn. He was a truck driver, and the family traveled out west in an 18-wheeler truck in a mix of leisure and work. On the morning of June 26, when Bourgeois was making a delivery to a Corpus Christi naval base, Batiste awoke to find Ja’karenn, her stepdaughter, unconscious. The parents took Ja’karenn to the hospital, where she died the next day. The official cause of death was “an impact to the head resulting in a devastating brain injury.”

Batiste and Bourgeois’s 6-year-old daughter Alfredesha quickly identified Bourgeois as a suspect; because they were on federal property at the naval base, he was charged by federal prosecutors. Alfredesha would later testify that she saw her dad hit Ja’karenn’s head against the backseat window four times and physically abuse her. Though Alfredesha blamed her dad for the killing, she also said that she enjoyed being in her father’s truck, where on many occasions she would talk into the speaker and type on the computer for fun during their trips. She also said her dad never hit her or her younger sister and that he treated her “like an angel.”

Bourgeois vehemently denied the allegations and said he was deeply troubled by losing his daughter. At trial, he testified that he never harmed Ja’karenn, never touched her inappropriately, and did not cause her death.

He was the only witness for the defense, court documents show. In an interview, Bourgeois-George said that she, along with more than 20 others — including Alfred’s pastor, family members, and childhood friends — were subpoenaed to testify by her father’s defense team, only to be told that they would not be called. Most of them, including Bourgeois-George, weren’t even allowed in the courtroom.

When Ja’karenn was hospitalized, a sexual abuse nurse examined her and found no evidence of sexual abuse. The autopsy also showed no such evidence. Still, the government argued that Bourgeois had abused his daughter, pointing to a single forensic test that indicates the presence of p30, a prostate-specific antigen that is widely understood as faulty because it can also be found in female fluids. In the years since, the FBI has reportedly abandoned its practices of testing for p30 because it is incapable of reliably determining the presence of semen.

In closing arguments, Bourgeois’s lawyers argued to the predominantly white jury that even if they believed that he had abused and killed Ja’karenn, there was still no evidence of premeditation. After deliberating for less than two hours, the jury found Alfred, a Black man, guilty.

In the coming years, Bourgeois’s appellate lawyers would challenge his conviction, arguing that his trial counsel was ineffective in presenting readily available evidence that cast doubt on his guilt. His appellate lawyers also revealed that the prosecution did not disclose that four people in jail were promised some benefit in exchange for testifying against Bourgeois.

A month after his execution, Bourgeois’s death row attorney shared his case file with Bourgeois-George. The documents — including autopsy reports, affidavits, witness testimony, clemency, and stay of execution petitions — help form the basis of her request for a posthumous pardon.

Expert Opinion

Among the key pieces of evidence against Bourgeois that his lawyers questioned was an examination of Ja’karenn’s brain after her death, which showed that she had a subarachnoid hemorrhage — bleeding between the brain and its membrane — caused by the burst of a weakened blood vessel wall, with no skull fracture. The consultation report also cited bruising and hematomas, or a collection of blood that forms outside of a blood vessel.

In 2007, Dr. Werner Spitz, a pathologist and chief medical examiner, wrote an affidavit as part of an appeal for Bourgeois’s innocence saying that the suggestion of bruising was “misleading and exaggerated,” that the photo had been enhanced, and that “dark skinned individuals frequently have variations of skin pigment and tones often mistaken for injuries.” Spitz also testified that the hematoma was at least a week old.

“I disagree with the witness testimony whereby the child’s head was struck multiple times on the interior of the vehicle,” Spitz wrote in the affidavit. “The findings place in question causation of the injuries and their timing.”

Four years later, Dr. Jan Edward Leestma, a consultant in forensic neuropathology, testified in an appellate hearing that what he observed of the subdural hematoma was not consistent with an injury that was inflicted within the 24-hour period that they were on federal grounds in Corpus Christi. While the doctors at the time found new blood (no more than three days old) in the subdural hematoma, Leestma said there was no indication that the injury occurred on the naval base. They had no reliable means to age and date it, Leestma said, noting that existing subdural hematomas from over a week can bleed without additional injury.

