A N N U A L SILVER GAVEL - American Bar Association begin at the beginning, in 1958, when director...

2 | 2017 Celebrating the 60th

WELCOMEI am very pleased to present the American Bar Association’s 2017—and 60th annual— Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts.

The ABA’s Gavel Awards are extremely selec-tive. Among this year’s many worthy entries, the Standing Committee selected just four Silver Gavels:

• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, published by Crown, in which sociologist Matthew Desmond tells the story of eight Milwaukee families to show that eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty and argues that decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for all Americans.

• Do Not Resist, a documentary, explores the present and future of law enforcement in the United States, from Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown to the “militarization” of police forces to the impact of new technologies.

• Radiolab Presents: “More Perfect,” a 5-episode WNYC public radio podcast miniseries, examines cases and controversies from Marbury v. Madison to Batson v. Kentucky to illuminate how the Supreme Court shapes American democracy.

• Trapped, which aired on Independent Lens on PBS, probes the impact of state TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) statutes on reproductive health clinic workers and relates how they and their lawyers challenged these laws in federal court in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

In addition, two excellent entries received Honorable Mention citations: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Books: Pantheon Books/Heather Ann Thompson); and “Forsaken: Florida’s Broken Mental Health System,” (Newspapers: Sun Sentinel, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida).

Congratulations to all of our deserving awardees for their outstanding efforts to foster the American public’s understanding of the law.

Finally, we also thank the dedicated members of the ABA Standing Committee on Gavel Awards and its Screening Committee for devoting thousands of hours to select this year’s award recipients.

Linda A. KleinPresident, American Bar Association

I am honored to serve as the chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Gavel Awards. We received many worthy entries for the 2017 Gavel Awards competition. Our task this year, therefore, in selecting only 19 finalists and, then, just 6 Gavel Award winners, was partic-ularly challenging.

The Gavel Awards recognize entries in nine discrete categories: books, commentary, documentaries, drama & literature, maga-zines, multimedia, newspapers, radio, and television. On page 18 of this booklet are our program objectives and selection criteria.

This year marks a special commemoration for the Silver Gavels—2017 is the 60th annual presentation of these selective awards by the American Bar Association. They were first presented in 1958 under the visionary leadership of ABA President Charles S. Rhyne.

Beginning on page 14 of this awards presentation program booklet appears a four-page annotated and illustrated timeline that highlights, year by year, just some of the American Bar Association’s many notable awardees throughout the past 60 years.

We begin at the beginning, in 1958, when director Sidney Lumet’s classic jury room drama 12 Angry Men received a Silver Gavel in the award’s first year. Within the first five years, two other acclaimed film dramas were also recognized: Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg and To Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. On the 60-year timeline you will also find such exemplary award winners as Louisiana State Penitentiary prison journalist Wilbert Rideau’s “Conversations with the Dead” (1979); Fred Friendly’s “The Constitution: That Delicate Balance” PBS television series (1984); Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action (1996); StoryCorps founder Dave Isay’s Witness to an Execution radio documentary (2001); The Central Park Five by documentarians Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon (2013); and Making a Murderer, codirected by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos for Netflix (2016). I encourage you to peruse this timeline of impressive Silver Gavel winners from the past six decades.

This awards presentation program booklet also features insightful interviews with the 2017 Gavel Award honorees. In addition, it includes committee commentaries and illustrative excerpts. I urge you to read through it carefully and also visit our website at www.ambar.org/gavelawards for more information on not only 2017’s six winners and 13 other finalists, but 60 years of Silver Gavels.

I would like to offer my congratulations to all of those recognized in 2017 for their dedicated efforts to foster the American public’s understanding of the law.

Stephen C. Edds, ChairABA Standing Committee on Gavel Awards


TABLE of CONTENTS

2017 SILVER GAVEL AWARDSBOOKS Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City 4Crown Publishing Group/Matthew Desmond

DOCUMENTARIESDo Not Resist 6Vanish Films

RADIORadiolab Presents: More Perfect 8WNYC Studios

TELEVISIONTrapped 10Trilogy Films

HONORABLE MENTIONBOOKSBlood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy 12Pantheon Books/Heather Ann Thompson

NEWSPAPERSForsaken: Florida’s Broken Mental Health System 13Sun Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale)

CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF ABA SILVER GAVEL AWARDS 14

Program Objectives and Selection Criteria 18

Judging Committees/Credits

Acknowledgements

Points of view or opinions in this publication do not necessarily represent the official policies or positions of the American Bar Association.

© 2017 American Bar Association

ANNUAL

COMMENTARYBOOKS


Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is pathbreaking ethnography exploring the processes of eviction, legal and otherwise, as “a cause, and not just a condition, of poverty.” Author Matthew Desmond powerfully and empathetically tells the stories of eight poor Milwaukee families as they struggle to maintain their homes. Evicted is unflinching and compassionate, heartbreaking and hopeful. By focusing on rental housing and eviction, the author seeks to change the paradigm about how we think about poverty in America. The book emerged from his immersive experience living among the subjects of his work. That experience, and the unresolved questions it raised, led Desmond to seek answers—some of which he could answer only by conducting extensive new quantitative sociological research, which analyzed Milwaukee renters and eviction court processes. Grounded in solid research and ethnographic methods, what makes Evicted so compelling is the author’s skillful use of narrative. Desmond captures in vivid detail the everyday struggles his subjects, often victims of exploitative private rental markets, face. He persuasively argues that the constant threat, if not the crushing reality, of eviction fundamentally shapes, and inequitably limits, affordable housing opportunities for Americans at the bottom. A masterful and deeply effective work, Evicted dissects the political and social constructs, laws, policies, and structures that produce and exacerbate profound housing inequality and discrimination. Desmond offers several practical solutions to begin addressing America’s housing crisis for our most impoverished citizens, including publicly funded legal services for low-income defendants in housing court. His book is a must-read for those who wish to deepen their under-standing of how eviction results in “poverty and profit in the American city” and its implications for our justice system and our society.

INTERVIEW with Matthew DesmondMatthew Desmond, the author of Evicted, is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American CityMatthew Desmond, AuthorCrown Publishing Group BOOKS

How did you come to write Evicted?I wanted to write a book about poverty that wasn’t just about poor people or poor neighborhoods. I thought poverty was a relationship. I was looking for a process that would allow me to illuminate that. I thought, “Eviction does that. It brings in tenants and landlords and all sorts of folks from across the city.” And I also wanted to understand the link between housing and poverty. I moved into a trailer park on the far south side of Milwaukee. I lived there for about five months and then moved into a room in a rooming house in the inner-city of Milwaukee and lived there for about two months. From those two neighborhoods, I followed families getting evicted. I followed the landlord who’s doing the evicting.

Why do you characterize eviction as a “process”? How is this process a legal one?When I started this work, I had no idea how prevalent eviction was. When you crunch the numbers in Milwaukee, you learn that about one in 14 of those who rent their homes in the inner-city are evicted through the courts every year, which is an astounding number. If you go sit in eviction court in Milwaukee, you just see row after row of people there every single day. It’s about 40 people a day evicted in Milwaukee. In Kansas City, Cleveland, Chicago, I found similar rates. If you get arrested in America, you have the right to an attorney, but you have no such right in civil court. The vast majority of folks in Milwaukee housing courts do not have attorneys. But the vast majority of landlords either have a lot of experience in housing court or do have representation. Under these conditions, a lot of tenants summoned to eviction court don’t show up. The sound of eviction court in Milwaukee is just a name, a pause, and then three stamps signifying a default eviction.

What are the consequences of eviction?Eviction causes loss. People lose not only their homes, but often their stuff, which is piled on the sidewalk or taken by movers. Kids lose their schools. You lose your community. It takes a good amount of

time and money to establish a home, and eviction can delete all that. Eviction comes with a mark that is also a legal process. That mark or that blemish can prevent you from moving into good housing in a safe neighborhood because many landlords turn away folks with an eviction on their name. It can also prevent you from moving into public housing because many of our public housing authorities count evictions as a strike against your application. We’re systematically denying housing help to families that need it the most. We have a study that shows that eviction causes job loss. We have a study that shows that moms who get evicted have higher rates of depression two years later. If you step back and look at the process and you add all that up, I think we have to conclude that eviction is not just a condi-tion of poverty, it’s a cause of it.

