Nate Blakeslee
By Nate Blakeslee:
New Evidence of Altered Documents in TYC Coverup
The Worst Judges in Texas
In these courtrooms, justice comes to a screeching halt
*A clarification has been appended to this story. It’s not a good time to be a Texas judge. President Bush’s nomination of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals remained caught in the … Read More
The Numbers Game
An Inside Look at a Texas Drug Task Force
(Also see sidebar “Padding the Books” at the end of this story.) One afternoon last summer, a former undercover narc named Barbara Markham drove me through the piney backroads of Chambers and Liberty Counties, 3000 square miles of sparsely populated … Read More
The Color of Justice
An undercover drug bust disproportionately targets African-Americans in Swisher County. Read More
The Gray and the White
The murder of correctional officer Danny Nagle opens the window to a Texas prison culture of intimidation, fear, and corruption.
Daniel Nagle didn’t die alone, because in a state prison nobody is ever alone. But the only witnesses to his murder, the first murder of a Texas prison guard by an inmate since 1982, were inmates. If you ask how … Read More
What Really Happened to the Class of ’99
Along the Texas-Louisiana border, the winding two-lane highways that cut among the Sabine Forest’s beanpole pines seem to rival Manhattan in number of hair salons: jobs are scarce in rural East Texas, and you can’t drive far at all without … Read More
Poison, Politics and Prevarication
Long before Perry was Agriculture Commissioner, he was a friend of the pesticide industry.
YOU couldn’t say Rick Perry has a body in his basement, because the man he buried is alive and talking. His name is Benny Fisher, and he’s now the sheriff of Delta County, a triangle of small East Texas cotton … Read More