According to the award announcement, the 25-year-old reporter retraced years of evidence, records, and interviews, and his reporting “showed the guilty verdict was accomplished when evidence gathered by the lead investigator was withheld by the prosecuting attorney’s office.”
McLemore said, “I wasn’t trying to prove Morton’s innocence — that was already clear — I was trying to show that the justice system had failed.”
McLemore is now a staff writer for the Fort Worth (Texas) Weekly.