Posted on 10/25/2009 4:04:06 PM PDT by opentalk
Chicago prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades and other material regarding the classroom performance of Northwestern University journalism students, according to The New York Times. Seems the prosecutors are tired of being second-guessed by the J-students, who are participants in The Innocence Project.
The Innocence Project is an effort by Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism to provide students with real-life experience in scrutinizing the actions of police and prosecutors in old cases. Their work has led to the release of at least 11 inmates who were shown to have been wrongly convicted.
It's that success rate that has the local DAs filing motions with little precedent, according to the Times: the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves.
Whatever one thinks about the death penalty, everybody agrees that innocent people should not go to jail for crimes they didn't commit. That Chicago prosecutors are going after the messengers of bad news has the aroma of abuse of office.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
“That Chicago prosecutors are going after the messengers of bad news has the aroma of abuse of office”
Really? I wonder how these journalists feel about their man obama going after FOX and Glenn Beck
Oh heck.
Just let the criminals out.
Why they’re all “innocent” right?
LOL!!!!
I’m against the whole dam government and most of the people who elected it. Hell, I’m against everybody and everything.
Mayor Daley and his running dog lackeys are the problem here. The sooner they're OUT OF OFFICE AND IN PRISON the safer everybody will be.
Shocked! I tell you! Shocked! Real reporters, who are not real reporters, doing the job of the State Run Media! Neophytes showing up the journeymen.
J schools are a fraud. Those kids should be in Law school or pre-law.
Freudian slip?
Next thing you know, you’ll have gift shop clerks breaking MAJOR political scandals, or maybe 20-year-old, skirted girls with camcorders provoking the political collapse of huge activist groups...!
Oh, wait...
Of course, get the case in front of the right (wrong) judge and it would be a waste.
Crook County, IL.
I believed firmly in the death penalty until I did my Criminal Law clinic in law school, and actually worked on several of the cases that were first uncovered by the innocence project.
Of the three men I represented who were on death row: One was without a doubt, forensics proved it innocent. (and even though we knew that, as did several government officials he was still in jail 20 years later.)
One was probably innocent, but when he went to trial in the early 80’s he found out he was HIV positive and thought he’d be dead soon so he didn’t put up much of a defense and didn’t say anything when his lawyer didn’t call any of his Alibi witnesses (his lawyer was hired by the State’s Attorney a few weeks after the trial)
One was a murderer, and a cop-killer, but he’d gotten life in prison for that murder, and he was framed for a second murder (recently confirmed by the deathbed confession of the real murderer btw) so vengeful cops could make sure he got the Death penalty
We can debate the morals of the Death Penalty another time (I’m a Christian and I believe the Lord meant what he said about “whatsoever you do to the least of these) But the simple fact is, the system by which we administer it is badly broken, and probably could never be fixed to the level of certainty that such a final penalty demands.
And, surprisingly enough, it costs more to execute a prisoner than it does to keep them in prison for life; so there is really no other argument than pure vengeance FOR it (and again I believe the Lord claimed that for his own)
me too.
if anyone is for it, i am against it
its a matter of principle
i someone other than me likes it
it cannot be good
oops, if you are against everything, how can i agree with you?
time for a “teaching moment”
i’ll have a Coors.
The government should not kill its citizens. Life in prison. Simple.
About the subpoena: Why can’t we get these rubes to subpoena The Won’s records while they’re at it, maybe a copy of his application to school or his BIRTH CERTIFICATE!
Sorry, the elephant in the room just had to speak.
Good post. I agree with you, btw.
A girl has sex with her boyfriend no one is aware of or a stranger and then later get raped and murdered by another man wearing a rubber who gets put on death row. Innocence project people come along and push for DNA testing which comes up with a unknown DNA sample not from the man in jail and he is let go because of it.
Another example, a girls is raped and murdered by 2 men, the police arrest one man and convict him of the murder and give him death penalty for it. Innocence project people come along and demand DNA testing, which comes back showing that another man raped the girl (the other man that was with the convicted man) and they let the man go thinking he is innocent.
There are two examples just off the top of my head where solely depending on DNA to prove people innocence is probably letting guilty people get away with crimes.
Just as our Republic presupposed a Christian society, so our justice system probably presupposes a Christian justice system whose world view would be offended by causing the death of an innocent man. Godly Jews would also fit well within our system of justice, but people who do not have a deep-seated system of morality that governs their beliefs will find that their system is only governed by the whims of other men (laws) or their own whims, and many of those people will allow personal interest to intrude into their notion of justice. That is how society and law break down.
Strangely, for an opinionated old geezer such as I, my thoughts never got as far as punishment...
The notion that students would have been rewarded with better grades for witnesses who confirmed the thesis that Mr. McKinney was innocent is simply false, he said.
“My students are told to uncover the truth, wherever that leads them,” he said. In the last four years, he said, students had twice concluded that the convicts whose cases they were studying were indeed guilty.
Northwestern University and David Protess, the professor who leads the students and directs the Medill Innocence Project, say the demands are ridiculously overreaching, irrelevant to Mr. McKinney’s case, in violation of the state’s protections for journalists and a breach of federal privacy statutes — not to mention insulting.
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