for breaking the news that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was held captive by the Taliban for half a decade after abandoning his Afghanistan post, would plead guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. http://bit.ly/2gdB8aa
for strong source work to break the news that two correctional officers had been offered, and then rejected, a plea deal in the investigation of Jeffrey Epsteinâs suicide. The two officers were suspected of having forged duty logs. https://bit.ly/2QzQ3LH
for putting AP ahead with word that the NBA and its players union had reached a tentative deal for a new labor agreement. http://abcn.ws/2hWwfkz
for telling the story of the millions of people worldwide whose lives have been turned upside down from the insidious threat of back-bay flooding. http://apne.ws/2s4t9k0
for looking into Jeffrey Epsteinâs charitable giving since his 2008 plea deal that required him to register as a sex offender, finding that he sought to underwrite all manner of causes for children, including an all-girls school near his Manhattan town house. https://bit.ly/2SkoaWG
for an exclusive story revealing that a county welfare agency had been using illegal custody agreements for years to remove children from parents under duress and sometimes without cause. https://bit.ly/2GgTpyr
for an exclusive sit-down interview with novelist Michael Peterson the day before he entered a plea ending the 15-year murder case against him. http://bit.ly/2mqwLKe http://apne.ws/2m533K9
for coaxing the prosecutor handling the assault charge against Montana's new congressman into telling the AP the politician would plead guilty. http://wapo.st/2sp3Id1
for reporting that eight-term U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, an anti-abortion lawmaker, had decided not to seek re-election after it was revealed he had sent text messages to a mistress encouraging her to get an abortion. http://bit.ly/2y9Do9o
The Minneapolis team of Amy Forliti, Steve Karnowski and Mohamed Ibrahim used diligent beat work and hustle to give AP a major win on the surprise guilty plea from one of three fired Minneapolis police officers facing trial in George Floydâs killing.Forliti, who monitors legal developments around the officers in the Floyd case, spotted an unexpected May 18 hearing scheduled for Thomas Lane, but no other details â unusual for the Floyd case. Karnowski and Ibrahim were quickly hustled to the hearing while Forliti reworked longstanding prep copy for a possible plea â which was exactly what happened.
Although two other outlets also learned of the hearing and were in attendance, AP had an alert out five minutes ahead of the nearest competitor, and an hour or more ahead of some major national news organizations.Read more
for their quick reaction to a vague advisory about a âJohn Doeâ appearing in court on an unspecified charge, putting the AP at an all-formats competitive advantage when Michael Cohen made a surprise guilty plea to lying to Congress.https://bit.ly/2Qm0FhBhttps://bit.ly/2PpG8Ee
Itâs hard to imagine why anyone would plead guilty to a crime they didnât commit. But as Richmond-based reporter Alanna Durkin Richer and Miami legal affairs reporter Curt Anderson found, it happens more often than you might think.
Digging through publicly available data on exonerations, they found alarming statistics: More than 300 of the roughly 1,900 people who have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989 pleaded guilty. So Richer and Anderson set out to explain why anyone would plead guilty to a crime he or she didnât commit ...
for using data and shoe-leather reporting to spotlight a terrible choice faced by many innocent people in a judicial system full of overworked defense lawyers and expedient judges and prosecutors: Plead guilty or risk going to prison for life. Last year, they found, 68 of 157 exonerations were in cases in which the defendant had pleaded guilty after facing that choice. http://apne.ws/2fVEf1O
A mentally disabled Louisiana man walked free last week after 20 years in prison for a killing his attorneys say he didn't commit. But New Orleans reporter Janet McConnaughey questioned why his plea agreement blames him for obstructing justice.
Corey Williams was a 16-year-old who still sucked his thumb, often wet himself and had been hospitalized for extreme lead poisoning when Shreveport, Louisiana, police brought him in for questioning in 1998 about a shooting that killed a pizza deliveryman.
For hours, he said he was innocent. Finally, Williams told police he did it and wanted to go home and lie down.
Two decades later, with doubts swirling around his murder conviction and the case submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court for review, Williams accepted a plea agreement, pleading guilty to manslaughter and obstructing justice.
McConnaughey asked the district attorney's office for documentation outlining the plea deal. There it was: Williams said heâd obstructed justice by removing evidence from the crime scene and by providing âa false inculpatory statement to police." Williamsâ signature was in inch-high printing, with big circles over the iâs.
McConnaugheyâs story received strong use by AP customers. For pursuing the underlying details and shining a light on a deal that set Williams free â but only after putting the blame on himself for a false confession â McConnaughey wins this weekâs Best of the States award.
