Montana Innocence Project
49 episodes listed below
Justice work, told with moral patience.
Unpacking Injustice uses patient interviews and community conversations to examine how criminal legal systems fail people and what repair can require. Its strongest episodes sit with cases, prison culture, Indigenous women’s incarceration, theater behind bars, and the long work of coming home.
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Unpacking Injustice is a Montana Innocence Project podcast with a steady, grave focus on wrongful conviction and prison reform. It is not built around quick reactions. The show prefers long-form interviews, recorded community discussions, and careful explanations of legal process. Its episodes often start with one case or one guest’s lived experience, then use that ground to examine a larger failure in the criminal legal system. Bernard Pease Jr.’s case brings forensic science, witness uncertainty, parole, and restored freedom into the same frame. Calvin Duncan’s appearance places jailhouse lawyers and access to courts at the center of the conversation. The death penalty episode asks what happens when irreversible punishment meets imperfect science and unfinished knowledge. It is a hard question. The show’s answer is not casual outrage, but a patient insistence that uncertainty, humanity, and due process matter.
Recent episodes also move beyond case litigation into culture and reentry. Brent Buell’s two-part conversation about Sing Sing and Rehabilitation Through the Arts makes theater inside prison feel less like a program and more like a test of public imagination. The discussion is about art, but also about trust, honesty, representation, and whether people returning home are met with real support. A community conversation with Bill Keller circles redemption, correctional officers, prison culture, and journalism behind bars. Christina Lucero’s episode connects Montana’s incarceration of Indigenous women to historical trauma, colonization, family experience, policy, and healing. The show keeps these subjects close to real people. It asks what punishment is supposed to accomplish, who gets believed, what evidence can miss, and what kind of community is possible after harm.
The tone is sober and humane. Guests are given room to speak, and technical language is usually translated into plain terms. It suits listeners who want criminal justice reporting with an advocacy lens, but who also want specificity: names, cases, institutions, filings, books, films, and the practical barriers that shape freedom after prison. Its defining quality is moral patience. The show can describe violence, injustice, and institutional failure without surrendering its interest in repair.
Made for: For listeners interested in wrongful convictions, prison reform, innocence work, reentry, and the human consequences of criminal punishment. It especially suits people who prefer careful interviews over sensational true-crime storytelling.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the blend of Montana-specific innocence work with broader conversations about rehabilitation, Indigenous women’s incarceration, the death penalty, and cultural representation. The show stays close to case details while keeping dignity and change at the center.
Unpacking Injustice is a Montana Innocence Project podcast that tells the real stories behind wrongful and unjust convictions and illuminates the complex issues responsible for making our criminal justice system unjust.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Unpacking Injustice connects contested evidence and legal procedure to the people living with convictions, incarceration and reentry.
Unpacking Injustice follows the pressure points where criminal convictions meet uncertain science, restricted access to courts and the difficult passage home from prison. Interviews and public conversations keep those systems attached to individual experience.
Certainty gets cross-examined here, and your reasonable doubt meets jailhouse lawyers and disputed diagnoses.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded conversation about re-entry, honesty, and why truthful storytelling matters.
Brandi Maddox's conversation with Brent Buell stays centered on re-entry and the often invisible barriers that shape it, while keeping dignity, support, and storytelling tied to real change.
Prison theater becomes a study in empathy, identity, and patient change.
Brent Buell's years teaching theater inside Sing Sing with Rehabilitation Through the Arts, and the later dramatization of that work in the 2023 Oscar-nominated film Sing Sing, give the conversation its center.
A measured case against execution, grounded in Robertson's stay and the cost of getting certainty wrong.
Unpacking Injustice marks World Day Against the Death Penalty with a sober look at the legal, moral, and human cost of execution. MTIP Executive Director Amy Sings in the Timber and Legal Director Brady Minow-Smith bring the focus to wrongful convictions, forensic science, and…
A Wrongful Conviction Day conversation that makes prison lawyering feel urgent and plainly necessary.
At its center, the episode gives a clear account of a Wrongful Conviction Day conversation with Calvin Duncan, MTIP leaders Amy Sings in the Timber and Brady Minow-Smith, and the discussion keeps faith with the event's focus on barriers to freedom, jailhouse lawyers, and…
A careful look at how diagnosis and assumption collide in serious child abuse cases.
Part two continues the conversation with Katherine Judson on shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma, showing how similar symptoms can be missed or read too quickly and how expert and medical assumptions can shape outcomes.
Rutherford County, explained at street level.
Accountability journalism in briefing form.
Survivor stories, told with steady care.
Conspiracy leaves the chat and enters town.
Black America, reported through history’s unfinished business.
Corinna Barrett Lain, author of Secrets of the Killing State, tells the Montana Innocence Project that lethal injection was designed to look humane, not to be humane, citing Oklahoma's 1977 protocol from medical examiner Jay Chapman.
Brandi Maddox of the Montana Innocence Project sits down with Brent Buell, the Theater Director and longtime Rehabilitation Through the Arts facilitator at Sing Sing, to talk about reentry, parole, and how stories change public perception.
Brent Buell talks through the theater work he did inside Sing Sing as the director of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, with the story moving from one impulsive promise to a 145-page script written in four days.
This episode features a book club discussion with journalist Bill Keller about his book 'What's Prison For?', exploring themes of punishment, rehabilitation, and redemption in the context of mass incarceration.
This episode explores the drivers of Montana's mass incarceration of Indigenous women through an interview with Christina Lucero, focusing on historical trauma, colonization impacts, and culturally relevant healing approaches.
This episode examines the case of Bernard Pease Jr., discussing faulty forensics, an upcoming legal filing, and his experiences since being paroled, with insights from legal experts and family members.
This episode discusses the Montana Innocence Project's new three-year strategic plan, focusing on narrative change, legal work, re-entry support, and advocacy in Montana's criminal legal system.
Amy Sings in the Timber and Brady Minow-Smith speak for the Montana Innocence Project.
Unpacking Injustice marks the 12th annual International Wrongful Conviction Day with a recorded conversation hosted by the Montana Innocence Project.
Part two stays with Katherine Judson, Executive Director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
This episode explores the history, controversies, and misconceptions surrounding the diagnosis of Shaken Baby Syndrome with expert Katherine Judson, focusing on its impact on wrongful convictions.
This episode features a discussion with a Missoula municipal court judge and a criminal defense attorney about how the cash bail system harms innocent people and the ongoing reform efforts in Missoula County.
This episode explores Dave Wilkes' wrongful conviction for his son's homicide, highlighting the Montana Innocence Project's investigation and key issues like shaken baby syndrome and ineffective legal counsel.