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News » Washington Politics The Oval: Tracking the Obama Presidency USA TODAY On Politics Supreme Court Census
For this series, USA TODAY used legal databases such as LexisNexis and PACER to review tens of
thousands of pages of judicial opinions, court dockets and other records filed in federal criminal cases
since Jan. 1, 1998.
Reporters identified more than 200 cases in which courts threw out convictions or publicly rebuked
prosecutors for misconduct, then had the list screened by a team of law professors, criminal attorneys and
former prosecutors to ensure that the prosecutors' actions qualified as misconduct.
The final list, available at justice.usatoday.com, includes only those cases agreed to by the experts who
reviewed them. Each case included in USA TODAY's tally was reviewed by at least four independent
experts.
The newspaper excluded dozens of other cases because experts thought the allegations of misconduct
were less serious, or because courts dismissed any missteps as harmless errors.
USA TODAY also reviewed detailed tracking information about more than 675,000 criminal cases filed in
federal district courts since 1998, using the Justice Department's caseload management databases.
Feeding the Machine: Sandbagging on Speed Limits - Feature (Car and Driver)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/methodology-federal-prosecutor-misconduct.htm Page 1 of 2
Prosecutorial misconduct series methodology and panel of experts - USATODAY.com 10/7/10 12:07 AM
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication
consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number,
city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.
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