Bourgeois’s lawyers consulted additional medical experts as they prepared a clemency petition ahead of his scheduled execution in 2020. One doctor who reviewed the medical evidence, Roland Auer, said that there were no findings that would be expected of a fatal blow to the head in a 2-year-old girl, “especially when the skull is as thin as observed in the autopsy.” Auer explained that the injuries were consistent with venous thrombosis, a blood clot blocking a vein, which he said was possibly caused by ingestion of salt water from the family’s trip to the beach in California just over a week before the death. That could be why the brain injuries predated the day of the alleged murder, Auer said.

Elizabeth Rouse, the doctor who examined the autopsy for the prosecution at the time of the trial, reviewed Auer’s findings and said she “did not disagree” that Ja’karenn “suffered venous thrombosis, occurring more than a week before death, or that the venous thrombosis was possibly caused by the ingestion of salt water,” according to the clemency petition.

Throughout his entire incarceration, Bourgeois was held in isolation. He was not allowed visits, phone calls, or letters with his family. With all this time alone, Bourgeois-George said that he developed an intellectual disability, which his lawyers used to contest his execution. The Supreme Court has deemed it unconstitutional to execute someone with an intellectual disability, yet the justices declined to step in to spare his life.

Bourgeois was killed on December 11, 2020. “I did not commit this crime,” he said in his final statement. “I love my kids with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.”

Bourgeois-George filed her request to Biden almost exactly four years later, on December 17. She says that as time passes, the feelings of grief get harder, not easier, especially with the possibility he might never get justice. Though she sees no end in sight, she is determined to keep fighting. “My father did not deserve this. He was a good father. He was a wonderful man,” she said. “He was tortured and tormented by his own country for 18 and a half years, and this is how his story ended.”

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Convicted of 34 felony counts in his hush money case, Donald Trump could have faced severe consequences. Each of the felony counts of falsifying business records was punishable by up to four years in prison and fines of up to $5,000. Yet U.S. District Judge Juan Merchan took a remarkably light approach in sentencing Friday, issuing Trump an “unconditional discharge” — meaning no jail time, no fines, and effectively no punishment except that he retains his felony conviction.

For many in the criminal justice reform and abolitionist space, his feather-light sentence further highlights the widespread inequities and failures of a criminal legal system where hundreds of thousands of Americans remain behind bars without ever even being convicted, let alone of a felony. 

Despite the nonexistent penalties (aside from limits on his ownership of firearms and a requirement that he provide a DNA sample for a New York state database), Trump continued to rail against his prosecution. He called it “a very terrible experience” that was politically motivated, echoing his previous claims that he was facing a “two-tiered justice system.” 

In the same city across a thin stretch of river, Ann Mathews, managing director of the Bronx Defenders, a public defenders nonprofit serving low-income Bronx residents, agrees that this case highlights the two tiers of justice. Just not in the way Trump means. 

“This never happens for our clients,” said Mathews. “We felt the outrage. And then I think, wow, imagine the people we represent.”

Paul Henderson, a former San Francisco prosecutor, agrees that such a sentencing is unheard of in a case like this. “I’ve been a prosecutor for a long time; I’ve worked in accountability my entire career; I don’t see sentences like that; I just don’t,” said Henderson. 

This type of special treatment is nothing new for the former president, who has routinely been treated by the justice system as if he was above the law — most notably in the Supreme Court decision in July granting him immunity from prosecution for “official acts.” 

Throughout the trial, Mathews noted, Trump was granted liberties that are never given to her clients, including having his attorneys present at his probation interview. “We’re never allowed to accompany our clients, and in fact, are specifically prohibited from being there during a probation interview, which is an incredibly important moment in the case for a client who is going to be sentenced,” said Mathews. 

The public defender said she doesn’t take issue with the fact that he was allowed his attorney. “The point is, everybody should have an attorney present during a probation interview, and that should be the norm,” she said. 