What has been the public impact of Evicted?When you write a book, you never know what the impact is going to be. With Evicted, we have been able to see a really tangible impact. We’ve had laws change at the state level and at the city level. New York City just passed the first-ever right to counsel in housing court. I testified in favor of that change based on the evidence that we’ve amassed about the consequences of eviction’s fallout on families and children. I think the book opened up a new avenue with a very simple claim it makes that without stable shelter everything else falls apart. Housing and eviction are central to understanding inequality in America today.

How would you sum up what your book is about?Evicted is about the human cost of the affordable housing crisis. It’s about moms deciding whether to pay the rent or buy food for their kids. It’s about people struggling with addiction, trying to decide if they can pay for methadone or pay the rent. It’s about grandmas deciding if they should spend their disability checks on a utility or their rent. It’s about these incredibly difficult decisions low-income families are facing today because we as a nation tolerate so much housing insecurity and so much poverty in this rich land.

EXCERPT


Chapter 22: If They Give Momma the PunishmentWhen it was time, Vanetta took a seat next to her public defender, a foot-tapping white man in a plain black suit. The courtroom didn’t look like the kind you see on television, those open-air theaters with balconies, large ceiling fans, and people crowded into wooden pews. It was a small space, separated from the audience by a thick wall of glass. Ceiling speakers broadcast court proceedings to onlookers.

The prosecution went first, represented by a fit pink-faced assistant district attorney with thinning hair and trimmed beard. Many things about Vanetta impressed him. She had not been arrested before and had “some employment history.” “She apparently attended school into the eleventh grade. That is better education, as sad as that is, that’s better education than many of the defendants that we see.” He continued, “She has family support. That’s good… Unfortunately, that same level of emotional and family support was available at the time of this offense, and by itself wasn’t sufficient… I don’t doubt that the decision was driven by desper-ation, but the fact that it was desperation does not minimize its impact on the victims.” One of the victims didn’t carry a purse anymore and didn’t feel safe in her neighborhood, the prose-cutor reported. “It is the state’s view that people need to know when you use a gun to take things from other people, you go to prison.”

Vanetta’s public defender spoke next, offering a sprawling but impassioned case for leni-ency. Vanetta was remorseful, he said, and had confessed to the crime. She was younger and “less street smart” than her accomplices. Her friend had held the gun. It was a crime of mean circumstances. “I believe punishment can be accomplished in a community setting,” the public defender concluded. “I don’t believe that you have to send her away.”

It was Vanetta’s turn to speak next. She “took full responsibility” for her actions and apologized to the victims and the Court. “At the time of this situation, me and my kids were going through a difficult time in our lives and on the verge of being evicted and our lights being cut off. I was overwhelmed by the difficulties. But this doesn’t excuse what I have done…. At this time I’m asking for leniency for me, but especially, for my children.”

Then it was time for people to speak on Vanetta’s behalf. The preach-er’s wife said, “I have observed in her a quiet calmness in the midst of trying circumstances.” Shortcake offered four sentences. Vanetta’s twin brother said that they “had just made twenty-one” and that his sister’s children needed to wake up to their mother, not to their aunties and uncles.

Finally, it was the judge’s turn. An older white man, he began to recap what he had just heard. “So this was a general discussion about the nature of this offense, basically, that it was an aberration…a crime of desperation. I look at that. But I’m also mindful of the fact that between then and now nothing has really changed….I’m saying that the overall economic situation hasn’t improved. Has it, Counsel?”

“No,” the public defender answered. He had argued that Vanetta had been looking for work. He hadn’t pointed out that Vanetta rose at five each morning but still had little time to find a job between searching

for a new place to live, attending GED classes, and caring for her chil-dren—or that employers usually did not hire people who had recently confessed to committing a felony.

“No,” the judge repeated. “And, quite honestly, I don’t know that it got any better after that time, maybe a little worse, based upon what’s occurred and the fact that she’s kicked around and moved around.”

What the judge was saying, in essence, was: We all agree that you were poor and scared when you did this violent, hurtful thing, and if you had been allowed to go on working five days a week at Old Country Buffet, refilling soup pots and mopping up frozen yogurt spills, none

of us would be here right now. You might have been able to save enough to move to an apart-ment that was de-leaded and clean in a neigh-borhood without drug dealers and with safe schools. With time, you may have been able to get Bo-Bo the medical treatment he needs for his seizures, and maybe you could have even started taking night classes to become a nurse, like you always wanted. And, who knows, maybe you could have actually become a nurse, a real nurse with a uniform and everything. Then you could really give your kids a childhood that would look nothing like the one Shortcake gave you. If you did that, you would walk around this cold city with your head held high, and maybe you would eventually come to feel that you were worth something and deserving of a man who could support you other than lending you his pistol for a stickup or at least one who didn’t break down your door and beat you in front of your children. Maybe you would meet someone with a steady job and get married in a small church with Kendal standing up front by the groom and Tembi as the poofy-dressed flower girl and Bo-Bo as the grinning, toddling ring bearer, just like you always dreamed it, and from that day on your groom would introduce

you as “my wife.” But that’s not what happened. What happened was that your hours were cut, and your electricity was about to be shut off, and you and your children were about to be thrown out of your home, and you snatched someone’s purse as your friend pointed a gun at her face. And if it was poverty that caused this crime, who’s to say you won’t do it again? Because you were poor then and you are poor now. We all see the underlying cause, we see it every day in this court, but the justice system is no charity, no jobs program, no Housing Authority. If we cannot pull the weed up from the roots, then at least we can cut it low at the stem.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is available from Crown and other booksellers nationwide. Go to www.penguin-randomhouse.com/books/247816/evicted-by-matthew-des-mond/9780553447453/ or visit the author’s website at https://scholar.harvard.edu/mdesmond


COMMENTARYDo Not Resist is a riveting and disturbing documentary account of the lures and risks of militarized policing. It seeks to probe the present—and future—of domestic law enforcement in the post-9/11 era of the war on terrorism, when “war” is waged not just on foreign soil, but at home. The documentary examines the increasing deployment of military equipment—from bayonets to armored vehicles to sophisticated surveillance technologies—for purposes of policing. To tell their story, the filmmakers obtained remarkable access. We observe SWAT teams executing a search warrant in South Carolina, go inside a Senate hearing on the police use of military equipment, witness a Concord, New Hampshire, city council meeting on whether to accept a “MRAP” armored vehicle, and attend a police training seminar led by Dave Grossman, an advocate for applying the objectives and techniques of war to law enforcement. Framing the story are striking street scenes of Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown, which open the documentary and to which the filmmakers periodically return. In such scenes, viewers frequently see and hear ordinary citizens and law enforcement officials in live action, unmediated by voice-over narra-tion. Do Not Resist juxtaposes these disturbing nighttime images of teargassed, shrouded protests in Ferguson and bright daylight scenes of assault vehicles rolling down quiet small town streets. This creates a powerful effect. The documentary touches on fundamental matters of law and order, privacy and public safety, and race and class—especially, as in the case of Ferguson, as they affect marginalized communities. This thought-provoking documentary challenges us to stop and consider the consequences of militarized policing. It serves to remind us that how a society polices itself always reflects what it values and what it fears.

INTERVIEW with Craig AtkinsonCraig Atkinson is the director, cinematographer, and coeditor of Do Not Resist.

DOCUMENTARIES

Do Not Resist Vanish FilmsCraig Atkinson, Director, Cinematograher, and CoeditorLaura Hartrick, Producer and Coeditor

Where did the initial idea for Do Not Resist come from?In April 2013, I watched the police response in the days following the Boston Marathon bombing in awe. I had never associated the vehicles, weapons, and tactics used by officers after the attack with domestic police work. I grew up in the war-on-drugs era of policing. My father was an officer for 29 years in a city bordering Detroit and became a member of SWAT when his city formed a team in 1989. What I was not familiar with, since my father’s retirement from the force in 2002, was the effect the war on terror has had on police work. Making this film was an attempt to understand what had changed.

How does your film focus on “militarization of police” and what does that phrase mean?When we look at the militarization of police, we are really talking about the flow of military equipment and cash grants to domestic law enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security has provided more than $39 billion dollars in grants for law enforcement since 9/11. The Department of Defense has also gifted $5 billion in physical equipment to local law enforcement. The “militarization of police” is not only these tools, but also the mentality of military officers and how they may conduct themselves in a war zone that has also started to trickle down to local police departments. We discovered during production that the 3.0 version of the militarization of police is the incoming surveillance technology that is now being used as part of routine police work.

