The National Association of Black Journalists has honored Mississippi Today, The Marshall Project and the Clarion Ledger with an NABJ Salute to Excellence Award for coverage of deaths inside Mississippi prisons.
The year-long project, which involved Mississippi Today’s senior investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell and criminal justice reporter Mina Corpuz and Justice Editor Debbie Skipper, also included the contributions of the Hattiesburg American and Mississippi Link. It chronicled dozens of killings that went unpunished.
Over a decade, at least 42 people were killed in the state’s prisons with just six people convicted in those deaths. Often families contacted by the reporters didn’t know their loved ones’ deaths were ruled a homicide. In one case, a prosecutor forgot to serve an indictment until a reporter on the team called about the homicide.
New evidence Mitchell uncovered offered hope to the mother of a son killed in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman five years ago that she would finally have some answers about what happened.
Faced with these facts, Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain told Mississippi Today that he would reopen investigations of the homicide cases as well as deaths ruled undetermined.