For more than a month, video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and photographer Dmitri Lovetsky tirelessly documented fierce fighting over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Then, as they were wrapping up their assignment, Armenia signed an agreement ceding the territory to Azerbaijan, triggering protests in Armenia and an exodus of ethnic Armenians from the region now falling into enemy hands. When Chernov and Lovetsky learned that Armenians were burning their own homes as they fled the region, the AP pair repeatedly made risky and arduous trips into the territory, producing powerful, emotionally charged reporting and images, including the moving story of a family abandoning its home.
For displaying exceptional commitment and courage in their coverage of last weekâs dramatic developments — as they have throughout this weekslong story — Chernov and Lovetsky earn APâs Best of the Week award.
Just as a second surge of coronavirus cases peaked in France, Associated Press journalists secured exclusive, hard-won access to an intensive care unit in southern Franceâs largest hospital for 24 hours, capturing the exhaustion, loneliness and dedication medical workers desperately struggling to save lives.
After a full day embedded with the ICU team, AP freelance photographer/video journalist Daniel Cole and global enterprise reporter Lori Hinnant came away with a searing, intimately reported all-formats account of Marseilleâs La Timone hospital, as medical staff tried to keep even one bed open.
For their dogged pursuit of access, tireless reporting and sensitive, compelling and timely storytelling, Cole and Hinnant earn APâs Best of the Week award.
used a network of sources and financial records to break news on sexual harassment accusations and questionable financial practices inside the Lincoln Project, a high-powered anti-Trump organization founded by prominent Republican consultants and known for its slick, sophisticated ads attacking Trump.Relying on deep sourcing, political reporter Peoples learned that one of the Lincoln Projectâs co-founders, Jeff Weaver, faced a far more expansive range of sexual harassment accusations than previously known, with some of the accusations coming from staff inside the Lincoln Project who informed senior leaders the allegations. Yet the leaders did nothing.On a separate track, Washington-based congressional reporter Slodysko dug into financial records that suggested there was a reason the Lincoln Project leadership didnât want to shake things up: They were making a ton of money. By sifting through dozens of documents, Slodysko learned that of the $90 million the group raised, $50 million went to firms controlled by Lincoln Project leaders. The pairâs story had immediate impact. By the end of the day, the Lincoln Project announced it would hire an outside firm to review the allegations and encouraged potential victims of sexual harassment to reach out to the organization. https://bit.ly/2OIYFk9
scooped everyone with news that the Justice Department was moving for dismissal of the case against Michael Flynn, President Donald Trumpâs former national security adviser who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Balsamo, acting on a tip, worked sources and obtained exclusive access to court documents showing the case was being dropped, before they were even filed in court. Tucker, APâs Mueller investigation expert, drafted the story, pulling together details and information from other sources on how this case could have ended in such a spectacular and unusual way.The AP exclusive forced virtually every major news outlet to use the story, including CNN. Even Trump proclaimed he didnât know it was coming â and heâd been railing for weeks about the case, mulling whether to pardon Flynn.https://bit.ly/2ArlBNRhttps://bit.ly/2WRm8Ae
continued their exceptional coverage of the toll that conflict has taken on residents and combatants in Nagorno-Karabakh, as Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over the separatist region. Highlights of their work have included vivid storytelling from inside a hospital overwhelmed by both the war and the pandemic, desperate residents fleeing the fighting and an intimate ritual of young Armenian recruits being baptized before deployment to the battlefield.Reporting from the heart of the region, video journalist Chernov and photographer Lovetsky have worked resourcefully without the assistance of fixers or translators, braving many nights during which the regional capital Stepanakert came under a barrage of Azerbaijani shelling and missile strikes. Their coverage provided the AP, its clients and readers with unique insight into life in Nagorno-Karabakh during the six weeks of the biggest escalation of a decades-old conflict between the two ex-Soviet nations.Since last weekâs coverage, Armenia and Azerbaijan have announced an agreement to halt fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh under a pact signed with Russia that calls for deployment of nearly 2,000 Russian peacekeepers and territorial concessions that triggered protests in Armenia.https://bit.ly/2IlNQlshttps://bit.ly/2GSRdiZ
AP reporters from three different teams broke distinctive, significant stories on the continuing drug overdose crisis in the U.S., which has been overshadowed this year by the coronavirus pandemic:
— A state-level report showing that overdose deaths are on pace to reach an all-time high this year, and that overdoses increased after the virus began spreading in the U.S.— An accountability story on President Donald Trumpâs handling of the opioid crisis, and how the issue has been overlooked in the presidential race.— A major scoop on a settlement between the federal government and Purdue Pharma, complete with details of criminal charges and the $8 billion settlement.
But the depth of coverage didnât end with the major news beats. All three stories put victims at the center of the reporting.
For revealing stories that broke news and provided a powerful reminder of an ongoing epidemic that has contributed to the deaths of more than 470,000 Americans, Mike Stobbe, Adrian Sainz, Farnoush Amiri, Geoff Mulvihill, Meghan Hoyer and Michael Balsamo win this weekâs Best of the States award.