How and why did you select Do Not Resist as your title? Do Not Resist was a command that we continued to hear while making the film, both from police and community members. There is a moment in the opening scene of the film where protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, are telling each other not to resist moments before they are teargassed by the SWAT team. Later during produc-tion, we would hear police officers use the term while making arrests.

We thought the title would speak to people from both sides of the issue.

How does your documentary foster public understanding of law? What has been its public impact?The film provides the public with the opportunity to experience many facets of law enforcement, which would otherwise be inaccessible. We had a group from the Brooklyn Defenders attend a screening our opening weekend in New York. We spoke with many of the lawyers after the screening, who started to question if the surveillance tech-nology that was portrayed in Do Not Resist is what was used in cases that they were attempting to defend. The film also speaks to police officers who are working hard to change the culture of policing. Many officers have mentioned that Do Not Resist is an example that they point people to when speaking about the need to reform.

What resources were required to develop your documentary? We wanted to remain unbiased and independent in our portrayal of law enforcement, especially as police reform became a national conversation. To do this we utilized grant funding from The Vital Projects Fund, The Frances Lear Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. These foundations allowed us the creative freedom to make an observational style film that allows viewers to come to their own conclusions.

What does winning the Silver Gavel Award from the ABA mean to you?It’s incredibly humbling to receive an award from an organization like the ABA that represents lawyers who are in the trenches every day. It confirms for us that the film is doing the work that we always hoped it would do, which was to reach not only the documentary film community, but also professionals who have the tools to implement much needed reforms within the criminal justice system.

Craig Atkinson Laura Hartrick

EXCERPT


TITLE: Concord, New Hampshire. Population: 42,900. Murders since 2004: 2.

TITLE: City of Concord Meeting Notice

SIGN: More Mayberry, Less Fallujah

TITLE: The police chief of Concord asks city council to accept a $250,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security.

TITLE: The grant will be used to purchase an armored vehicle known as “The Bearcat.”

MARINE CORPS COLONEL (RET.): You don’t need this.

You really don’t.

I was a colonel. I’m a retired colonel in the Marine Corps.

I saw a sign back there that said, “We want more Mayberry and less Fallujah.”

And I spent a year in Fallujah.

The way we do things in the military is called “task organization.”

You take a command and then you attach units to it in order to accomplish the mission.

What’s happening is we’re building a domestic military because it’s unlawful or unconstitutional to use American troops on American soil.

So I don’t know where we’re gonna use this many vehicles and this many troops. Concord is just one little cog in the wheel.

We’re building an army over here and I can’t believe that people aren’t seeing it.

My wife always told my kids …

COUNCILOR: Thank you...

COLONEL: There’s always free cheese in the mousetrap.

FEMALE CONCORD CITIZEN: I understand that the police officers run toward danger, and that is an admirable thing, but we need to put things into perspective.

This is from the federal government’s National Safety Council.

“Your chances of dying from a terrorist attack are 1 in 20 million.”

So we need to put the brakes on the fear and we need to act rationally.

Terrorism works because it makes people irrational and it makes them destroy themselves.

That’s what’s happening.

COUNCILOR: Thank you very much.

MALE CONCORD CITIZEN: If you had told me 20 years ago when I was serving my country and defending it against the Soviet Union, that someday we would have armored personnel carriers used to roam the streets of Concord, New Hampshire, I would have told you, you were a raving lunatic.

Because that sort of thing doesn’t happen here in America, where people are free and we have a government that is a government of, by and for the people.

So the idea that we should have that, just because it’s free money.

It’s not free money, it’s all of our money, and it’s more than just all of our money, it’s debt.

And debt is a form of slavery.

The more this country goes into debt, the heavier the chains on all of us.

FEMALE COUNCILOR: I will say that I intend to vote in favor of accepting the federal money to purchase a Bearcat.

ROLL CALL: Councilor Blanchard.

BLANCHARD: Yes.

ROLL CALL: Councilor Dililacona.

DILILACONA: Yes.

ROLL CALL: Councilor Grady Sexton.

SEXTON: Yes.

ROLL CALL: Councilor Patton.

PATTON: No.

ROLL CALL: Councilor Sheech.

SHEECH: Yes.

COUNCILOR: Motion’s adopted, 11 to 4.

CARD: Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security has given police departments $34 billion in grants to purchase equipment.

TITLE: The Department of Defense has contrib-uted an additional $5 billion in free military equipment to law enforcement.

MRAP [Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected]armored vehicles are available for free under the program.

TITLE: Red River Army Depot, Texas

Each MRAP costs the American taxpayer up to $1.2 million to manufacture.

TITLE: Bob Russell. MRAP Driving Instructor.

BOB RUSSELL: These are coming back from overseas.

Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, trains come in daily.

They’re coming back to be demilitarized, put away or sold as foreign sales.

They’re evaluated and then they issue them to the law enforcement.

They supposedly have been cleared.

You shouldn’t find any human anatomy in there.

They pretty well purge them out.

But unfortunately, it still gets through.

You’ll find it every once in a while.

There’s no way around it. War is war.

The big thing is to teach them how to maneuver the truck to prevent the rollovers.

Unfortunately, we never train the law enforcement, so they’re kind of out there on their own.

The 72-minute documentary Do Not Resist can be streamed by Prime members on Amazon. For film screenings or to purchase the educa-tional edition, with discussion guide, go to http://www.donotresistfilm.com/

BOOKS


COMMENTARY

INTERVIEW with Suzie LechtenbergSuzie Lechtenberg is the executive producer of More Perfect. She and Jad Abumrad, the host and coexecutive producer, work together to choose the stories they cover. They produce, report, edit, and sound-design episodes and manage the show’s team of producers and reporters.

Accessible and charmingly engaging, More Perfect cuts across educational and cultural divides and informs listeners about the United States Supreme Court, how the Court came to be, and why its decisions so deeply affect our lives. Its creators have undoubtedly succeeded in making learning about the workings of the highest court in the land both entertaining and enriching. Throughout its five episodes, a diverse group of story tellers guides captivated listeners through noteworthy Supreme Court cases and related controversies. Featured is one early case—Marbury v. Madison from 1803 —that was a seminal decision, which, while apparently limiting the Court’s authority, managed to catapult it into the powerful institution that it is today. Through the genius of Chief Justice John Marshall, it accomplished this by firmly establishing the Court’s power of judicial review to strike down laws as unconstitutional. In another episode, the series producers explore a seemingly dry 1962 case about legislative “apportionment”—Baker v. Carr—that turned out to be so gut-wrenching to decide—and yet important to American democracy itself—that it tragically led one Supreme Court justice to a nervous breakdown. More Perfect incorporates creative use of music and other sound effects, archival audio from historic Supreme Court opinions, and lively and engaging interactions with plaintiffs, activists, and commentators to imaginatively bring the Supreme Court to life for its listeners. The series never forgets the human stories behind the cases it explores. More Perfect is storytelling at its best—informative, entertaining, and widely relevant.

Radiolab Presents: More PerfectWNYC StudiosJad Abumrad, Executive Producer, Host, Creator Suzie Lechtenberg, Executive Producer Elie Mystal, Legal Editor | Kelsey Padgett, Producer, ReporterSean Rameswaram, Correspondent | Tobin Low, Producer RADIO

Where did the initial idea for More Perfect come from? What led to its development?In 2013, Abumrad asked the Radiolab producers to take a look at the Supreme Court docket. He had a hunch there would be stories for the show to tell. One of the titles of the cases, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, caught a producer’s eye. This case was a legal battle that entangled a biological father, a heart-broken couple, and the tragic history of Native American children taken from their families. Months of reporting ensued, and Radiolab produced the award-win-ning episode, “Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl.” Abumrad and Radiolab subsequently went on to produce and report more legal stories, including the Peabody Award-winning episode, “60 Words,” in 2014. The success of both of these episodes inspired Abumrad to start a new Radiolab spin-off show about the law: More Perfect.

How and why did you select More Perfect as the title for the series?More Perfect is about the Supreme Court. To be honest though, we’ve always sort of thought of that as a Trojan horse: what More Perfect is actually doing is telling stories about our Constitution and our democracy. It’s Civics 101, neatly packaged with a storytelling bow. The preamble to the Constitution, of course, starts off with, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”. Those words “more perfect” enticed us. Not only does it make a great staccato name for a show, but it seems to sum up what we as Americans are trying to do: We are constantly striving to perfect our democracy and improve upon our union and much of this comes to a head at the United States Supreme Court.

