2011 Hillman Prize for Newspaper Journalism
Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy
“Justice in the Balance” USA Today
Brad Heath is an investigative reporter at USA TODAY. His work includes groundbreaking investigations of misconduct by federal prosecutors and industrial air pollution around the nation’s schools. Before joining USA TODAY, he was an enterprise writer for The Detroit News and was the investigative reporter for The Press & Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y. Heath holds a degree in political science from Colgate University, and is currently a student at Georgetown University Law Center.
Kevin McCoy has been a USA TODAY reporter since 2000. He previously worked as a reporter and editor for the New York Daily News and New York Newsday.
Judges have warned for decades that misconduct by prosecutors threatens the Constitution’s promise of a fair trial. In 1997, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which was designed to discourage misconduct by allowing the reimbursement of legal fees to defendants who are the victims of wrongful Federal prosecution.
But in a landmark series, USA Today documented 201 cases in which judges determined that Justice Department prosecutors–-the nation’s most elite and powerful law enforcement officials—violated laws or legal ethics.
Assisted by legal experts and former prosecutors, Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy spent six months reviewing legal databases, department records and tens of thousands of pages of court filings. They found that innocent people are punished, guilty people go free, or face less punishment, and taxpayers foot the bill.
It is the most comprehensive account ever written of the scope of misconduct by federal prosecutors. In January 2011, the Justice Department announced the results of an internal review and the creation of a new unit whose sole mission will be to discipline federal prosecutors who have violated the rights of citizens.
Finalists for the 2011 Hillman Prize for Newspaper Journalism:
- Matthew D. LaPlante, "Comprehensive coverage of veterans issues," Salt Lake Tribune
- Martin Z. Braun, Michael McDonald, Christopher Palmeri, Darrell Preston and
William Selway, "Wall Street vs. Main Street," Bloomberg - S. Heather Duncan, "Our Children's Keepers," The Telegraph
Previous Honorees in Newspaper Journalism
Click on a column heading to sort the list
Year |
Honoree | Title | Publisher/Airer | Site | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry, Alison Fitzgerald & Craig Torres | The Fight for Transparency | Bloomberg News | ||
| 2009 | Nina Bernstein | "Deaths in Immigrant Detention" | The New York Times | Go | |
| 2008 | Charles Duhigg | Golden Opportunities | The New York Times | Go | |
| 2007 | Rukmini Maria Callimachi | Coverage of Hurricane Katrina aftermath | The Associated Press | ||
| 2006 | Cam Simpson | Pipeline to Peril | Chicago Tribune | Go | |
| 2005 | Peter G. Gosselin | The New Deal | Los Angeles Times | ||
| 2004 | Nancy Cleeland, Abigail Goldman, Evelyn Iritani and Tyler Marshall | The Wal-Mart Effect | Los Angeles Times | Go | |
| 2004 | David Barstow and Lowell Bergman | Dangerous Business | New York Times | Go | |
| 2003 | Ellen Schultz & Theo Francis | Valued Employees: Worker Dies, Firm Profits | Wall Street Journal | ||
| 2002 | David Olinger | Seller Beware | The Denver Post | ||
| 2001 | Ellen Schultz | selected articles on pension cuts | Wall Street Journal | ||
| 2000 | Maya Bell | Why Children Kill | The Orlando Sentinel | ||
| 1998 | Jerry Mitchell | The Preacher and the Klansman& other investigative reporting on the KKK | The Clarion-Ledger | ||
| 1997 | Jason DeParle | Learning Poverty Firsthand& other stories of welfare reform | The New York Times | ||
| 1996 | Rita Giordano & Alfred Lubrano | Passyunk Homes: Welfare | The Philadelphia Inquirer | ||
| 1995 | Chris Kelley | for the series Whither the Cities? | The Dallas Morning News | ||
| 1994 | Jim Morris | for the series Worked to Death | Houston Chronicle | ||
| 1993 | Eileen Welsome | for the series The Plutonium Experiment | The Albuquerque Tribune | ||
| 1992 | Nancy Stancill | for the series Slaves to the Sale | Houston Chronicle | ||
| 1991 | Donald L. Barlett & James B. Steele | for the series America: What Went Wrong? | The Philadelphia Inquirer | ||
| 1990 | The Detroit Free Press | for the series Workers at Risk | The Detroit Free Press | ||
| 1989 | William H. and Margaret Wolf Freivogel | series on The Shift on Civil Rights | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | ||
| 1988 | Anchorage Daily News | A People in Peril | Anchorage Daily News | ||
| 1987 | The Journal | The Unfinished Dream | (Lorain Ohio) | ||
| 1986 | Henry Weinstein, Thomas H. Maugh II, and Dan Morain | for the series Drug Testing on the Job | Los Angeles Times |