University's justice project finds itself targeted
Jeff Long, Chicago Tribune
Issue date: 10/21/09 Section: News
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Their efforts helped win a new day in court for Anthony McKinney, who has spent 31 years in prison for the slaying. But as they prepare for that crucial hearing, prosecutors seem to have focused on the students and teacher who led the investigation for the school's internationally acclaimed Innocence Project.
The Cook County state's attorney subpoenaed the students' grades, notes and recordings of witness interviews, the class syllabus and even e-mails they sent to each other and to professor David Protess of the university's Medill School of Journalism.
Northwestern has turned over documents related to on-the-record interviews with witnesses that students conducted, as well as copies of audio and videotapes, Protess said.
But the school is fighting the effort to get grades and grading criteria, evaluations of student performance, expenses incurred during the inquiry, the syllabus, e-mails and unpublished student memos, as well as interviews not conducted on the record, or where witnesses weren't willing to be recorded.
"I don't think it's any of the state's business to know the state of mind of my students," Protess said. "Prosecutors should be more concerned with the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney than with my students' grades."
Prosecutors declined to discuss their request for grade reports, but a spokeswoman said the subpoena is about seeking truth in the case.
"They have material that's relevant to the ongoing investigation, and we should be entitled to that information," said spokeswoman Sally Daly.
Don Craven, acting executive director of the Illinois Press Association, said the request seems harassing at best, and at worst looks like an attempt to discredit the work done by the Innocence Project to ferret out wrongful convictions.
"They're either trying to undermine the investigation, or they're trying to undermine the entire project," Craven said.
Turning over such a wide range of information, he said, would cripple the Innocence Project's ability to get witnesses to cooperate in the future. Richard O'Brien, the lawyer representing the university, said it's an unwarranted fishing expedition that focuses on the messenger-rather than on the possibility that an innocent man has spent more than three decades behind bars. Prosecutors, he said, "seem to be peeved" at the Innocence Project for uncovering a wrongful conviction.
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