How does More Perfect foster public understanding of law? What has its public impact been?We aim to tell stories in a way that anyone and everyone will understand and be interested in. We want legal scholars to listen, but we also want people who know nothing about the Court (and think they don’t care!) to listen, too. A few ways we can measure impact are as follows: More Perfect Season One has been downloaded millions of times. The New York Times said, “This is possibly the most mesmerizing podcast I’ve ever heard.” The show is also being used in classroom curricula, including Georgetown, American University, the University of Michigan, and many other schools.

What resources were required to develop your project?It takes a village to make a radio show (or a podcast), and it kind of took a village to make More Perfect, too. We had a team of approx-imately 14 people who contributed to the making of season one. But there were many other people who supported the show in important ways. More Perfect is funded by New York Public Radio/WNYC Studios, and also in part by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation.

What does winning the Silver Gavel Award from the ABA mean to you (and your organization)?Winning the Silver Gavel Award is such an honor. We are so grateful to the American Bar Association for recognizing the work that we do.

Jad Abumrad Suzie Lechtenberg Elie Mystal


EXCERPT Object Anyway

RAMESWARAM: The Court found in 1986 that the prosecutor’s actions for sure violated the 14th Amendment. They said racial discrimination of any kind in jury selection is not allowed. (Cue Dan Rather.)

DAN RATHER, CBS: The high court ruled today it is illegal... Even on a peremptory challenge, it is illegal for a lawyer to reject a juror on the basis of race.

RAMESWARAM: James Batson’s sentence was immediately vacated. How’d that feel?

JAMES BATSON: It’s indescribable, if you’re in prison and you know your sentence is being taken away, I mean, that’s a great feeling. I still brag every now and then when conversa-tion come up. I could just be hanging out, playing chess, I got a law on the law books. Batson rule. Haha.

RAMESWARAM: And that was the biggest deal of all, this headline. There was this new rule. ... Named after him.

RATHER: Justices put new limits on what is called peremptory chal-lenge …

RAMESWARAM: The Batson rule is this echo of what James did in the court that day. When you see people—minorities—getting booted off of a jury, you can say, “Your honor, I think that’s a Batson viola-tion.” And the other side, be it the defense or the prosecution, has to provide nonracial reasons for why they eliminated that juror. And, for a lot of people, this was a breakthrough.

JEFF ROBINSON: It was a big deal when the case was decided and the initial elation was quickly tempered with a strong dose of reality.

RAMESWARAM: This is Jeff Robinson, he’s the director of the ACLU’s Center for Justice.

ROBINSON: Because what Batson prevents is deliberate racial discrimination.

BRYAN STEVENSON: And almost immediately ... prosecutors started training each other ... on how to get around Batson ...

RAMESWARAM: That’s Bryan Stevenson. He is the director of the Equal Justice Initiative …

ROBINSON: And some of these are on videotape...

RAMESWARAM: And I found one! I mean, it’s on YouTube.

JACK MCMAHON (TRAINING VIDEO): When you’re picking a jury, you gotta stick with these basic rules...

RAMESWARAM: This is one of those videos. This one, it’s a Philadelphia prosecutor named Jack McMahon, lecturing to a room full of young prosecutors on how to pick a jury.

MCMAHON: Ya know, in selecting blacks, you don’t want the real educated ones… In my experience, black women, young black women are very bad, uh there’s an antagonism I guess maybe because they’re downtrodden on two respects. They got two minorities. They’re women and they’re blacks. They’re downtrodden on two areas and they somehow want to take it out on somebody and you don’t want it to be you.

RAMESWARAM: The craziest thing about this video is that it was filmed just a few months after the Batson decision.

MCMAHON: Batson v. Kentucky, I’m sure you’ve all become aware of it. That case...

RAMESWARAM: Jack MacMahon basically tells the prosecutors,

look, we got this new rule. Here’s how you break it. You strike the black person off the jury, but just say it’s for another reason.

ROBINSON: Because that’s what Batson requires is a racially neutral reason.

MCMAHON: My advice would be in that situation is when you do have a black juror, you question them at length and on this little sheet that you have, mark something down you can articulate later on if something happens. Say you strike three blacks, first three people. Write it down right then in there, I’d write it right in my little box there. Ya know, the woman had a kid about the same age as the defendant and I thought

she’d be sympathetic to him or she’s unemployed and I just don’t like unemployed people because I find they’re not too stable.

STEVENSON: Which was almost this training to create a catalogue of reasons that on the face were race-neutral. Just say you’re excluding them because they’re too tall, or they’re too old, ... or they belong to a church, ... or they’re a nurse ...

ROBINSON: As long as a prosecutor doesn’t say I excused that person because they’re black, Batson says it’s completely okay.

STEVENSON: I was actually working on a case … This was 1986. And we were defending someone down in Swainsboro, Georgia. And the Batson decision came down and objections were made when the prosecutor used his peremptory strikes to exclude all of the African Americans. And we said, “Wait a minute, your honor, there’s a new decision—Batson v. Kentucky—which means that the prosecutor can’t do this!” And the court said, “Well, I’ve read Batson, what this means is that the prosecutor has to give race-neutral reasons.” And so the prosecutor says, “I’ve got my race-neutral reasons.” He said, “Well, I struck this woman, because she looks just like the defendant.” The defendant was an African-American male. … I said, “Now wait a minute! What is that?” The judge says, “Well, I see that.”

RAMESWARAM: The judge said, “I see that?!”

STEVENSON: Oh yes, he did. The prosecutor said, “I struck this man because he lives in South Swainsboro and that’s where the defendant lives.” And we of course were saying, “Look, all the black people live in South Swainsboro … that’s not a race-neutral reason.” The judge said, “No, that is a race-neutral reason.” … My favorite was, the pros-ecutor said…

RAMESWARAM: None of those were your favorite?!

STEVENSON: Oh, no! It gets better! It gets better! … The prosecutor said, “I struck this man because he testified that he was a Mason.” And he said, “Your honor, I just don’t want anybody who’s a member of a Masonic lodge on my jury. They have their own codes, their own rituals, their own culture. I don’t want that.” And the juror was put back on the stand. We asked the juror, “Are you a member of a Masonic lodge?” The juror said, “No. I’m not.” He said, “I’m a brick mason!” And the judge said, “I still know what you mean. I’ll let you exclude that person.”

RAMESWARAM: Oh my god!

STEVENSON: Right? And so almost from the very beginning, there was this cynicism, this game playing. I used to tell people, “Batson’s not going to eliminate racial bias in jury selection, but it will make the jury selection process a lot more entertaining. Y’all should come to court and just watch the show.”

Visit wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect/episodes to listen to the 5 episodes in the More Perfect series.

BOOKS


COMMENTARY

INTERVIEW with Dawn PorterDawn Porter is the director of Trapped. Her film Gideon’s Army received the 2014 Silver Gavel Award for Documentaries.

Trapped is a moving and informative account of the effort in some states to regulate abortion clinics in ways that make it nearly impossible for them to do business. The program documents the effects of TRAP laws—Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers—which single out reproductive health clinics for health and safety regulations. The film focuses on the impact of TRAP laws on clinics in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi. Clinic owners, staff, doctors, patients, and lawyers representing them describe their experiences in personal terms and with poignant emotional detail. In one suspenseful scene, viewers follow clinic workers in real time as they track the progress of their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to request a stay to hold off on Texas HB2 taking effect, thereby enabling their clinic to remain open. Texas HB2, a TRAP, required abortion clinics to meet the medical standards of surgical suites and doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privi-leges at local hospitals. The challenge to HB2, followed in Trapped, would come before the Supreme Court in 2016 in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. The Court ruled that the Texas law unconstitutionally burdened the right of women to obtain abortions without providing any valid health or medical justifications. Had the Court upheld the law, many clinics in affected states would have had to close permanently. Trapped gives abortion clinic workers voice to articulate why they do what they do, in spite of the obstacles. It is a story that deeply implicates law, whether the regulatory authority of states in a federalist system or the judicial authority of the federal courts to determine the constitu-tional parameters of reproductive rights.

