Four states. Eighty capital cases. One reporter goes inside the criminal justice system.

Armed only with a reporter’s notebook and a pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution, McClatchy Supreme Court beat-reporter Stephen Henderson takes EXPOSÉ inside the world of death penalty defense. The Supreme Court has ruled that even convicted murderers have a right to a vigorous defense when a jury is deciding whether or not they should be executed. But Henderson finds that poorly funded defense lawyers are failing their clients — even those who have suffered abuse, show clear signs of mental illness or have very low IQs.

>> Watch “Death is Different,” the most recent EXPOSÉ episode produced and written by CIR’s Oriana Zill de Granados.

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Carrie Ching

Carrie Ching is an award-winning, independent multimedia journalist and producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For six years, she led digital storytelling projects at the Center for Investigative Reporting as senior multimedia producer. Her multimedia reports have been featured by NPR.org, The Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, Grist, Time.com, Fast Company, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, KQED, PBS NewsHour, Salon.com, Mother Jones, Public Radio International, Poynter, Columbia Journalism Review and many other publications. Her specialty is crafting digital narratives and exploring ways to use video, audio, photography, animation and interactive graphics to push the boundaries of storytelling on the Web, tablets and mobile. Her work has been honored with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Best of the West, the Online News Association, Scripps Howard, The Gracies, and was part of the entry in a Pulitzer-finalist project. Prior to her time at CIR she was a magazine and book editor, video journalist, newspaper reporter and TV comedy scriptwriter. She was on the 2010 Eddie Adams Workshop faculty as a multimedia producer working with MediaStorm to teach digital storytelling techniques to photojournalists. She completed a master’s degree in journalism at UC Berkeley in 2005.