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Brett Simpson (she/her) is an assistant producer for Reveal. She is pursuing a master's degree at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she focuses on audio, print and investigative reporting. She has received fellowships from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, the National Press Club, the White House Correspondents’ Association and the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center. She is also the graduate researcher at UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program. Most recently, Simpson reported breaking news for the San Francisco Chronicle and covered the coronavirus outbreak in the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times. She received a bachelor's degree in English at Princeton University, where she twice won the Ferris Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Projects in Journalism. Simpson is based in Reveal’s Emeryville, California, office.
There have long been concerns about the quality of investigations into the suspicious deaths of young Black men in the state, especially when police are involved.
Billey Joe Johnson was a Black boy dating a White girl. That made the story behind his death even more complicated.
When a detective with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation finds out what Reveal has uncovered, he begins to wonder whether the case should be reopened.
In December 2008, the autopsy of Billey Joe Johnson Jr. helped the grand jury conclude that his death was an accident. But an independent review of the autopsy came to a different conclusion.
On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system buckles as authorities fail to follow up on inconsistencies in the official story.
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since.
A murder conviction sent Myon Burrell to prison for life when he was a teenager. An investigative reporter dug into what seemed a hopeless case. What she found helped free him.
As the Taliban take over Kabul, an Afghan poet, a journalist fielding desperate phone calls and an American veteran reflect on the past and future of Afghanistan.
Wyoming locks up kids at one of the highest rates in the nation. A mother tells the story of how her daughter’s fight snowballed into incarceration and tragedy.
Dr. Paloma Marin-Nevarez graduated in the middle of the pandemic. We follow the rookie doctor through her first months working on the front lines.
