In 1989, Shawn Drumgold was convicted of the murder of 12-year-old Tiffany Moore and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But in 2003, Drumgold was released from prison, largely thanks to Dick Lehr, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Boston Globe who uncovered evidence that proved Drumgold had been wrongfully convicted.

This June, Lehr joined the University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism as a journalist-in-residence with the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project. Lehr will also be assisting Schuster Institute's co-founder and director, Florence Graves, in finding a new associate director for the project after Pamela Cytrynbaum left last year to teach in Oregon. Lehr, who teaches a journalism course at Boston University, will remain in the position until December.

Lehr worked for nearly 20 years as a reporter for the Boston Globe and has won several awards for his investigative reporting. Yet he describes the beginning of his journalistic career as casual, almost accidental. During high school in New England and his undergraduate studies at Harvard College, Lehr wrote for student newspapers, but says he never seriously considered pursuing journalism professionally until after college.

"I didn't know it was a passion," he confesses.

After he graduated, Lehr moved to Connecticut, and his future in journalism really got its start. Lehr met two recent graduates of Yale University and the University of Virginia who were starting their own newspaper in the town of Old Lyme. They were looking to hire a reporter for their Old Lyme Gazette, Lehr says, and they hired him almost instantly. Lehr says this first job as a reporter made it "really click" that he wanted to become a professional journalist.

"We were trying to make a difference in small communities," he recalls.

After working for this original publication, Lehr went on to work for two years for the Hartford Courant.

As his enthusiasm for journalism grew, Lehr also began to explore his fascination with the criminal justice system. Driven by the belief that a better understanding of the law would "help [him] become a better journalist," Lehr began attending law school at night while working for the Courant during the day.

"I didn't expect to complete law school," Lehr says. Although he planned to attend for only one or two years, Lehr ultimately graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

Earning a degree in law proved highly beneficial for Lehr as he began his journalism career. Lehr says attending law school helped him understand the relationship between the legal system and the media and encouraged him to focus on the criminal justice system as his area of specialty. More importantly, Lehr recalls feeling more confident as a young reporter sitting in on trials in criminal court because of his background in law.

Reflecting on his work at the Courant, Lehr recalls with pride and disbelief one of the "wildest" investigative pieces he worked on. After one year at the paper, the Ku Klux Klan began leafleting colleges around the Hartford area.

Lehr says the Klan's activity was a source of chaos and confusion for the Hartford community.

"[The event] was getting a lot of news coverage and getting a lot of headlines, but there were a lot of unanswered questions," he says.

Excited by the idea of unravelling the mystery surrounding the Klan's activity, Lehr volunteered to work on the story with a senior reporter. Lehr's voice still contains the eager anticipation of a new reporter working on his first extensive investigation as he recounts how he enlisted in the Klan under a fake name and attended a Klan meeting.

"We exposed them," he says, "and wrote the story."

In retrospect, Lehr admits he may have tried a different approach. "I would probably do the story differently now," he said. "I haven't used deception an awful lot" he says.

It was while working as a Globe reporter that Lehr undertook what is possibly his most well-known piece of investigative reporting. In 2003, he proved the innocence of Shawn Drumgold.

"Journalists should always keep their eyes and ears open for a tip about another [story]," Lehr advises. His investigation into Drumgold's case actually began while he was working on another story about a man who had been recently released from prison.

With a casual tone, perhaps to convey the unplanned nature of the investigation's beginning, Lehr recalls a Harvard lawyer mentioning to him, "I keep hearing this guy Drumgold is in [jail] wrongfully."

At that point, Lehr knew relatively little about Drumgold's case. But once he began researching the conviction, "one thing led to another," he says.

"I didn't believe he was innocent right from the beginning," Lehr recalls. Over the course of four months, however, working full time on Drumgold's case, carefully examining his conviction and interviewing him in prison periodically, Lehr says he changed his mind.

"New evidence suggested strongly that they got the wrong guy," Lehr recounts. In 2003, Lehr's investigation ultimately led to Drumgold's release from a sentence of life without parole.

Right now Lehr is working on his fourth book, The Fence, based on a case of police brutality in Boston in 1995. He is also the co-author of The Underboss: A Dramatic Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family and Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance between the FBI and the Irish Mob, both with Gerard O'Neill, and Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind the Dartmouth Murders, with Mitchell Zuckoff.

Lehr says all of his bookd have flowed from stories he published while working at the Globe.

Currently, Lehr teaches a course called "Media Law and Ethics" at Boston University. He also organized an investigative reporting seminar for BU students to investigate real cases and get their reports published in Boston media.

At Brandeis, Lehr works with undergraduate research assistants for the Innocence Project. Assistant Will Friedman '09 says that working with Lehr is a good experience because Lehr "knows what he's doing."

"He has insightful and intelligent things to say at every turn," Friedman says.

The Justice Brandeis Innocence Project, one of three projects within the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, addresses what the Schuster Institute Web site describes as an ethical crisis in the United States: the wrongful imprisonment of innocent people, especially lower-class minorities.

Thanks to innocence projects across the country, some based at universities, hundreds of innocent people have been released from wrongful convictions.

Many of these cases are solved after DNA evidence is introduced into the case, but the Brandeis branch accepts cases with no DNA evidence from the New England Innocence Project. These are cases that generally involve sloppy police work, unreliable eyewitness accounts and courtroom errors. The Brandeis Project is the third journalism-based project in the country.

Currently, the Brandeis Project is investigating its first case, which involves the potentially wrongful conviction of a man convicted of homicide and is now serving a life sentence in prison, Lehr says. His case has no DNA evidence and was referred to them by the New England Innocence Project. The individual, a native of the Dominican Republic, speaks very little English, and Lehr says his case is complicated by the fact that he needs a translator.

"[The case] turned out to be an extremely difficult one," Lehr says. Undergraduate interns have been investigating this case alone for almost two years now, since the Innocence Project opened at Brandeis.

It's necessary to keep anonymous the man they're investigating, Graves said, to protect the fragility and progress of the case.

The Innocence Project's investigations are perhaps less glamorous than people might believe. "Sometimes people don't understand that much of investigative reporting is paper documents, not being out in the field," Graves says.

Nevertheless, Lehr proudly says that, "When you've gotten someone out of jail who doesn't belong there, you've done it all.