Jessica Lesnop

Hi, I'm Jessica Lesnop, and I'm a reporter at ProPublica and the host of a new podcast called Paper Trail.

On this new show, we're going to show you that investigative journalism is powerful.

And here's how I know that.

Many years ago, I was working as a reporter at a tiny newspaper in Missouri, and I got this crazy tip about a man in prison.

He'd been convicted of armed robbery when he was in his 20s and sentenced.

But then the government made a huge mistake.

They never actually sent him to prison.

They just forgot about him.

By the time they realized their mistake, 13 years had passed and he'd become this pretty upstanding guy.

Wife and kids, he didn't even like to swear.

Even the victim of the robbery told me this guy shouldn't have to go to prison after all this time.

But instead of dropping it, they arrested him in front of his family and locked him up.

I was already a pretty cynical person at the time, and this story was not helping.

But I published the story anyway, and the case wound up getting a bunch of attention.

A while later, he gets a new court hearing.

I walk in, his wife is there, she's all dressed up and I'm like, this is going to suck.

This is just going to be some kind of pointless procedural thing where they're just gonna confirm he's completely screwed.

Instead, the judge gets up there and starts talking and he lays out the facts of the case and some of the details I thought had to have come from my story.

And then he concludes that putting the guy in prison now serves no purpose.

And he says to the guy, you can go home, like, right now.