Trapped Trilogy FilmsDawn Porter, DirectorMarilyn Ness, Producer TELEVISION

What was the impetus for your project?I started working on Trapped almost by accident. I was filming for a project in Jackson, Mississippi, for a different movie. I read in the local newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger, that there was only one abortion clinic in the entire state of Mississippi. I was really shocked by that. I just called up the clinic and said, “Can I come over?” I said, “I’m a documentary filmmaker and I just heard about this and I wonder if you would mind if we came over this afternoon.” When I went there that first day, I met Dr. Parker. Dr. Parker is the lead character in Trapped. He is an abortion provider who at that time was living in Chicago. He would fly on weekends and his vacation and be one of two providers of abortion services in clinics, not only in Mississippi, but also in Alabama. He just started talking to me about the state of providing abortions, particularly in the South. He was such a charismatic and interesting person. When you’re a documentary filmmaker, your curiosity is really where things start. I asked if he would interested in being filmed and he agreed. And then three years later, here we are.

What does the title Trapped mean? “Trapped” as a title has two meanings. One is that the laws that limit women’s right to reproductive access are known as TRAP laws. TRAP is an acronym—Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers. But there’s also this very real situation where women who are seeking abortions in states with these restrictive laws are kind of political pawns. The legislatures keep passing these laws to regulate abortion providers, and the women are trapped. If you have one clinic and you have to wait several weeks, you could literally be trapped in a pregnancy that you don’t want because you don’t have a safe and legal way to terminate it.

How does your film foster public understanding of law?I’m a lawyer and I am attracted to legal stories. While abortion is legal, the greatest threat to reproductive justice is actually a legal

battle that’s happening in states across America. It doesn’t matter if you have a decision in Roe v. Wade being upheld, if there aren’t any actual clinics. It’s what lawyers call “right without a remedy.”

What was Texas HB2 and how is it part of your story?Texas HB2 was the law that allowed the state to regulate abortion clinics, to regulate how wide the hallways are, to provide for very onerous restrictions. That law was challenged by a clinic, Whole Woman’s Health, and went up to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the time we started filming, we had a sense that one of the cases was going up to the Supreme Court, but we didn’t know which one. It turned out that it was Whole Woman’s Health. The decision in that case was one of the most important in reproductive health in the last several decades. The justices were quite clear that the law was essentially a sham law and that its purpose was to close clinics. Its purpose was not to help women’s health and safety. The Supreme Court said it would look beyond the stated reasons. The state of Texas could not just state a reason without providing evidence for it.

What has been the public impact of Trapped?I’ve been absolutely thrilled by the response to Trapped. I’m not looking to change anyone’s mind. I think abortion is one of those issues where you are entitled to your own beliefs. But what I am inter-ested in is the legal and political issues surrounding abortion. You are entitled to your beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that your beliefs trump my legal rights. We saw the themes of Trapped be absorbed into popular culture. “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” did a whole segment on TRAP laws, where we consulted with them, made the film available, made research available. The film is getting out there and people are using it and talking about it, and debating it. That’s exactly what you want to see as a filmmaker.

EXCERPT


MSNBC NEWS REPORTER JOY-ANN REID: Mississippi could soon become ground zero in the fight by some on the far right to eliminate abortion within their states. …

ALABAMA GOVERNOR ROBERT BENTLEY: We need to always remember that it is our duty to protect those innocent lives that are not being protected right now.

MISSISSIPPI GOVERNOR PHIL BRYANT: Today you see the first step in a movement I believe to do what we campaigned on. To say we’re gonna try to end abortion in Mississippi.

CBS EVENING NEWS REPORTER SCOTT PELLEY: Opponents say these laws are designed solely to close abortion facilities. Supporters say they make health care safer.

REVEREND RUSTY THOMAS: Here’s our goal, brothers and sisters. To take this enemy on... and take him out, in Jesus name.

WOMAN ON STREET: The pro-life side has won. We’ve already won.

CARD: TRAPPED

CARD: Alabama

OBSCURED WOMAN HAVING AN ABORTION: I really didn’t realize I was preg-nant for a while ... Because I had two periods initially. Plus, I was on birth control. So, there was just a whole lot of surprises when I found out. So I started goin’ online and tryin’ to find resources to see what I could do because I knew I was in the last semester of school. I hadn’t planned on having another pregnancy. That was the furthest thing from my mind at that point. At 43 to start over. Found out that the clinic in Tuscaloosa was closed temporarily. I called Montgomery, Selma. Selma didn’t have a clinic at that time. Birmingham. Just I mean everywhere imaginable. So that’s why I did actually look at some of the home methods, but they were more geared towards, I guess, early early pregnancy that people can help themselves miscarriage. But then readin’ about ‘em, it was scary. Like herbs that you can take. And I actually ordered some. I was afraid to take ‘em after I read about ‘em. And people are gonna find a way, if they’re truly determined, I mean I was on the Internet lookin’ for any resource, any, option. Just because I talked myself out of tryin’ some of the things that were mentioned doesn’t mean other people aren’t.

ANIMATION: (zoom in on southern U.S. states - Alabama focus, pan to Texas)

TEXAS GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: When there are ... 80,000 lives lost to abortion...

CARD: Governor Rick Perry, December, 2012

GOVERNOR PERRY: … each year, in our state. We know our work is a long way from bein’ over. This session I’m callin’ on the legislature to strengthen our ban on that procedure. My goal and the goal of many of those joining me here today is to make abortion at any stage a thing of the past.

CARD: June 25th, 2013

MALE NEWS REPORTER: Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis, of Fort Worth, is trying to hold out till midnight in a filibuster to block a bill that would set the standards for the strictest abortion laws in the country.

SENATOR WENDY DAVIS: Members ... I’m rising on the floor today ... to humbly give voice to thousands of Texans who have been

ignored. This legislating is being done, and voted on, look around the room, primarily by men.

CROWD: Our right, our right to decide! Our right, our right, our right to decide! Wendy, Wendy, Wendy, Wendy, Wendy, Wendy!

MALE LEGISLATOR: If we can have order in the chamber. So that the members can properly cast a vote. …

CARD: On the last day in session, a 13-hour filibuster by Wendy Davis prevents passage of anti-abortion legislation.

CARD: But Governor Rick Perry calls a special session. Two days later, the Senate passes a nearly identical bill, Texas HB2.

ANIMATION: Texas clinics disappearing, one-by-one.

CARD: Clinic closures due to HB2’s restric-tions. New York. The Center for Reproductive Rights is a law firm that represents clinics across the United States.

NANCY NORTHUP, President and CEO, Center for Reproductive Rights: Over half the states in the United States right now have TRAP laws. TRAP laws are Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. They’re not a general law that might apply to all doctors in the state, or even all OB/GYNs in the state. They just zoom in on doctors who provide abortion services. And they’re designed to make it hard for them to provide those services.

MAN ON STREET: Willie Parker.

Willie. You hypocrite. You pretend to be a Christian. When are you gonna come back to Christ and stop killing babies? Yeah, you know Willie Parker, he ... goes down to Mississippi twice a month to kill his own race? In Jackson. You know about that? He claims to be a

Christian. I think he was a Christian. But Christians don’t go around killing babies.

WILLIE PARKER: There are people who feel like having a faith identity and providing abortion care are mutually exclusive. I had a very ... traditional upbringing when it comes to religion. I grew up in the ...

CAPTION: Willie J. Parker, M.D., Obstetrician/Gynecologist

PARKER: ... black Baptist church. I do think that my commitment to my work and my sense of integrity about it is rooted in uh, my early Christian and religious understandings. When you have a sense of ... duty about what you do, it kind of allows you to ignore the naysayers. Before I was ever born, my maternal grandmother, my mother’s mother, died in childbirth. Becoming pregnant and giving birth less than a year after her last child had been born and so she basically, uh, hemorrhaged to death. So ... always in the back of my mind is the fact that all statistics and all policies represent the realities of people that they affect. I recently made the decision to move home to Birmingham to make sure that there is access to abortion care for women in my home state, home region. The need for access to abortion and reproductive rights is most prominent in the South. So for me that meant rather than traveling down south periodically, to relocate.

The 80-minute Trapped is available on Netflix and Amazon. For more information and resources, go to www.trappeddocumentary.com


Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Heather Ann Thompson, AuthorPenguin Random House/Pantheon Books

COMMENTARY

INTERVIEW with Heather Ann ThompsonHeather Ann Thompson is the author of Blood in the Water.