Inequity is a central feature of the criminal justice system in which Mathews works. Clients with deep pockets have a clear advantage. Some judges, she said, treat defendants with paid counsel differently than those who have to rely on free services like the Bronx Defenders.

“If you are somebody who is able to retain counsel, and you have either an unlimited or significant sort of money source upon which to fund your defense, there are any number of resources that even the most well-funded public defender office does not have,” she said. 

It’s not just the wealthy who have a leg up; race is another layer of inequity in the system, said Vincent M. Southerland, NYU Law School professor and faculty director of NYU’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law. 

“We have — and this is part of a long history of America — this kind of presumption of criminality and dangerousness that attaches to brown skin and one’s race,” said Southerland. 

These assumptions lead to a host of differential outcomes for people of color in the justice system, said Southerland, a former federal public defender. Black and Latino defendants, in particular, face longer sentences, higher conviction rates, and are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of a serious crime. 

“That kind of presumption of dangerousness and criminality will seep into the sorts of judgments that folks who are making decisions about whether or not someone should be held in custody, what sentence they should be, what sentences that might be appropriate for them, what charges should be labeled against them,” he said. 

Mathews said she doesn’t take issue with the fact that Trump was granted the unconditional discharge. She just wishes that some of that same leniency could be shown in other cases. “Why is it that in so many similar situations, and even arguably less serious at least in terms of the charges,” she said, “we see much harsher sentencing?” 

The post A Tale of Two Justice Systems: Only Trump Gets Convicted of 34 Felonies and Receives No Punishment appeared first on The Intercept.

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The conventional wisdom holds that the Super Bowl is the most lucrative sporting event in the world, generating as much as $1 billion in revenue. Aside from the game itself, the halftime show performance, which features major music icons, has long been a main draw for viewers. This year’s show — sponsored by Apple Music, produced by Roc Nation and Diversified Production Services, and featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar — will be no exception.

Advertisers will reportedly spend $7 million on average for a 30-second spot in Super Bowl LIX, reaping a huge windfall for Fox. With millions more viewers tuning in for halftime than the game itself in recent years, that cost can be expected to be higher for advertisers who want the slots during the break. 

Not everyone, however, is cleaning up on the halftime entertainment.

The workers tasked with setting up and breaking down the large, elaborate stages and displays on the field for the roughly 15-minute performance hardly get to cash in. For this year’s halftime show, field crew workers are set to make as little as $12 per hour during rehearsals and during Super Bowl LIX itself, according to an online job listing. The job stretches across eight days and includes about 48 hours of work. 

The role requires workers to be able to “push, pull, bend and lift” heavy objects, up to 50 pounds in weight, according to the listing. Workers will be “moving and assembling the large rolling stage carts and other scenic elements on and off the field” for the show, which typically costs $10-15 million to produce. The crews are not given a ticket to watch the game.

Cities often compete with each other to host the Super Bowl, chasing the NFL’s promise that the annual event will inject millions in revenue into the local economy. But the benefits often fall short of projections.

“The reality is we see these jobs, whether it’s working the halftime show, whether it’s working in a concession stand, or even the restaurant work that is getting extra hours because the Super Bowl is coming — these aren’t high-paying jobs,” said Michael Edwards, a professor at North Carolina State University who researches the ethics and social responsibility of sports and sporting events. “These are all service industry event-type gig jobs that are going to be low-paying with no benefits at all.”

Roc Nation, Diversified Production Services, and the NFL did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment. The listed email address on the Super Bowl Productions website, which posted the gig, also did not immediately respond to request for comment.

While there may be short-term gains for some workers and businesses, research shows that the overall revenue share for local taxpayers is about a quarter of what is promised. That income is a fraction compared to what the NFL makes from ticket and merchandise sales and broadcasting deals, 100 percent of which the league pockets.

“Most of the economic impact of the Super Bowl is realized by corporations and leaks out of the local economy.”

The $12-per-hour wages are compliant with labor laws in Louisiana, which lacks a state minimum wage and follows the federal minimum wage of $7.25. Even so, estimates show that fast-food workers on average make more at $18 an hour, with the lower end of the average range at about $13 an hour. Food workers and labor advocates have been pushing for nearly a decade to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, with many low-wage workers unable to pay for health care, utilities, and bills.

