A court in Illinois has now come up with a novel way to avoid the potential exposure of future embarrassing facts relating to prosecutorial misconduct and other mishaps: Blame the Messenger, by making the Innocence Project, rather than the facts it muckrakes up the issue.
Truthout reports
The work of many Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism students, under the direction of investigative journalism professor David Protess as part of the Medill Innocence Project, has helped lead to the release of 11 wrongfully convicted inmates, and when former Illinois Gov. George Ryan dropped sentences of everyone on Death Row before he left office, he acknowledged that it was partly because of the wrongful convictions resulting from the research done by Protess and his students.
Northwestern undergraduate journalism students continue to gain firsthand experience in investigating wrongful convictions under Protess as part of the Innocence Project, but the investigation into one case - of Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of shooting and killing a security guard in 1978 and whose murder conviction is being reviewed - has stirred recent controversy.
That's because staffers in the Cook County state's attorney's office have demanded that they need students' grades, grading criteria, syllabus and e-mail messages related to the students' investigation. Northwestern University and Protess, though, argue in court documents that turning over so many materials is burdensome and not relevant to deciding whether McKinney should be exonerated. A court date to address these matters is set for early November.
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