Prosecutor Subpoenas Student Grades in Innocence Project Effort to Free Convict
Responding to a claim that Anthony McKinney has spent 31 years in an Illinois prison for a murder he didn’t commit, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office has asked for more information from the Northwestern University journalism students who collected exonerating evidence on his behalf.
And the relevant information prosecutors say they need to evaluate the case accurately includes the grades they received in the Medill Innocence Project class, the grading criteria and e-mails they sent to each other and professor David Protess, reports the Chicago Tribune. A state shield law that protects journalists from having to reveal confidential sources and reporting notes doesn’t apply because the students aren’t working journalists, the state’s attorney’s office contends.
School officials have turned over videotape of on-the record interviews with witnesses and related written materials. But they object to what they see as an unwarranted fishing expedition that invades the privacy of students, according to the newspaper.
“I don’t think it’s any of the state’s business to know the state of mind of my students,” says Protess. “Prosecutors should be more concerned with the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney than with my students’ grades.”
But “they have material that’s relevant to the ongoing investigation, and we should be entitled to that information,” says Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for the prosecution.
Meanwhile, the project’s effort to free McKinney continues. In 2006, students provided their findings to the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Bluhm Legal Clinic of Northwestern University School of Law. It filed a petition for a Cook County Circuit Court hearing on McKinney’s behalf, which has not yet been held.