“There is always this vague, but highlighted, statement about X number of jobs created by hosting the Super Bowl,” Edwards said. “Most of the economic impact of the Super Bowl is realized by corporations and leaks out of the local economy. What actually ends up in the pockets of local residents is typically much less.”

History of Labor Issues

The Super Bowl, and the halftime show in particular, has been notorious for labor exploitation, from low pay to allegations of wage theft and unpaid work. The NFL regularly leans on unpaid, volunteer work during the Super Bowl.

Ahead of this year’s game, the league is actively recruiting unpaid volunteer “ambassadors.” The unpaid workers are expected to assist visitors at airports, hotels, and NFL-sanctioned events, working three four-hour shifts leading up to the game. 

In 2016, for the Super Bowl 50 halftime show in the San Francisco Bay Area, production managers recruited volunteers for the field crew work with no pay. The arrangement was a potential violation of California’s labor laws, which limit the use of volunteer work for commercial events. However, after a local news report by a Bay Area ABC affiliate station aired, the NFL said it would pay its crew of around 500 field workers. 

Several years later in 2021, however, at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida, production teams hired by the NFL were recruiting unpaid volunteers to perform as a part of the halftime show, according to old listings for the event.

“The Super Bowl or the NFL isn’t any different than any other corporation.”

The halftime show for the Super Bowl in 2022, held in the Los Angeles area, also drew controversy for offering unpaid roles for dancers, recruiting them for 72 hours of unpaid rehearsal time, as well as the performance. The NFL eventually agreed to pay dancers $15 per hour, which still disappointed dance and labor advocates. 

Pay for the 500 field crew workers for the performance, sponsored by Pepsi, was also $15 per hour, which at the time was minimum wage for California. 

Concession workers at last year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas made as little as $14.25 per hour — slightly more than Nevada’s minimum wage, but less than the $18 beers they were serving. And after the 2019 Super Bowl in Atlanta, 200 workers, hired by a firm authorized by the NFL, worked 72 hours, including 14-hour days, but did not receive pay. 

“The Super Bowl or the NFL isn’t any different than any other corporation in the U.S. or the world: There’s always an equity issue,” Edwards said. “There’s always an argument that could be made that the owners should share more profits with labor.” 

He pointed out that players have been able to bargain for higher paying contracts through its powerful union, the NFL Players Association, but that hasn’t trickled down to the front-line workers in the NFL. 

He said, “The front-line staff are always going to be paid as low as, in some cases, management can get away with.”

“Built to Host” New Orleans?

As it vied to host the Super Bowl, New Orleans marketed itself as the “Built to Host” city, with robust tourism infrastructure already in place. That capacity has brought the big game to the Crescent City 10 times in the past. 

Hosting the Super Bowl this year has not been without controversy. The city is already facing blowback for its enforcement of the NFL’s “clean zones,” which restrict portions of downtown New Orleans near the Superdome from unauthorized advertising and commercial activities. Such policies shut out street vendors from cashing in on the event — in a city with a rich tradition of selling everything from drinks to tunes right on the sidewalk. 

Violating the policy can carry a fine of up to $500. Similar regulations have spawned lawsuits from small businesses and an environmental activist who was arrested for tabling in one of the “clean zones.” 

Policing and surveillance of street vendors is common in Super Bowl events, including in 2022 near Los Angeles, when the NFL called on the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to crack down on unlicensed vendors, who are often immigrants and sometimes undocumented.

Such heavy-handed enforcement should spur more careful debate within communities who are considering the chance to host the Super Bowl, said Edwards.

“Certainly there’s a certain prestige, there may be a certain kind of exposure of hosting a Super Bowl, and what it means to some communities, as well as any mega-sporting event,” he said. “But the reality is, there’s a lot of costs, there’s a lot of negative impacts whether it’s environmental, whether it’s human rights impacts, whether it’s social impacts. And I think, from a public’s perspective, understanding all those costs and understanding all the ways in which there could be negative impacts don’t get enough coverage in the conversation.” 