What led you to write this book? I wrote Blood in the Water—the first comprehensive history of the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy—in the hope of rescuing the untold story of one of the 20th century’s greatest human rights struggles. I also wanted to explain how its brutal end, and the way that police and state officials spun it, connects to the crisis of mass incarcera-tion today.

I am by training an historian of civil rights, and I came to write this book because I knew it to be an extraordinary civil rights protest behind bars that I

felt we should all know much more about than we did. That began a 13-year research odyssey. The state of New York blocked access to this story at every turn, and it eventually became clear to me that this was because it had covered up an extraordinary massacre of prisoners and guards by members of law enforcement at Attica. The state then spent the next 30 years using the court system to impune prisoners for all that had gone wrong during this historic protest at Attica rather than indict the troopers and corrections officers who had killed and tortured the men inside. Had the prisoner lawyers not saved so many of their files, had the prisoners and surviving guards not insisted on telling the stories of the trauma they had suffered, and had I not had a few very lucky research breaks that I describe in the prologue, the true history of Attica might never have come to light.

Why did you title the book Blood in the Water? The title comes from the testimony of one of the prisoners at Attica who had managed, somehow, to survive the trooper retaking. The full quote is in the epigraph of the book, but basically he says that as the shooting and killing is going all around him, as he lay cowering on the muddy ground of Attica’s D Yard, and bullets are flying all around him, all he could see was blood in the water.

How does your book foster public understanding of law and legal institutions?

Oh my goodness, so much of this book is about the importance of justice, the law, and insistence upon equal justice under the law. The book describes one of the most extraordinary legal events in American history in great detail—from all angles. We hear of a historic defense effort in the criminal court system of New York between 1971 and 1976—one that involved young law students and lawyers from across the country. And we learn of an incredible, and many decades long, legal battle through the civil courts of New York to get justice for the Attica prisoners. I think that this is such a powerful David-and-Goliath story—one that I hope will inspire people to fight for justice and use the law to do it.

What resources did you need to write your book?It required the good will and faith of so many people to share their stories and their files with me. It required so many years of my own family’s patience and their utter faith that this work was important and that I could indeed write this book. And it took enormous determination on the part of the survivors to keep insisting that their trauma—scars and wounds for which the state of New York has spent 45 years denying responsibility—mattered. As far as institu-tional resources, what were never afforded me were those of the state of New York. Attica prison is public—we as taxpayers pay for its operation, as well as having had to fund the legal fees from the state’s decades of denial and obfuscation. And yet, the state never made thousands of boxes of records—public files—available to me or the survivors.

What does winning the Gavel Award Honorable Mention cita-tion from the ABA mean to you?It is so amazing, and I am so deeply honored. For decades, prisoner and guard survivors of Attica tried in vain to be heard in courts of law—even by the Supreme Court of the United States. To have their stories—their history—honored by the ABA in this way is truly moving to me. Truly.

Blood in the Water is available from Penguin Random House/Pantheon Books and other booksellers nationwide. For more informa-tion, go to http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/178182/blood-in-the-water-by-heather-ann-thompson/9780375423222/

Drive through low-income black neighborhoods in the Midwest. You’ll likely see houses next to broken train tracks and shut-down factories, places where racist housing policies forced newly arrived black Southerners to live. Then read Heather Ann Thompson’s brilliant, meticulously researched book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. You’ll learn about the mainly black men who were then prisoners in Attica, the mainly white men who were their guards, and the extensive cover up that took place for decades afterward. During the retaking of Attica and for months afterward, when the men were starved and beaten and isolated and shot and killed and forced to crawl through mud and excrement, the message was the same, “Your lives do not matter.” Read Blood in the Water to learn about the hostages and the families and the police and the lawyers and the politicians. The book might leave you with more questions than answers. Riots or uprisings? Punishment or torture? Criminal or poor? Then think about that drive and ask this: Why do we allow poor black boys and girls to live beneath smokestacks and attend underfunded schools in communities without grocery stores and jobs, but with ready access to guns and drugs—and then shake our heads when so many are sent to prison? Yes, Attica ushered in some prison reforms, but it also heralded a new era of mass incarceration. What has changed since Attica, nearly half a century ago? What will change in the next fifty years? Those are the questions Blood in the Water challenges all of us to answer.


Forsaken: Florida’s Broken Mental Health SystemSun Sentinel | Fort Lauderdale, FloridaDana Banker, Managing EditorMegan O’Matz, Sally Kestin, and Stephen Hobbs, ReportersJohn Maines, Database Editor

COMMENTARY

INTERVIEW with Stephen HobbsStephen Hobbs is an investigative reporter and database specialist with the Sun Sentinel. He was a member of the reporting team for “Forsaken.”

Where did the initial idea for your series come from? My colleagues, Amy Shipley and Ann Choi, began looking at our mental health court due to some complaints about the high hurdles placed on mentally ill defendants and how the court actually was not helping many it set out to assist. From there, we began looking at other services in our county and the difficulty mentally ill people and their families face in accessing care and remaining safe from harm.

Why was the title for your project selected?“Forsaken: Florida’s Broken Mental Health System” encapsulates what our series was about—how mentally ill people have been abandoned by the courts, jails, and state leaders who failed to allocate enough funds to provide treatment for so many. Florida spends the least in the nation, per person, on mental health services. We often found that families struggled for years to access consistent care and, instead, found a revolving door of quick hospitalizations, leaving their loved ones no better off. In the most extreme cases, people with mental illness killed family members who were trying in vain for years to get them proper care.

How does the series foster public understanding of law? What was its public impact?We saw programs, like the mental health court, set up with good intentions but, due to bureaucracy or lack of common sense,“trapped” people in an upsetting and disturbing legal system—for minor infractions—that left the sick person unable to comply and pay their dues. As a result of our stories, the State Attorney’s office reviewed many cases and finally dropped ones that had been in the system for years. And the newspaper raised awareness among judges,

jailers, and families of the need to intervene when someone refuses to take medication or eat. Finally, the series showed how lack of access to health care resulted in the brutal killings of some relatives: destroying families and further turning to the justice system to

handle what should have been medical issues. However, Florida’s lawmakers continue to underfund mental health services, preferring, inexplicably, to pay for prisons rather than mental health care.

What resources were required to develop “Forsaken”?The Sun Sentinel spent over a year on the series, involving at various points at least six reporters and several editors. The reporters obtained reams of documents from the courts, jails, and families and dug through government reports for statistics quantifying the problem. We also produced related online videos and graphics.

What does winning the Gavel Award Honorable Mention citation from the ABA mean to you?We are proud of our work and extremely grateful for the recognition. We hope the ABA award will bring greater attention to this important topic.

Go to http://projects.sun-sentinel.com/projects/forsaken/ to read the nine-part “Forsaken” investigative series and view related video and photos.

Stephen Hobbs Megan O’Matz Sally Kestin

The Sun Sentinel’s nine-part investigative series “Forsaken” examines Florida’s broken mental health system. “Forsaken” starts with a basic fact: Florida is dead last of all 50 states in per capita public spending on mental health services. The series examines the nexus between the state’s mental health and criminal justice systems. It is the result of extremely thorough reporting, requiring numerous requests for public records—county, jail, and medical—and related data analysis. Augmenting the investigative reports are photographs and graphs, as well as videos online. Delivering a powerful emotional impact, “Forsaken” provides tragic examples of inadequately trained police responders reacting with deadly force to mentally ill individuals who appear threatening to them. It also recounts tragic stories of the mentally ill who Florida courts determine are not a danger to themselves or others who are then released, only to kill relatives or others. In so doing, the series examines the impact of Florida’s Baker Act, which provides for involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill, exposing its weaknesses and limitations. “Forsaken” sets out solutions for “how to fix Florida’s failing mental health system.” For instance, it argues persuasively for multidisciplinary responses to mentally ill individuals suffering acute episodes, teaming up social workers and other behavioral specialists with police. No one can read “Forsaken” and not come away highly informed about the devastating impact of underinvestment in mental health services in Florida and the tragic failures of the justice system that have been its result.


1958 12 Angry MenDirector Sidney Lumet’s classic jury room drama 12 Angry Men stars Henry Fonda as juror #8 (United Artists).

1959 An Interpretive Report: Supreme Court EditorialsSeries of St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorials by Irving Dilliard includes “Criticism of Supreme Court Will Continue as Long as Self-Government Endures” and “Supreme Court Under Attack for Decisions on Two Fronts: Negro Rights and Communism.”

