From The Associated Press:
MIAMI — Former Herald reporter and editor Gene Miller, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for stories that led to the release of four people wrongly convicted of murder, died Friday. He was 76.
Miller died at his home near South Miami after suffering from cancer, his family told the Herald for a story posted on its Web site.
“He was the soul and the conscience of our newsroom, a somber place the day he died,” reporter Martin Merzer wrote. “He coached novice reporters. He turned butter-fingered writers into prize winners. He challenged senior editors when he thought they were wrong, which was pretty often.”
Miller worked at the Herald for 48 years, retiring in 2001. His first Pulitzer was in 1967 for two investigations that freed prisoners Joe Shea and Mary Katherin Hampton, who were each convicted of separate murders they didn’t commit.
In 1976, he won his second Pulitzer after eight years of reporting about the case of Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee. The two black men were sentenced to death in 1963 after being convicted of the murders of two white gas station attendants in the Florida Panhandle town of Port St. Joe.