The legal battle between the Medill Innocence Project and Cook County State’s Attorney’s office continued Wednesday, when both sides submitted additional briefs.
“My hope is that today’s court appearance was a major step towards resolving this case,” said Prof. David Protess, who leads the class.
Students in the Innocence Project investigate potentially wrongful convictions. The legal battle between the project and the state began in October when prosecutors subpoenaed class records, including student grades and course syllabi. The subpoena came in response to information gathered by students on the case of Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of a 1978 murder of a security guard. Students began looking into the case in 2003 and submitted findings to the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern School of Law’s Bluhm Legal Clinic in 2006.
“We’re journalists, and our obligation is to find the truth, and then when we find it, to expose it,” Protess said.
At the court appearance, McKinney’s lawyers from the Center on Wrongful Convictions submitted a brief and an amended post-conviction petition.
The brief declared the state’s subpoena to be “unnecessary, unwarranted, and unsupported,” and the amended petition removed controversial evidence, Protess said.
“The point is that if we were part of a legal team, a subpoena like this might be appropriate,” he said. “But we’re not a part of a legal team, and that’s what today’s brief established.”
The state is positioning the Innocence Project as an investigative arm of the law center, which is inaccurate, Protess said.
“There is an important distinction between the Medill Innocence Project and the Center on Wrongful Convictions,” he said. “What the state has done is to try to link us in an inappropriate way.”
The brief filed by the state said “the members of the Team functioned as criminal investigators and not as journalists.”
Center on Wrongful Convictions Director Robert Warden declined to comment.
The post-conviction petition removes from evidence alternative suspects Michael Lane and Anthony Drake, whom students were accused of bribing. The petition instead focuses on eyewitnesses Wayne Phillips and Dennis Pettis, both of whom recanted incriminating reports they had given police. Phillips, Pettis and McKinney all claim they were beaten by Harvey police officers into giving statements.
Protess said the brief submitted by prosecutors “restated everything they’d contended before.”
The state’s attorney’s office couldn’t be reached for comment.
FAR-REACHING IMPACT
What started in a classroom in Evanston has now extended to affect legislation states away.
Sandy Rosenberg, a Democratic representative from Baltimore City, filed House Bill 257 in the Maryland General Assembly to extend the state’s shield law to college journalists.
The bill is an important step in officially establishing student journalists’ rights, said Ron Spielberger, executive director of College Media Advisers.
“If it’s in law, nobody can say ‘That doesn’t apply here,'” he said. “What I’d like to see is a national shield law.”
State-by-state legislation will be a “piecemeal” process, but the case between Cook County prosecutors and the Innocence Project demonstrates a need for more definitive laws, Spielberger said.
College Media Advisers was one of 18 media organizations to submit an amicus curiae brief on Jan. 12 for the Innocence Project, Spielberger said.
“I’m willing to take the heat for it,” he said.
The next court date is scheduled for March 10, when the state will have an opportunity to reply to the brief filed by the defense team.
“I hope we can focus the case on the issue that is really most important, which is the exoneration of an innocent man who has spent 31 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit,” Protess said. “I hope we can put an end to this sideshow, but that’s up to the prosecutors now.”[email protected]
Editor’s Note: An original version of this article has been altered.