He also listed other human rights and labor issues surrounding other global sporting events, such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup. Major stadium construction projects have fueled displacement and gentrification of communities, as well as worker exploitation and slave labor in the case of Qatar leading up to the 2022 World Cup. 

“When communities are thinking about: Do we want to host? Do we want to publicly finance a stadium to get a Super Bowl? Do we want to invest in this infrastructure cost for hosting the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup?” Edwards said. “If we’re not going to generate the types of economic impacts they’re claiming, what are the benefits? How do we ensure those benefits are equitably distributed among the population?”

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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law on Thursday changes to the state’s public records statute that allow law enforcement agencies to charge hundreds of dollars for body camera footage. Though such videos are central to watchdog reporting and police oversight, Ohio opted to join a handful of states that have made it easier for cops to put a steep price tag on transparency.

“Public bodies should be in the business of making it easier — not harder — for the public and the press to access important government records like body worn camera footage,” said Gunita Singh, an attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “There’s no need to impose vast sums of money onto requesters doing their part to foster transparency and accountability.”

Over the past decade, more law enforcement agencies have deployed body cameras — and the footage they provide has become central to covering cops and stemming police brutality. At the same time, law enforcement agencies and police unions have begun complaining about the time and expense of turning these videos over to the public when requested. Some states have responded by authorizing fees for processing footage: In 2023, Arizona passed a law allowing charges up to $46 “per video-hour reviewed.” In 2016, Indiana authorized fees as high as $150 per video.

“Crucial records will now be sequestered behind a paywall few can afford.”

Ohio’s enacted law, House Bill 315, which was quietly introduced in the state legislature in late December, creates a new provision for requesting law enforcement videos. State and local law enforcement agencies can now charge steep fees for reviewing and redacting videos — up to $75 per hour of footage produced and a maximum of $750 per video. Police can require that the fees be paid in advance.

Press advocates and civil liberties groups urged DeWine to veto the hastily approved measure. He declined.

In a signing statement, DeWine said House Bill 315 was “a workable compromise to balance the modern realities of preparing these public records and the cost it takes to prepare them.”

Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, was alarmed that the bill was passed and signed with “zero legislative debate.”

“Ohioans deserve government transparency, especially regarding policing. Instead, crucial records will now be sequestered behind a paywall few can afford,” Daniels said. “Advocates, news media, and victims of police actions are right to be concerned how these unnecessary changes will impact their safety and insight into how police operate in and around the state.”

“We are disappointed that this law was enacted last minute, without an opportunity to be heard on our concerns,” said Monica Nieporte, president and executive director of the Ohio News Media Association. “We feel this law has many deficiencies and will lead to unnecessary barriers to records access both for journalists and the public.”

Nieporte said her group was “committed to working with the legislature, Governor DeWine and Attorney General [Dave] Yost to amend this language immediately.”

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On the night executioners killed Joseph Corcoran, a glowing inflatable snowman stood on the front lawn of the Indiana State Prison wearing a top hat and frozen smile. Its left arm was raised in a wave, as if to greet the white vans waiting to take witnesses to the death chamber. Inside the brick building in front of the prison complex, shadowy figures stood at the windows, their movements inscrutable from the outside. As the clock struck midnight on December 18, a few dozen protesters sang “Amazing Grace.”

The 165-year-old penitentiary is located in the northern reaches of the state, just half a mile from Lake Michigan. In heavy coats and winter hats, the demonstrators had gathered across the street, braving the cold to stand in protest of Indiana’s first execution in 15 years. They were joined by a handful of reporters, who paced around the parking lot where yellow caution tape cordoned off a “staging area” for press. Under state law and the policies of the Indiana Department of Correction, this was as close as any journalist would be able to get to the execution.

No one knew when exactly the killing would happen, only that it would be carried out “before sunrise.” 

The rule is a relic of the late 1800s, when states carried out executions hidden from public view.

“No media briefings or interviews will be conducted,” said informational materials emailed in advance. Nor would there be bathrooms available. “Please plan accordingly.”

