Monday briefing: What a new Guardian podcast reveals about the US justice system

In today’s newsletter: Off Duty revisits the conviction of Alexander Villa, raising troubling questions about how it was builtGood morning. On the evening of 29 December 2011, Clifton Lewis – an off-duty Chicago police officer working as a security guard at a minimart on the city’s west side – was shot dead during a robbery. The killing prompted a huge manhunt and an intensive investigation by the Chicago police department. Years later, prosecutors said they had their man, and in 2019 Alexander Villa was convicted of Lewis’s murder and sentenced to life in prison.But the case against Lewis has long been contested – and as the Guardian’s new investigative podcast series, Off Duty, explores, there are troubling questions about how that conviction was secured, from confessions that were later recanted to evidence that appears shaky or missing. And it revolves around a justice system that, once it settled on a suspect, seemed unwilling to reconsider.For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Melissa Segura, a senior investigations reporter for Guardian US and the host of Off Duty, about how the case unfolded – and why she believes the story potentially raises serious doubts about many more cases like it. First, the headlines.Iran | The global energy crisis caused by the war in Iran is equivalent to the combined force of the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of the International Energy Agency has warned.UK news | Four ambulances belonging to the Jewish community ambulance service have been set on fire in Golders Green, with police saying they were treating the incident as an “antisemitic hate crime”.Technology | Palantir is to be granted access to a trove of highly sensitive UK financial regulation data, in a deal that has prompted fresh concerns about the US AI company’s deepening reach into the British state, the Guardian can reveal.UK news | An undercover police officer has admitted he was exposed as an infiltrator by his own blunder, which has been described by activists as worthy of Inspector Clouseau, the spycops public inquiry has heard.Business | Several porridge products in the UK have been recalled over a possible mice contamination at their manufacturing site.Of course, Melissa Segura’s reporting for Off Duty may sound thrilling. But in our interview, she makes clear that listeners should come away feeling as if they’ve done more than listen to a riveting plotline – because the podcast is about so much more than that.“There’s a way to listen to this story as a juicy true-crime caper – and sure, it has those elements,” Melissa says. “But I really hope people also hear something deeper in it. We’re living through a moment in the US where institutional norms and safeguards are being tested, and sometimes failing. This story shows what happens when every part of a system fails at once.”Why this case?Melissa had already spent years reporting on wrongful convictions in Chicago, so she regularly heard from families asking her to look at cases. “The family of Alex Villa reached out to me years ago, and at the time I couldn’t take it on,” she says. “But what kept nagging at me was the bigger context.”At the same time, Chicago’s conviction integrity unit – a body meant to review potential miscarriages of justice – was itself facing allegations of misconduct. “That juxtaposition really struck me,” Melissa says. “And what made this case different from other wrongful conviction stories was how Alex’s lawyers were eventually able to uncover potential misconduct at multiple stages of the criminal justice process.”Individual allegations of coerced confessions or flawed evidence are not unusual in such cases, she says. “But here it appeared to be something more systemic.”The Guardian approached the Chicago police department and prosecutors involved in the case for comment but did not receive a response. No officials have been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the case.Why tell this story as a podcast?Melissa says the case immediately struck her as one that needed the intimacy of audio.“My first reaction was that the story felt cinematic,” she says. “It’s full of twists and turns, and audio lets you bring people very close to those moments. It exists in your ears – it creates a relationship with the audience.”There was also a practical reason. The reporting runs to what she describes as “a mini-book’s worth of material”.“To do it justice in print you’d almost need an entire Saturday magazine,” she says. “The podcast format let us capture the nuance and complexity of the case while respecting the audience’s time.”What makes this case resonate more widely?For Melissa, one of the most striking aspects of the case was the role played by digital evidence.“This was the peak BlackBerry era, and one of the key figures in the story left a heavy digital footprint,” she says. “We tend to think of ones and zeros as almost like DNA – objective and undeniable.”But the podcast raises serious questions about how that data was interpreted and used in court.“The lawyers in this case were able to use metadata to challenge aspects of the prosecution’s narrative and highlight potential misconduct,” Melissa says. “That could become a template for future legal challenges.”This podcast series is an example of the investigative journalism made possible by you. Finding a story of potential injustice and explaining why it could be part of a larger systemic issue, truly matters. If you value our dedication to fearless reporting, please consider supporting the Guardian with either a one-off or regular contribution.How long did the investigation take?Melissa first encountered the case before she joined the Guardian.