Legally Obscene publishes long-form accounts of criminal cases, built from primary documents rather than from other people's coverage. This page describes how that work is done and what rules it follows, so you can judge the reporting rather than take it on trust.
Where the facts come from
A Case File starts with documents: police case files obtained under public records law, autopsy and laboratory reports, charging documents, trial transcripts, appellate opinions. Contemporary news reporting is used where it adds something the record does not have — a family member's words at a verdict, a detective's comment at the time — and it is identified as reporting, not as record.
Where a document is public and can be republished without exposing private information, it is attached to the article so you can read it yourself.
Every fact is tied to a document
Each factual statement in a Case File is recorded against the source that supports it, together with a verbatim quotation from that source. Before anything is written, each quotation is checked against the document by exact text matching. If the quoted words are not literally present in the source, the claim is discarded rather than flagged for review.
This is a narrow guarantee and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not cover. It proves a claim was copied from a document rather than composed. It cannot prove the document was right. A police report that records a wrong date produces a claim with a wrong date, correctly quoted.
A claim supported only by forums, comment threads or video descriptions is never treated as established fact. Those sources are useful for finding cases and locating material; they cannot carry an assertion on their own.
What we will not say
The most consequential rule here concerns guilt. An article does not call someone a murderer, a rapist, or an abductor unless a court convicted them of it. Where a person was accused, charged, or suspected and the case ended otherwise — or never ended at all — the article says so in those words and no stronger ones. This is checked mechanically before publication, and language that asserts guilt the record does not support blocks the piece from going out.
Where a document reports what someone said under oath, the article attributes it to them. A medical examiner declining to exclude a possibility is not the same as a finding, and it is not reported as one.
Who we name
Victims, defendants, convicted offenders, public officials acting in their official roles, and adult witnesses whose accounts are part of the record are named.
Two categories are not, and the reasons differ:
- Minors. Anyone under eighteen at the time of the events is described by role rather than by name.
- People never charged. A name printed beside a killing asserts a connection no court has established. Where someone was questioned, suspected, or named in a file but never charged, they are described by their role in the investigation.
Documents attached to an article are reviewed page by page before publication, and pages carrying personal information about people who are not part of the story are withheld. Public records releases are redacted by the releasing agency, and that redaction is not always complete or consistent.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, it should be fixed and the fix should be visible. Corrections are noted on the article itself rather than made silently. If you find an error — particularly one involving a name, a charge, a date, or an outcome — please write, and include the document if you have it.