Canary: The Washington Post Investigates · The Washington Post

Chapter 4: "To serve as a judge"

October 1, 2020·23 min·2 clips

Carol tells a reporter she feels personally responsible for other victims of Judge Morrison because keeping his secret may have hurt women who stood before him in court.

The episode opens with a content warning about explicit language and descriptions of sexual violence. Reporter Amy Britton narrates that after her first trip to Birmingham to meet Carol, something that had been hidden for decades began to surface. Carol has no personal connection to Lauren Clark, but she felt a strong sense of loyalty to Lauren after learning that Lauren's attacker received only ten days in jail from Judge Morrison. Carol believes she may have failed other victims by keeping her own accusation secret, and she wants to keep going. Back in DC, Britton reviews her old files on Lauren's case and realizes she knows very little about Judge Morrison himself or how he handled sexual assault cases. She begins researching Morrison's background and finds a man who emerged over decades as a champion of criminal justice reform, particularly around eliminating cash bail in DC. Morrison has spoken at Justice Department events, appeared on television, and was featured in a clip from John Oliver's HBO show. Britton travels to East Lansing, Michigan, where Morrison is giving a speech at a small church. Morrison, now 76 and wearing cowboy boots, describes the damage of incarceration and spontaneously mentions the fear of sexual assault in jail — a moment Britton notes but is uncertain how to interpret. Carol, who agrees with Morrison's legal philosophy on bail reform, nonetheless feels deeply conflicted about his position of authority over sexual assault survivors. Britton explains that DC's court system does not release sentencing data by judge, making it structurally difficult to scrutinize Morrison's record. To solve this, she works with data reporter Stephen Rich, who writes a program to scrape hundreds of thousands of court records from the DC Superior Court website. The scrape is estimated to take over a thousand hours. While waiting for the data, Britton searches Washington Post archives and finds a 1981 case in which Morrison presided over a school teacher convicted of sexually abusing five male students aged 14 to 17. Morrison referenced the victims' 'character impediments' and suspended the jail sentence, sentencing the teacher to probation instead. Britton notes the median minimum prison term for comparable cases in DC was nine years. Several months into reporting, Britton meets with Lauren Clark in a DC office building to tell her about Carol. Lauren has no prior knowledge of Carol or her accusation. As Britton explains the situation, Lauren reacts with immediate visceral anger — saying she feels her stomach being ripped out. She describes feeling overwhelmed not just by her individual case but by the scale of the problem: dozens or hundreds of women who sat before Morrison in cases involving sexual violence. Lauren stands up and stares out the window as she processes the information. Britton asks Lauren if she would be willing to meet Carol, and Lauren agrees, noting that Carol's situation requires even more courage than her own.

As heard by us

A steady chapter about duty, records, and the uneasy work of making a judge legible.

The chapter stays close to Carol after the first Birmingham trip, when something she has been carrying for a long time finally starts to surface.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want an investigative reckoning built from records, searches, and a secret that has stayed hidden for decades.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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