In most death penalty states, executions are scheduled to take place in the evening, with at least a few members of the press serving as witnesses. But Indiana planned to kill Corcoran in the dead of night, without a single journalist present. The rule is a relic of the late 1800s, when numerous states carried out executions hidden from public view. Aside from Indiana, only Wyoming, which has not killed anyone since 1992, still has a law barring media witnesses on the books.

George Hale, a reporter with Indiana Public Media, was interviewed in the parking lot by abolitionist group Death Penalty Action. One of the few journalists who repeatedly witnessed the federal executions under Donald Trump, Hale knows better than most that media witnesses are critical for documenting evidence of botched executions. Indiana planned to kill Corcoran with the same sedative used by the federal government: a single lethal dose of pentobarbital, which has been linked to pulmonary edema, the filling of the lungs with fluid. Experts have described the experience as torture. 

In an op-ed co-authored with a Freedom of the Press Foundation lawyer, Hale wrote that he’d worked with an anesthesiologist to develop a guide for media witnesses — a checklist of signs that an execution was going awry. Instead, the media ban would hide any red flags.

Hale and other reporters tried to raise alarms about the state’s lack of transparency. As in other death penalty states, Indiana had passed a law shrouding its execution drugs in secrecy. Since obtaining the drugs it would use to kill Corcoran, the Department of Correction had “denied virtually every information request related to the execution,” wrote a veteran journalist with the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “Agency staffers won’t say how many vials were bought, what it cost, the expiration date. Nothing.” 

The Department of Correction disclosed only one new piece of information in the hours leading up to the execution, shared in a brief email at 4:45 p.m. Corcoran, it read, “requested Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for his last meal.”

“His last words were: ‘Not really. Let’s get this over with.’”

At 12:21 a.m., a stream of uniformed officers exited the prison grounds and headed to a cluster of police cars in the back of the parking lot. It seemed too soon for the execution to be over, but the crowd knew better than to ask them questions. “Merry Christmas,” one officer said to a police colleague as he left.

More than 30 minutes later, at 12:59, the Department of Correction sent an email to the press. 

“The execution process started shortly after 12:00 a.m. CST on December 18, 2024,” it read. “Corcoran was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m.” 

“His last words were: ‘Not really. Let’s get this over with.’”

Grace or Retribution

The return of executions in the Hoosier state came largely at the behest of Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a MAGA stalwart perhaps best known for targeting a doctor who gave abortion care to a 10-year-old rape survivor. In a joint press release with the governor announcing the decision to seek an execution date for Corcoran earlier this year, Rokita called the death penalty “a means of providing justice for victims of society’s most heinous crimes.” 

Corcoran was 22 years old when he shot and killed his brother, James, and three other men, including his sister’s fiancé. It was 1997, and the family was still reeling from the murder of Corcoran’s parents five years earlier, a crime for which he was tried as a juvenile and acquitted. News reports said that Corcoran had committed the murders after he overheard the men talking about him. He immediately turned himself in.

Although there was no question of his guilt, there was reason to believe that Corcoran was not competent to stand trial. In the years after he was sentenced to die, multiple doctors diagnosed Corcoran with paranoid schizophrenia. Experts testified at a 2003 hearing that he believed prison guards were using an ultrasound machine to force him to speak. It was this delusion that appeared to have led Corcoran to refuse a plea deal before his 1999 trial; court records show that he would only agree to one if he could first have his vocal cords severed “because his involuntary speech allowed others to know his innermost thoughts.” 

Corcoran repeatedly sought to drop his appeals and volunteer for execution. Post-conviction attorneys argued that Corcoran’s severe mental illness made him incompetent to make such a decision, while the attorney general’s office insisted he was fine. In court filings, prosecutors cited a letter in which Corcoran claimed to have “fabricated” his delusions.

After the state announced its plans to kill Corcoran, one surviving relative of his victims spoke out loudly about her opposition to the execution. In a Facebook post in early December, Corcoran’s sister, Kelly Ernst, wrote that his death sentence had done nothing to assuage her grief or bring closure. 

