Speaker biography

David Hanners is a reporter for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. He joined the paper in 1994 after spending 12 years at The Dallas Morning News. His major awards include the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for explanatory journalism, the George Polk Award for regional reporting, a Gavel Award from the State Bar of Texas, two Headliners Awards for governmental affairs reporting from the Austin Headliners Club, three “Katies” from the Press Club of Dallas and numerous other national and regional awards in Texas and Minnesota. In 1991, he was named the Knight Law Fellow in the Michigan Journalism Fellowship program. He spent an academic year at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, studying capital punishment and wrongful convictions. His groundbreaking stories on aviation safety, wrongful convictions and tobacco industry documents have resulted in him being interviewed by other publications and television programs, including The New York Times, ABC-TV's "Nightline," CourtTV's "Forensic Files" and A&E’s “Biography.” In connection with his work on the Cook case, he also wrote stories raising questions about the convictions of two other inmates on Texas’ death row, James Lee Beathard and Leonel Herrera. Hanners also wrote articles, which helped win the release of John Miller and Debbie Loveless, a couple wrongly convicted and sentenced to life for allegedly killing their 4-year-old daughter.