From a variety of perspectives come the heartbreaking details of hardship and hard time served because of institutional corruption and systemic racism in our criminal justice system. These are the voices fighting for equity.
All titles featured are included in the Audible Plus catalog.
100:1 The Crack Legacy
In this six-episode podcast, veteran journalist Christopher Johnson digs deep into the history of the war on drugs, focusing on the US government’s aggressive campaign against crack cocaine in the 1980s. In interviews with narcotics agents, former dealers, and community members, Johnson explores how the punitive policies were created, enforced, and experienced—and makes a persuasive case that their devastating, race-based impacts are still being felt in criminal justice and policing today.
Murder in the Bayou
This atmospheric deep dive into the southern Louisiana serial killer case known as the Jeff Davis 8 has undeniable parallels to the first season of True Detective. But author Ethan Brown is after something deeper than the troubles of one small town and the spookiness of the bayou. As he explores the connections between eight unsolved murders and the local sex and drug trades, he uncovers a story of deep-rooted corruption that echoes the systemic injustices seen at a national level.
Law and Disorder
Mindhunter authors John Douglas and Mark Olshaker serve up another winning and bingeable collection of high-profile cases, this one dedicated to the challenging fight for justice in a flawed system. Former FBI agent Douglas draws on his years of experience profiling some of the most famous criminals in history to explore cases both old and new—from the Salem witch trials to Amanda Knox to the West Memphis Three—that highlight corruption and injustice from a thrilling procedural perspective.
The Trials of Walter Ogrod
There’s good news for new listeners of The Trials of Walter Ogrod, because in June 2020, this explosive story got a coda: a Philadelphia court dropped all charges against Ogrod—an autistic man sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of a 4-year-old girl—and released him from prison. Ogrod’s heartbreaking story, based largely on a false confession and the testimony of a jailhouse snitch, has resonance for many other wrongful convictions still awaiting justice—a relevance well understood by author Thomas Lowenstein, a former policy director and investigator at Innocence Project New Orleans.
Midnight Son
In this eight-episode documentary podcast, Iñupiaq native and storyteller James Dommek Jr. unravels the true crime mystery of Teddy Kyle Smith, an actor-turned-fugitive whose story intersects with an Alaskan legend: a mythic tribe known as the Iñukuns. Told in the Iñupiaq tradition of oral storytelling, Midnight Son centers the experience of Native Americans in Alaska while questioning the government systems and legal processes that often fail them.
Payback (The Marshall Project)
In 1983, Darrell Cannon was taken from his home by Chicago police officers investigating a murder, interrogated, and then brutally tortured until he gave a false confession. In this first installment of Southside, a collection of five Chicago-based stories of systemic injustice from the Marshall Project, journalist Natalie Y. Moore examines the corruption, cover-up, and inspiring fight for justice in a story whose themes of racist policing and community-led activism has national resonance.
