Pamela Colloff Wins October Sidney for Texas Monthly Story on Man Wrongly Convicted of Murder | Hillman Foundation

Pamela Colloff Wins October Sidney for Texas Monthly Story on Man Wrongly Convicted of Murder

November 15, 2010

NEW YORK: The Sidney Hillman Foundation announced today that Pamela Colloff has won the October Sidney Award for her extraordinary investigation in October’s Texas Monthly into the case of Anthony Graves, a man who was wrongly accused of brutally murdering a family of six, and spent eighteen years behind bars as a result.

Colloff’s story begins:

“Since August 23, 1992, Anthony Graves has been behind bars for the gruesome murder of a family in Somerville. There was no clear motive, no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, and the only witness against him recanted, declaring again and again before his death, in 2000, that Graves didn’t do it. If he didn’t, the truth will come out. Won’t it?”

Incredibly, the truth did come out, almost as soon as Colloff’s story appeared. Exactly one month after publication, District Attorney Bill Parham announced: “There’s not a single thing that says Anthony Graves was involved in this case. There is nothing.” At Parham’s request, State District Judge Reva Towslee-Corbett signed a motion declaring, “We have found no credible evidence which inculpates this defendant.”

In a follow-up story, Colloff described what happened next: “Anthony Graves was in the middle of writing a letter on Wednesday afternoon when a guard at the Burleson County jail appeared outside his cell. Without explanation, the guard unlocked Graves’s cell and ordered the 45-year-old inmate to follow him. ‘I didn’t have any idea what was going on,’ Graves told [Colloff] yesterday. ‘I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t putting handcuffs on me.’ ”

Bewildered, Graves was led to a part of the jail that he had never seen before. There, one of his attorneys, Nicole Cásarez—a journalism professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, who has spent the past eight years investigating his case—was waiting for him. ‘God is good,’ she told Graves. ‘It’s over. It’s finally over.’ ”

Graves had been off of death row but still in jail awaiting a new trial, ever since a three- judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had thrown out his original conviction four and a half years ago, after issuing a sharp rebuke of the original district attorney who had prosecuted the case.

Sidney Award Judge Charles Kaiser said, “Colloff’s superb 14,000 word article is a meticulous reconstruction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice. The fact that it took the district attorney only four weeks to conclude that the reporter had gotten everything right is an extraordinary testament to the talents of a great reporter—and to the enduring power of the press. ”

The award-winning piece was the third longest article ever published by the Texas Monthly.

Colloff has been a staff writer for the magazine since 1997. An article she wrote about school prayer in 2001 was nominated for a National Magazine Award. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker. Her articles have been anthologized in the 2008 and 2007 editions of “Best American Crime Reporting” and the 2006 edition of “Best American Sports Writing.” She has a B.A. in English literature from Brown University and she grew up in New York City. Colloff lives in Austin with her husband, Chad Nichols, and their three-year-old son.

For an interview with Colloff about her story, click here.

The Sidney Award is given once a month to an outstanding piece of socially-conscious journalism by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which also awards the annual Hillman Prizes every spring. For more information please click here.


(photo courtesy: Texas Monthly)

Since 1950, the Sidney Hillman Foundation has honored journalists whose work fosters social and economic justice. Our prizes and awards celebrate the legacy and vision of Sidney Hillman, founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, a predecessor union to Workers United, SEIU.

For more information about the Sidney award and the Hillman Foundation contact Elissa Strauss at elissa.strauss@gmail.com.

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