How America's Courts Fell for a Con Man

Pamela Colloff is a criminal justice journalist whose work focuses on wrongful incarceration and institutional failures in the U.S. criminal justice system. Her reporting career includes roles at Texas Monthly, ProPublica, and New York Times Magazine. Her first book, Catch The Devil, follows her investigations into Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse informant whose false testimony helped prosecutors secure convictions across the American South, including a man still on death row. The book traces Skalnik’s life and the lives of victims, including scammed ex-wives, molested girls, and incarcerated men. It portrays prosecutors as often politically incentivized to obtain convictions regardless of actual guilt.

"Colloff has been a criminal justice journalist for decades. She developed her knack for that brand of reporting as a staffer at Texas Monthly -a job she landed fresh out of college when Austin rent was still $300 a month. In the years since, her work has focused on the wrongly incarcerated and the myriad institutional failings of the US criminal justice system."

"Colloff's first book, Catch The Devil follows her reporting for The New York Times and ProPublica on Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse informant whose false testimony helped prosecutors across the American south secure the convictions of dozens of men, one of whom is still on death row. In exchange for his testimony, detectives and prosecutors awarded Skalnik-whose rap sheet included fraud, grand theft, and an arrest for child sexual abuse-sweetheart deals like sentence reductions, early release, and at one point, an unsanctioned conjugal visit."

"Catch The Devil traces Skalnik's life, as well as those of his victims, who make up a diverse group of scammed ex-wives, molested girls, and incarcerated men. Colloff's pain-staking, comprehensive reporting is a scathing indictment of a country where prosecutors are so often politically incentivized to get a conviction regardless of a defendant's actual guilt."

"In a packed, exquisitely air conditioned room-it was New Orleans in the summer, after all-dozens of media workers sat knee to knee on carpet when the room's few hundred or so chairs filled just to hear Colloff explain her writing process."

Read at The Nation