A Chicago Tribune series exposing endemic dysfunction in the Cook County criminal courts has won the 2023 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism.
“Stalled Justice,” led by Tribune reporters Joe Mahr and Megan Crepeau, investigated why Cook County murder cases take so long to reach a resolution. The defendants in these cases are routinely locked up for years — sometimes up to a decade or more — without a trial. That’s longer than in any other major American city reporters could study.
Defendants and victims’ families both described feeling confused and hopeless as they wait year after year for closure. Reporters found frequent breakdowns at every phase of a criminal case, failures that have become so common that courthouse insiders barely register them as problems. Judges have the power to strike a better balance between fairness and efficiency but rarely exercise it.
The Tribune also found Cook County courts have ignored their own case management standards for years, as well as repeatedly disregarding recommendations for reform. The result is a justice system that has failed in its fundamental duties of fairness and competency.
To reach their findings, Tribune reporters observed hundreds of court hearings, interviewed victims’ families as well as defendants, analyzed millions of lines of raw data, and reviewed five decades’ worth of studies chronicling Cook County court delays.
“The presumption of innocence in our criminal justice system tends to be more myth than reality. But the Chicago Tribune treats the presumption seriously in this exceptional series on the impact of stunning delays in the Cook County courts,” said Taylor judge Ken Armstrong. “The series accounts for all the people hurt by the court system’s failures, be they a relative of a murder victim or a defendant awaiting trial. This could have been a laborious read, full of procedural jargon. It’s anything but. The reporting is deep and thoughtful, the writing clean and clear.”
The Taylor award recognizes work from across the country that exemplifies fairness in news coverage. It is administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
“The Chicago Tribune’s ‘Stalled Justice’ series represents the best in local journalism. The series had a very clear mandate, based on principles of fairness, and the reporters went to great lengths to seek out sources from all sides — from defendants to relatives to prosecutors to judges and administrators,” said another Taylor judge, Wonbo Woo. “They further took steps to ensure those sources were well-informed about their participation and were thoughtful in their approach to covering very sensitive issues.”
The team named as this year’s winner also includes Tribune photojournalist Brian Cassella and editors Jeff Coen and Kaarin Tisue.
The Tribune won 2017’s Taylor award for an investigation that exposed Cook County’s unfair property tax assessment practices, with ProPublica Illinois contributing. In past years, the Taylor award also has recognized the Tribune for reporting on Chicago’s corrupt red-light camera program, for a series on toxic flame-retardant chemicals, for exposing a clout-filled admissions process at the University of Illinois and for coverage of race issues in America.