“Instead, it is a lengthy, costly and political process,” she wrote. In the years since the crime, her brother had written to express his remorse and she had forgiven him: “I will not attend his execution, neither as family or as victim, as I believe it would take a piece of me that I will not get back.” 

As the execution drew near, the prosecutor who sent Corcoran to death row also came out against it. As the elected district attorney of Allen County, where the murders took place, Robert Gevers had urged jurors to send Corcoran to death row, calling it the only proper punishment for such “carnage.” But his feelings about the death penalty had evolved since then. “Times have changed, my own thinking has changed,” he told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. 

In a phone call two days before Corcoran’s execution, Gevers said he had come to oppose executions in part due to a conversation with his young son. After the U.S. government killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, his son, then 10 years old, asked him a series of moral questions about the death penalty, unaware that Gevers had once sent someone to die. As he struggled to answer, he began to realize his own stance was untenable.

“If this is what the public has said is a legitimate punishment for certain actions, then the public has the right to know how that’s carried out.”

Gevers later reflected on it in an unpublished essay, which included a scene from Corcoran’s sentencing trial he had never forgotten. The mother of one of the victims had taken the stand. “As she spoke about the loss of her son, the looming years of tragic memories, the future of emptiness in her family, and the awful task of burying a child, she opened the box and set a book on the table in front of her son’s killer,” he wrote. The book was a Bible inscribed with Corcoran’s name. The woman told Corcoran that she forgave him. To Gevers, it was a powerful act of grace. The death penalty was nothing but retribution, he concluded. 

Gevers learned about Corcoran’s execution date from a woman at the attorney general’s office, who called him earlier this year “out of the blue.” The news unsettled him. And he was deeply disturbed to learn the state would not allow media witnesses. 

“I thought, ‘You have to be kidding,’” Gevers told me. “If this is what the public has said is a legitimate punishment for certain actions, then the public has the right to know how that’s carried out.” 

Prosecutors’ Regrets

Among lawyers who once handled death penalty prosecutions, Gevers is not alone in turning against capital punishment. In Indiana, as in many other states, prosecutors are increasingly reluctant to seek the death penalty. And, in part thanks to improved capital defense, it has been a decade since an Indiana jury handed down a new death sentence. 

A month before Corcoran’s execution, I met veteran attorney Thomas Vanes at the Lake County Public Defender’s Office, an aging brick building that once housed a hospital. Located in the northwest corner of the state, just an hour from Chicago, Lake County once led Indiana in new death sentences, placing more than 20 people on death row between 1978 and 1990, the majority of them Black or Latino. Yet almost none had been executed.

Vanes handed me a packet containing facts and figures about the state’s death penalty record as a whole. Prosecutors frequently invoke executions as providing finality and closure for victims’ families. By this measure, Indiana’s track record was abysmal: Of 97 people sentenced to die after the state passed its modern death penalty law in 1977, the vast majority had not withstood legal challenges. Only 20 had resulted in an execution. As of 2019, 60 people had been removed from death row due to reversals by appellate courts, commutations, or deals reached with the state. 

Vanes’s own early career provided a vivid snapshot of this history. As a prosecutor in the Lake County district attorney’s office during the 1970s and 1980s, he sent nine men to the state’s death row. 

“Of the nine, only one ended up being executed here in Indiana,” Vanes told me. “And he was a volunteer.”

 Two others were executed in other states for different crimes. Of the remaining six, one man took his own life. The rest saw their sentences reduced.

To Vanes, such numbers are an indictment of the whole system — especially considering the tremendous amount of taxpayer money devoted to seeking and defending death sentences. “If you were a cold-blooded economic adviser, you would say that’s a poor return on investment,” he said.

It’s not hard to see why so many of Indiana’s old death penalty cases have failed appellate review. The earliest death sentences were the product of a system that had not created a legal infrastructure to provide meaningful representation to defendants on trial for their lives. As a prosecutor, Vanes said, he had a clear advantage over his opposing counsel. 

