Reporters and Advocates to Receive New Annual Awards

The Innocence Network today announced the recipients of the organization’s first annual awards for public service and investigative journalism.

Jim Trainum, a Washington, D.C., police detective, will receive the group’s Champion of Justice Award for his work advocating for reforms to prevent wrongful convictions. The Journalism Award will go to Mike Wagner and Geoff Dutton, reporters at the Columbus Dispatch whose 14-part series “A Test of Convictions” uncovered deep flaws in Ohio’s system for post-conviction DNA testing and has led to two exonerations so far.

A special third award will be given posthumously to Pete Shellem, a reporter from the Harrisburg Patriot-News who died in October. Through dogged investigative reporting, Shellem uncovered evidence of innocence leading to exonerations of five people who had served 68 years in prison.

The awards will be presented at the opening of the tenth annual Innocence Network conference on April 16, in Atlanta. For more information on the awards and the conference,

visit the Innocence Network website

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The Innocence Project is a founding member of the Innocence Network, an affiliation of organizations dedicated to providing pro bono legal and investigative services to individuals seeking to prove innocence of crimes for which they have been convicted and working to redress the causes of wrongful convictions.