By: Caryn Tamber

The American Bar Association has announced the winners of its 2010 Silver Gavel Awards, which honor pieces of journalism “that have been exemplary in helping to foster the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system.” I would urge you to read the series that won in the newspaper category.

“Presumed Guilty,” from the Lincoln Journal Star, tells the story of how six people–count ‘em, six–were imprisoned, some for almost two decades, in connection with a rape and murder they didn’t commit. In 2008, DNA evidence excluded two of them from DNA left at the crime scene, and after that the whole case fell apart. Authorities concluded that a seventh person, unrelated to the original six, was solely responsible for the crime. Remarkably, the prosecutor who won the convictions and the police investigator who pieced together the faulty case still insist large parts of it were true.

This is an excellent piece of journalism, and I’d highly recommend it.

Incidentally, the winner in the magazine category is “Trial by Fire” from The New Yorker, another story involving a (purported) wrongful conviction. Unlike in the Nebraska case, though, no officials in the case profiled by The New Yorker have stated that the convicted–and executed–man was innocent.