ProPublica’s Brett Murphy won two awards this week for his “Words of Conviction” investigation. On Tuesday, the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida announced that Murphy is this year’s recipient of the 2023 Brechner Freedom of Information Award, which rewards excellence in reporting that draws on government documents and data, shedding light on official secrecy.
On Thursday, the Denver Press Club and the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information announced that Murphy won the 2023 Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting. The award honors the late Al Nakkula, a 46-year veteran of the Rocky Mountain News, whose tenacity made him a legendary police reporter.
In “Words of Conviction,” Murphy showed how for more than a decade, the 911 call analysis training program and its methods have quietly spread across the country, burrowing into the justice system. Today, hundreds of police officers, prosecutors, coroners and dispatchers nationwide have taken a course that purports to teach them how to divine guilt and innocence from the word choice, cadence and grammar of people reporting emergencies. His monthslong investigation reveals that this is junk science.
Drawing on thousands of emails and other records, Murphy documented more than 100 cases in 26 states where law enforcement employed these methods. His first story is a gripping narrative about Jessica Logan, a young mother convicted of killing her baby after a detective analyzed her 911 call. Immediately following publication, attorneys from the Exoneration Project and the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences offered to represent Logan in her appeal.
The second story profiled the architect of 911 call analysis, Tracy Harpster, and the institutions — most notably, the FBI and prosecutors — that enabled him. Days after it was published, state lawmakers began making inquiries about how 911 call analysis may have penetrated the justice system and what possible legislative steps may be necessary to stem it. A collective of district attorneys has instructed its members to “reject dangerous pseudoscientific ‘evidence’ like this” and open post-conviction reviews.
“Murphy’s work is an exceptional example of dogged persistence and creativity in uncovering miscarriages of justice carried out under the guise of ‘science,’” said Janet Coats, interim director of the Brechner Center and managing director of the Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology.
“I would say part of what stood out for us was that Brett’s work exposed something that was so unique. None of us knew that 911 call analysis was regularly being used by police and prosecutors,” said Chris Osher, senior investigative reporter/editor of The Gazette, a judge of the Al Nakkula awards. “To think that a person could be targeted at times for just calling 911 for help was revelatory. To think that prosecutors and police were relying on key phrasings to determine who they believed was guilty or innocent also defied common sense as well as ongoing research that found doing so was unreliable and prone to error.”
