The Sidney Hillman Foundation has recognized USA Today for “Exemplary Reporting that Fosters Social and Economic Justice,” for a series of stories on misconduct by federal prosecutors.
The series, entitled “Justice in the Balance” and written by Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy, examined 201 criminal cases across the country. In all of these cases, federal judges had found that prosecutors had in some way broken the rules.
In many instances the result was that the guilty went free and the innocent were sent to prison, the newspaper reported.
Attorney General Eric Holder pushed back against the newspaper’s findings, saying in December that the “overwhelming majority” of Justice Department prosecutors handle their cases properly.
The Sidney Hillman Foundation was created in 1950 to award to “journalists, writers and public figures whose work fosters social and economic justice.”