1960 “Perry Mason”CBS courtroom drama Perry Mason star Raymond Burr accepts the Silver Gavel for Paisano Productions during the ABA Annual Meeting in St. Louis.

1961 “A Real Case of Murder: People v. Peter Manceri”Airing on “CBS Reports,” Edward R. Murrow reporting and Fred Friendly producing. Tells the story of Peter Manceri, accused of stomp-ing 65-year-old Edward Butler to death in Brooklyn at age 15. Charged with first-degree murder as an adult, he became a symbol of juvenile delinquency in New York. Manceri was found not guilty. 1962 Judgment at NurembergDirector Stanley Kramer’s dramatization of the Judges’ Trial at Nurem-berg, starring Maximilian Schell, Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, and Marlene Dietrich.

1963 To Kill a MockingbirdDirector Robert Mulligan’s film version (Universal International Pictures) of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird stars Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. 1964 “Blacklist” “The “Blacklist” episode of the CBS legal drama The Defenders drama-tizes the plight of the blacklisted actor (played by Jack Klugman) and the role of his lawyers (played by E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed). 1965 “Gideon’s Trumpet: The Poor Man & the Law”CBS News television documentary “Gideon’s Trumpet: The Poor Man & the Law” highlights the 1963 Supreme Court decision on the rights of the accused to counsel. Includes interviews with Justice Arthur Gold-berg, defense attorney Abe Fortas, and petitioner Clarence Gideon.1966 “The Revolution in Criminal Justice”Time magazine essay from July 16, 1965, focuses on “The Revolution in Criminal Justice.”1967 “View from the High Bench”In “A View from the High Bench,” WTVN-TV (Columbus, Ohio) interviews Justice Potter Stewart for Law Day. Filmed in his chambers, he discusses the foundations of American jurisprudence. 1968 “Justice for All?”In “Justice for All?,” NBC News shines a spotlight on problems of the nation’s poor growing out of unequal access to legal services.1969 “The Cop and the Court”In “The Cop and the Court,” NBC Radio News reporter Carl Stern examines problems of the police and methods of law enforcement.

1970 The Warren YearsDiscusses the political and legal career and personal philosophy of Earl Warren, the former Chief Justice of the United States. “The Warren Years” is produced by the National Educational Television and Radio Center, the precursor to PBS.1971 “Judging the Law”The Minneapolis Star publishes managing editor Daniel M. Upham’s weekly column, “Judging the Law.”1972 “Jail with No Bail”Future Massachusetts Governor Mi-chael Dukakis moderates the “Jail with No Bail” episode of The Advocates (WGBH and KCET). The program features a panel discussion that exam-ines “crime prevention centers.”

YEARS

ABA SILVER GAVEL AWARDS

Celebrating

Highlighting awardees each year since inception


1973 Guilty by Reason of RaceNBC Reports documentary Guilty by Reason of Race assesses the plight of 110,000 Japanese-Americans held in detention camps throughout World War II. Produced and reported by Robert North-shield.1974 All Things Considered: “Watergate” National Public Radio’s news program All Things Considered, cohost-ed by Susan Stamberg, examines important issues raised by Watergate.1975 “A Scrap of Black Cloth” In “A Scrap of Black Cloth” in The New Yorker, Richard Harris tells of the long ordeal suffered by a New York teacher who wore an arm band to express his position on the Vietnam War.

1976 Fear on TrialCBS Movie of the Week Fear on Trial dramatizes the story of Austin, Texas, radio show host John Henry Faulk (portrayed by William Devane), who brought a lawsuit that helped end the McCarthy Era blacklist.1977 Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys

Produced by Tomorrow Entertainment for NBC, Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys dramatizes the real-life story of injustice about nine young black men in Alabama accused of raping two white women. Stars Arthur Hill as Judge Horton.1978 “New Green Sneakers and Other Lessons of the Street”Produced by WCBS-Radio, “New Green Sneakers and Other Lessons of the Street” examines juvenile crime and the workings of the juvenile system in New York City. 1979 “Conversations with the Dead”The Angolite is the Louisiana State Penitentiary’s prisoner-run maga-zine. Edited by inmate Wilbert Rideau, “Conversations with the Dead” takes a first-hand look at the plight of prisoners who become “forgot-ten” within the criminal justice bureaucracy.

1980 “Feature on Jail Conditions in Mississippi”

Reporters Stephanie Saul and Patrick Larkin examine “Jail Conditions in Mississippi” in The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi). 1981 “Judge: The Law and Frank Johnson”Produced by WNET/Thirteen New York, Bill Moyer’s Journal features a two-hour interview with Frank M. Johnson, Jr., who served on the U.S. District Court in Montgomery, Alabama, for 24 years and revolu-tionized life in the South through his rulings on school desegregation.

1982 Minnesota Rag: The Dramatic Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Case That Gave New Meaning to Freedom of the Press, (University of Minnesota Press, 1981). Author Fred Friendly’s Minnesota Rag tells “The Dramatic Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Case That Gave New Meaning to Freedom of the Press.” The book relates the story of Near v. Minnesota, which shaped our understanding of freedom of the press and set a precedent for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. 1983 “American Justice: The ABC’s of How it Really Works”“American Justice: The ABC’s of How it Really Works,” a U.S. News & World Report cover article, appears as a special 24-page section sum-marizing the American system of administering justice.

1984 The Constitution: That Delicate BalanceFounded by Fred Friendly, the Seminars on Me-dia and Society produced The Constitution: That Delicate Balance airing on PBS, features a mod-erator-led panel of experts—journalists, judges, lawyers, and politicians—exploring thought-pro-voking hypothetical scenarios to probe American constitutional democracy.

1985 “Nowhere to Hide: Privacy in the Year of Orwell”San Francisco Examiner staff writer Scott Winokur examines “Privacy in the Year of Orwell” in “Nowhere to Hide.” 1986 “Separate and Unequal”In “Separate and Unequal,” the Dallas Morning News conducts an extensive investigation of the nation’s subsidized housing system, revealing widespread segregation and discrimination affected 10 million low-income Americans.

1987 Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American PoliticsUniversity of Virginia Politics professor David M. O’Brien examines “the Supreme Court in American Politics” in his book Storm Center (W.W. Norton).

1988 “The Blessings of Liberty” Anchored by ABC News journalists David Brinkley, Ted Koppel, and Peter Jennings, the 3-hour presentation “The Blessings of Liberty” inte-grates narrative, movies, photographs, readings, music and dramatiza-tions to tell the story of the United States Constitution on the occasion of its bicentennial. 1989 “The Death Penalty: A Failure of Execution”The Miami Herald; David Von Drehle, Staff WriterMiami Herald staff writer David Von Drehle examines the rationale for and current use of the death penalty and to assess its value in our complex legal and social environment.


1990 “A Legal Question, A Moral Choice”KMOX Radio’s eight-part series “A Legal Question, A Moral Choice” explains the legal issues involved in the highly volatile issue of abortion and the ramifications of the Webster v. Reproductive Health Services decision. 1991 Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe examines the debate over repro-ductive rights in Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (W.W. Norton).

1992 In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in ActionAuthors Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy examine “The Bill of Rights in Action” in In Our Defense (William Morrow), treating the histori-cal and legal significance of each amendment.

1993 “Law & Order: Intolerance”Executive Producer Dick Wolf ’s “Intolerance” episode of Law & Order examines the complex Fourth Amendment principles of search and seizure within the setting of a racially charged homicide.

1994 Crime and Punishment in American HistoryStanford legal historian Lawrence Friedman examines Crime and Punishment in American History (Basic Books). 1995 “May It Please the Court”With expert narration by University of California, San Diego schol-ar Peter Irons, the five-part public radio series “May It Please the Court” (Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project for Northwest Public Affairs Network) features (then) rarely heard oral arguments from landmark Supreme Court cases: Cooper v. Aaron, Miranda v. Arizona, Roe v. Wade, U.S. v. Nixon, and Bakke.

1996 A Civil ActionA Civil Action (Random House) is author Jonathan Harr’s classic work of novelistic non-fiction about a complex environmental liability lawsuit and its aftermath.

