Corruption exposé honored
The College’s Brechner Center for Freedom of Information recently honored a South Dakota newspaper for exposing government corruption and helping change the law that enabled the practice.
Patrick Lalley
Patrick Lalley, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader assistant managing editor who spearheaded the investigative project, accepted the 2005 Joseph L. Brechner Award for Freedom of Information, established in 1985 by the late Orlando broadcaster Joseph L. Brechner.
“It’s nice to know there are people watching,” Lalley said during the Center’s annual awards event.
The Center recognized Lalley and his staff at a time when government secrecy is increasing, said the Center’s executive director, Sandra Chance, JM 1975, MAMC 1985. She described the Leader’s work as an “example of everything investigative reporting is designed to do.”
Speakers Dean Terry Hynes and Associate Provost Sheila Dickison noted that freedom-of-information laws are more important than ever in maintaining checks on abuses of power by government officials.
Lalley and reporters David Kranz, Terry Woster, Jon Walker and Stu Whitney took on a “Huey Long-style benevolent dictator” and made him accountable, Lalley said. They started the series in 2003 when Kranz wrote a story about South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow’s pardoning American Indian Movement leader Russell Means.
Means had been convicted of rioting to obstruct justice in 1975 after he refused to stand for a judge during a court hearing. A melee ensued as police arrested him. Janklow issued Means a pardon 28 years later and had the court records sealed.
The Argus Leader editorial staff wondered how many other pardons Janklow issued, said Lalley, who spoke to several classes in the College.
“There were people we were talking to [in Janklow’s administration] who led us to believe there were many more,” he said. “When contacted by the Argus Leader, Janklow wouldn’t disclose how many.”
Lalley and his staff discovered Means’ pardon was one of scores of pardons, clemencies and commutations Janklow handed out to his relatives, cronies and benefactors. But by the time they looked for documents, the “records were gone,” he said. And the South Dakota secretary of state refused to release any relevant documents. For 17 months, the Argus Leader spent $50,000 challenging the Janklow administration in the courts, including the state supreme court, for access.
“We typically lose these fights,” Lalley said. But this time the paper won: The court ordered the records released, and Lalley and his staff obtained a list of 214 pardons that Janklow had issued during his four terms as governor, plus four more by the previous governor.
Janklow had secretly pardoned his lawyer, his son-in-law, former state officials, and convicted murderers, drug offenders and sex offenders, Lalley said. One man, a bookie, had been pardoned 10 times,
If not for Lalley and his staff’s dogged pursuit, Janklow’s pardons would likely have gone unnoticed: No regional reporter had ever written anything about them, Lalley noted.
The law that allows the governor to seal court records now mandates a five-year waiting period before they can be sealed. Yet, South Dakota still has some of the worst public-records laws in the nation, Chance said.
“It was the best story I’ve ever participated in,” Lalley said.
