The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) will hon­or jour­nal­ists from The Birmingham News and The Chicago Tribune, and direc­tors from Big Mouth Productions dur­ing its 9th Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards at the National Press Club on Monday, July 25. The awards rec­og­nize those jour­nal­ists who have made an excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

This year’s cer­e­mo­ny will fea­ture the first-ever Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award for Excellence in the Posthumous Exploration of Innocence. The hon­or will go to Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley for their arti­cle about the cap­i­tal con­vic­tion of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was exe­cut­ed in Texas last year. Willingham had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the arson mur­der of his three daugh­ters, but had main­tained his inno­cence since his arrest. An inves­ti­ga­tion of the state’s case against Willingham revealed that his con­vic­tion was based pri­mar­i­ly on arson the­o­ries that have since been repu­di­at­ed by sci­en­tif­ic advances.

The Award for Excellence in Print Journalism will be award­ed to Carla Crowder, a reporter with The Birmingham News. Crowder will receive the hon­or for her achieve­ments in giv­ing voice to both sides of the death penal­ty debate in Alabama. Crowder’s arti­cles have pro­filed the indi­vid­ual life his­to­ries of the exe­cut­ed, the eco­nom­ic and per­son­al strug­gles faced by those who have been exon­er­at­ed from death row, and the sto­ries of those who con­tin­ue to await their exe­cu­tions. In 2004, Crowder wrote about the life of David Hocker, who was exe­cut­ed in Alabama late last year. Hocker was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der after a one-day tri­al, sen­tenced to death after his attor­ney pre­sent­ed no mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence, and was exe­cut­ed with no post-con­vic­tion review. In her series on Hocker, Crowder did what no attor­ney or social work­er had ever done before: tell Kevin Hocker’s life sto­ry.

Directors Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson of the New York-based Big Mouth Productions will receive the Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism for their doc­u­men­tary ​“Deadline.” This film, which was fea­tured last year by Dateline NBC, gave view­ers a first-hand look at the emo­tion­al events sur­round­ing for­mer Illinois Governor George Ryan’s his­toric deci­sion to par­don four men and offer clemen­cy to the remain­ing 167 peo­ple on the state’s death row due to his con­cerns about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of Illinois’s death penal­ty. Though he had been a tough-on-crime death penal­ty sup­port­er for near­ly two decades, Ryan’s opin­ion about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was shak­en when he watched a group of jour­nal­ism stu­dents dis­cov­er evi­dence that exon­er­at­ed a man from death row just before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. In the film, Chevigny and Johnson give view­ers an insider’s look at Ryan’s coura­geous actions and America’s death penal­ty debate.

New York Assemblyman Joseph Lentol will deliv­er the keynote address at the awards lun­cheon. Earlier this year, Lentol, who is Chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Codes, played a piv­otal role in the committee’s his­toric vote not to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in New York. A for­mer death penal­ty pro­po­nent, Lentol’s posi­tion on the issue began to evolve after the state’s statute was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 2004 and the Assembly held a series of pub­lic hear­ings to deter­mine the best course of action regard­ing the future of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in New York.

The Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards are named in hon­or of the late Supreme Court Justice who believed that peo­ple would see the death penal­ty in a new light once they under­stood how it works in prac­tice. ​“The ques­tion with which we must deal,” Justice Marshall wrote, ​“is not whether a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of American cit­i­zens would today, if polled, opine that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is bar­barous­ly cru­el, but whether they would find it to be so in light of all infor­ma­tion present­ly avail­able.”

The dis­tin­guished judges for this year’s Awards were Loren Ghiglione, Dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and Virginia Sloan, Executive Director of The Constitution Project.

Entries for next year’s awards must be pub­lished or pro­duced in 2005 and should be sub­mit­ted to the Death Penalty Information Center by January 31, 2006.

See Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards. 

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