“The defense was handled by people who were part-time public defenders with their own private practice,” he said. “Meanwhile my workload shrank to afford me the time to do the death penalty cases.” In retrospect, he said, his court victories were nothing to brag about.

“We didn’t know what we were doing, to be honest.”

Vanes was just two years out of law school when he prosecuted his first death penalty case. It was 1978, and the state had just overhauled its entire criminal code. As Vanes recalls, neither he nor his own bosses were especially well-equipped to apply the new death penalty law. “We didn’t know what we were doing, to be honest.” 

Vanes won the case. When it came time for the sentencing phase, even the judge “didn’t quite know what to do, because it was all new,” he said. The defendant, a Black man named James Brewer, became the first person sentenced to die in Indiana’s “modern” death penalty era. 

The early victory was a significant career boost for the 27-year-old. Seeking the death penalty became part of the office culture in ways that sound disturbing in retrospect. Vanes remembered the case of a 16-year-old white boy who killed a bank teller during a robbery in 1988. Since the office had recently won a death sentence against a 16-year-old Black girl, Vanes said it felt necessary to try again. 

“We pursued it against her,” he thought. “How could we not pursue it against him?” 

The jury voted to spare the teenager’s life; today, the Eighth Amendment forbids the death penalty for juveniles.

Brewer’s death sentence was ultimately overturned after a Lake County judge concluded that his lawyer had provided ineffective assistance of counsel. By then, Vanes had left the prosecutor’s office and become a public defender. 

“There is always a danger that prosecutors treat their former cases like they were their own children: Protect it at all costs,” he said. By the time his old cases fell apart, it didn’t bother him that much. He did regret the impact on victims’ families who were misled by the death penalty’s false promise of closure.

Vanes articulated an uncomfortable fact that had loomed over Corcoran’s case regardless of the legal arguments over his competency. Sometimes the very evidence that was supposed to spare someone from execution instead convinces people they will always pose a danger, even behind prison walls, he said. “Unfortunately for this man, his mental illness scares people.”

A Glimpse Inside

The protesters had mostly disbanded when a trio of prison staff walked toward the parking lot at 1:06 a.m. A man in khakis and a black balaclava clutched a stack of papers, followed by a woman in a fur-lined hood. Behind them, an officer shot a thumbs up at the cops stationed in front of the parking lot. 

The man in the balaclava stuffed the papers in an inconspicuous box attached to a No Parking sign. With a teal marker, someone had written “Media Statement” in clumsy block letters. The papers were one-page press statements — printed versions of the email sent out moments before — never mind that there was virtually no one left to receive them. The officials walked back to the prison in silence. 

Shortly afterward, news broke that a local journalist had managed to attend the execution after all. Reporter Casey Smith from the Indiana Capital Chronicle had gotten on Corcoran’s personal witness list. Her dispatch, published around 3 a.m., filled in key gaps in the state’s narrative.

Official language stated the “execution process” had begun shortly after midnight, raising concerns that the lethal injection had dragged out for more than 40 minutes. But Smith’s article revealed that the execution had gone relatively quickly. 

“Blinds for a one-way window with limited visibility into the execution chamber were raised at 12:34 a.m.,” she wrote. “Corcoran appeared awake with his eyes blinking, but otherwise still and silent, at that time. After a brief movement of his left hand and fingers at about 12:37 a.m., Corcoran did not move again. Blinds to the witness room were closed by the prison warden at 12:40 a.m.”

It was not clear what happened in the four minutes between the closing of the blinds and the estimated time of death. Nor is it known what was said in the execution chamber apart from the words prison officials chose to share. Generally speaking, however, the execution appeared to have gone according to plan.

A spiritual adviser who accompanied Corcoran as he died described the final visit in an interview with Smith. “We had prayer together,” he told her. “We talked and laughed, we reminisced.” He said Corcoran seemed less concerned about himself than his neighbors. 

“He actually was talking more about the other guys on death row, and how it was going to impact them. He wasn’t talking about his own feelings and fears,” the spiritual adviser told Smith. “From my perspective, it was very, very peaceful.”

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