“I’d heard about it earlier and even attended some court hearings in 2023,” she says. “I started at the Guardian in February 2024, and the podcast was commissioned that July. So it’s been a long development.”Her path into investigative reporting has been unconventional – although she tells me she is keen not to draw a distinction between “investigative reporting” and traditional journalism. It is all investigation. Before covering criminal justice, Melissa spent more than a decade as a sports reporter covering Major League Baseball, but with a focus on how young players were being recruited from Latin America and then discarded.“For me the through-line has always been the same,” she says. “Whether I was covering sports or the courts, I was asking questions about power – and about the impact those in power have on people who are often pushed to the margins. Raising up those voices and those stories.”What should listeners take away?If there’s one takeaway from this podcast series, Melissa hopes it’s the sense of jeopardy. Many may feel removed from the story of someone like Villa, embroiled in a murder case, regardless of how he got there.But the new American reality is that many, many more people are finding themselves caught up in the legal system right now, in ways they never expected.She points to an oft-quoted line by the science fiction writer William Gibson: “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”“The reality we see is one with ICE on the streets of Minneapolis, our immigration courts decimated, a supreme court not pushing back and preserving our sacred checks and balances that we are so proud of in the US. That reality has already been lived by the Alex Villas of our nation.”The story, she says, offers a lens on present-day America – seen through one criminal case that began more than a decade ago. You can listen to the first episode of Off Duty, The Crime, here. It is also available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.Anita Chaudhuri investigates the mental health crisis hitting women in midlife – figures suggest almost two-thirds of women over 50 struggle with their mental health. MartinThere are now three UK postcodes with more dogs than babies. People who decide to have dogs but not children are often cast as selfish – so I found Zing Tsjeng’s portrait of them a helpful reframe. It takes a lot of humanity, money and compassion to raise an animal. Poppy Noor, newsletters teamPolly Hudson is amusing questioning why Josh Wardle of Wordle fame has attempted what she calls “That Difficult Second Album” of launching a new game. Martin“The war is a video game, a spectator sport, a social media festival of dunking” is Nesrine Malik’s verdict on how Trump’s AI, memes and a simplistic narrative have flattened the conflict in Iran. PoppyAmong other things I discovered in this Catherine Slessor piece about Henry Moore’s house, Hoglands, is that his statues were so controversial at the time some got vandalised. MartinFootball | Nico O’Reilly’s 60th and 64th minute goals lifted Manchester City to a 2-0 victory over Arsenal in the Carabao Cup final.Athletics | Britain’s Georgia Hunter Bell, Molly Caudery and Keely Hodgkinson won three golds in 29 minutes – in the 1500m, pole vault and 800m respectively – at the 2026 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland on Sunday evening.Football | Sunderland’s Tyne-Wear derby victory at Newcastle was overshadowed by reports that Lutsharel Geertruida had been the subject of racist abuse from home fans. The Premier League will now investigate after the referee, Anthony Taylor, stopped the match in line with the league’s on-field anti-discrimination protocol early in the second half.The Guardian says: “Iran vows to target water sites if US hits power plants”, while the Times has “US and Iran ramp up threats”. The Telegraph says “We’ll send price of oil soaring, vows Iran” and the FT has “Trump raises stakes in war with Iran”. The i says “Fuel price rises ‘inescapable’ as pressure mounts to cap energy giants’ profits”. The Daily Mail reports on the missile attack on Diego Garcia with the headline: “Why did PM keep public in dark for 30 hours after Chagos strike?” The Daily Mirror reports on former Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, with the headline: “Cops told: talk to Andrew’s second accuser”. The Sun says Soham murderer Ian Huntley will be cremated without a funeral service, with the headline “Burn in hell”. The Daily Express reports on begging gangs. The headline is “Migrant gang boss made axe threats to kill”.What the Epstein case teaches us about groomingLucia Osborne-Crowley, journalist and author of The Lasting Harm, explains the grooming tactics of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. “People talk about Jeffrey Epstein as though he’s special or as though he’s mysterious in some way,” Lucia tells Annie Kelly. “That takes away from the truth of it, which is that there are lots of people like him.“This kind of thing happens in neighbourhoods all over the world, in institutions all over the world … it is the same playbook all the time.”Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Tom Gauld’s cartoons, the best Saturday magazine content and an exclusive look behind the scenesA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad“It’s a rollercoaster when you’re dating. Your hopes are very high and they can be dashed very quickly,” Zack Rogow says. At 66, he approached his first date with grief – and euphoria. “I was gaga – ‘Oh, I’m single again. I can meet people!’”One match led to another: 75 first dates in 18 months. Around the time of his 73rd date, he met a woman at a book launch who “asked interesting questions”. They have been together ever since.Rogow has since turned the experience into a poetry collection, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens. “What the title poem is really about is intimacy and release … in whatever way makes sense,” he says. Read more about his search for love here.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayAnd finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.Quick crosswordCryptic crosswordWordiply