1997 Mississippi, AmericaExamining the historical civil rights events of 1964, Director Judith McCray’s Mississippi, America documentary (Southern Illinois Uni-versity Documentary Productions and WSIU-TV) showcased the ef-forts of citizens and the lawyers who volunteered to help them confront violence, murder, and government repression in Mississippi in order to win the right to vote for African Americans.1998 Oyez. Oyez. Oyez: A Supreme Court WWW ResourceProduced by a Northwestern University team led by political scien-tist Jerry Goldman, Oyez.Oyez.Oyez is a multimedia website on the Supreme Court. First website to receive a Silver Gavel.

1999 “Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea?”Published in The Atlantic Monthly, Charles Mann’s “Who Will Own Your Next Good Idea?” probes the future of copyright law.

2000 “The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois”Written by reporters Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills, The Chicago Tribune’s pathbreaking series examines “The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois.” 2001 “Witness to an Execution”Narrated by Warden Jim Willett, the Sound Portraits Production-pro-duced radio documentary, “Witness to an Execution,” tells the story of the men and women involved with the execution of death-row inmates at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas. By StoryCorps founder Dave Isay and producer Stacy Abramson.

2002 “Juvenile Justice: Four Kids, Four Crimes”PBS Frontline with Oregon Public Broadcasting and ABC News Nightline considers whether teenagers charged with serious or violent crimes should be tried as juveniles or adults in Juvenile Justice: Four Kids, Four Crimes.2003 “Law and Terrorism: Coverage from the Wall Street Journal”Senior Special Writer Jess Bravin’s series of articles in The Wall Street Journal focuses on legal and constitutional issues raised in the war on terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. 2004 Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of HistoryProduced and written by Sherry Jones, the two-hour documentary Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History revisits and reevaluates the events of June 17, 1972, and their aftermath, which ultimately led to a constitutional crisis and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.2005 Chasing FreedomStarring Juliette Lewis and Layla Alizada, Court TV’s original drama Chasing Freedom tells the story of Meena, a young Afghan woman seeking political asylum in the United States. 2006 America’s Constitution: A BiographyYale law professor Akhil Reed Amar tells the story of our nation’s founding charter in America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House).


2007 “Nobody’s Hero”Published in 5280: Denver’s City Magazine; Maximillian Potter’s “Nobody’s Hero” focuses on the travails of citizen soldiers returning to their civilian jobs after military service.

2008 The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme CourtIn The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (Doubleday), author Jeffrey Toobin lifts the veil of mystery surrounding the justices to reveal them as human beings and place them in a historical and political context.

2009 The ResponseWritten and produced by lawyer Sig Libowitz, The Response is a 30-minute courtroom drama based on transcripts of Guantanamo military tribunals.

2010 SCOTUSblogSCOTUSblog, the online web log on the U.S. Supreme Court, is published by appellate lawyer Tom Goldstein and edited by Amy Howe. 2011 Scorpions: The Battle and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court JusticesIn Scorpions: The Battle and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices (Twelve/Hachette Book Group), Harvard law professor Noah Feldman presents a group biography of Franklin Roosevelt’s four great Supreme Court Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson.2012 “The Death Penalty in America”TheAtlantic.com publishes Contributing Editor and National Corre-spondent Andrew Cohen’s series of 10 columns on the administration of “The Death Penalty in America.”

2013 The Central Park FiveIn The Central Park Five, documentary filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon (Florentine Films) retell, in their own voices, the now-understood full account of five black and Latino teenag-ers from Harlem falsely convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park in 1989.

2014 Gideon’s ArmyTrilogy Films documentary Gideon’s Army tells the story of three young public defenders on a quest for “justice for all.”2015 Serial: Season OneProduced by WBEZ Chicago & This American Life, the 12-part radio podcast Serial: Sea-son One reexamines a 2000 murder trial in Baltimore to tell a larger story of criminal justice in America.

2016 Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial, by Kenji YoshinoNYU law professor Kenji Yoshino’s book Speak Now: Marriage Equal-ity on Trial (Crown Publishing) tells the story of the groundbreaking federal trial challenging Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.Making a MurdererCodirected by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos for Netflix, the 10-episode documentary thriller Making a Murderer, set in America’s heartland, is about a DNA exoneree who finds himself the prime suspect in a grisly new crime.

2017 Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American CityIn Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown), sociol-ogist Matthew Desmond tells the story of eight Milwaukee families to show that eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty and argues that decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for all Americans.Do Not ResistThe documentary Do Not Resist explores the present and future of law enforcement in the United States, from Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown to the “militarization” of police forces to the impact of new technologies.Radiolab Presents: More PerfectThe 5-episode WNYC public radio podcast More Perfect miniseries examines cases and controversies from Marbury v. Madison to Batson v. Kentucky to illuminate how the Supreme Court shapes American democracy.TrappedDawn Porter’s documentary, airing on Independent Lens on PBS, probes the impact of state TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) statutes on reproductive health clinic workers and relates how they and their lawyers challenged these laws in federal court in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

For more information on 60 years of ABA Silver Gavel Awards, go to www.ambar.org/gavelawards.


SILVER GAVEL AWARDS COMPETITION

Eligible CategoriesBooks | Commentary | Documentaries | Drama & Literature

Magazines | Multimedia | Newspapers | Radio | Television

Program Objectives and Selection Criteria

Extent to which entries:

• foster the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system;

• educate the public about the American constitutional/legal system and the fundamental principles and values upon which it is based;

• educate the public about the operations of legal institutions (e.g., the courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies, prisons, and law enforcement agencies) and the role lawyers and other legal professionals play in the justice system;

• encourage public support for improvements in the American justice system by informing the public about current practices, policies, and issues.

Criteria for selection of entries:

• educational value of legal information or issues treated;

• impact on, or outreach to, the public;

• thoroughness and accuracy in presentation of issues;

• creativity and originality in approach to subject matter and effectiveness of presentation; and

• demonstrated technical skill in production of entry.

ABA Standing Committee on Gavel AwardsStephen C. Edds, ChairAggie AlvezAmelia BossCollin CooperCatherine DiPaoloMary Phelan d’IsaAderson B. FrançoisMarvin InfingerJames C. ManningMyra McKenzie-HarrisAndrea Agathoklis MurinoAngela Onwuachi-WilligFelicia Sampson PrestonVincent D. RougeauMichelle Ann SilverthornPeter SuzukiDavid G. SwensonStephen J. Wermiel

Board of Governors LiaisonRamona G. See

Screening CommitteeLynn M. AllinghamCory M. AmronJoseph F. BacaMelanie D. BraggN. Kay Bridger-RileyPamila J. BrownLouise Rosen ByerKathleen M. CarrickChristine Alice CorcosTerry DershawGeralyn FallonEric FishErnestine ForrestPatricia A. GarciaSharon Stern GerstmanMarla N. GreensteinBrooks HollandDavid HundleyJ. Philip JonesAnn KistingGail Leftwich Kitch

Jason KohlmeyerStephan LandsmanAmy Cashore MarianiLinda T. McElroyDavid V. MeanyLinda MonkMorey M. MyersDaniel NaranjoAdrienne NelsonRobert L. OstertagHerman PalarzJohn P. RatnaswamyJill S. Miller RockwellLeah J. RoenSandra I. RothenbergSteven D. SchwinnStuart H. ShiffmanBen G. SissmanGary SlaimanSuzanne SpauldingKathy SwedlowTrude A. TsujimotoPauline WeaverCarolyn Ahrens Wieland

StaffDirector, Division for Public EducationFrank Valadez

Staff DirectorHoward Kaplan

Program SpecialistPamela Hollins

Administrative AssistantChristina Cerveny

CreditsEditorHoward Kaplan

Design and IllustrationPinckard Gill Creative

The American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Awards are judged by the Standing Committee on Gavel Awards. It is assisted by a Screening Committee.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of Butler Snow LLP for the Silver Gavel Awards program. Additional support was provided by the Robert R. McCormick

Foundation and individual donors. We thank them for their contributions to the ABA Fund for Justice and Education to sustain the awards program in

commemorating 60 years of presentation.

2018 SILVER GAVEL AWARDSCOMPETITION

The deadline for the 2018 Silver Gavel Awards Competition is Monday, January 8, 2018. Entries must have been originally published, produced, or presented during 2017. To access the online entry form and guidelines, go to www.ambar.org/gavelawards (available November 1, 2017).

To learn more about the Silver Gavel Awards (including further information on all 2017 finalists), go to www.ambar.org/gavelawards

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