Maurice
Possley is a criminal justice reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
He has been a reporter since 1972 and has worked for the Tribune
since 1984, including as an investigative reporter, covering the state and
federal criminal courts, and as deputy metropolitan editor.
Mr. Possley’s work has included coverage of the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the case against Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and the culmination of the grand jury investigation of the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
In the past several years, he has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize on two occasions for work with other Tribune reporters on prosecutorial misconduct and the death penalty. Their reporting was cited by former Illinois Governor George Ryan as playing a significant role in his decision to institute a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois in 2000 and to empty Death Row in 2003 by commuting all death sentences in Illinois. Together with other Tribune reporters, Mr. Possley has received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, the Thurgood Marshall Journalism award, the Champions of Justice award, and the Silver Gavel award for his series “Forensics under the Microscope.”
He is co-author of a book about a Chicago mob hit man and the witness against him, entitled Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder and the Price of Truth and The Brown's Chicken Massacre, a book about a mass murder in Palatine, Ill.
