Howard Swindle
Clinton Howard Swindle was editor of North Texas' student newspaper, the Campus Chat, in 1968 before being named Outstanding Journalism Graduate. After serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War, he worked for the Fort Worth Press and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which led to a position with the Dallas Times Herald.
In 1979 he joined the Dallas Morning News, where he worked as a reporter, assistant metropolitan editor and assistant managing editor for projects before becoming a writer-at-large. In 1986, the News won its first Pulitzer Prize for a project that Swindle edited. Projects led by Swindle would later win two other Pulitzers for the paper.
Swindle was the author of several books, including Once a Hero; Doin' Dirty; America's Condemned: Death Row Inmates in Their Own Words; Trespasses: Portrait of a Serial Rapist; and Deliberate Indifference: A Study of Racial Injustice and Murder. Universal Pictures' Eye See You, released in 2002, was based on his novel Jitter Joint.
“There are...emotions, traumas, and transitions in every family that faces don't reflect and film doesn't capture. (255)”
“Sex taken violently under threat is an emotional train wreck that derails not only the law but, more importantly, the sanctity of the soul. Rape strips its victim of her power to make determinations about perhaps the single most intrinsic value in her existence: the right to share intimacy. That loss of control and power of self-determination is a scar on the soul, a pox on the spirit. (58)”