There's a very important editorial in The Nation this week that I hope everyone will take the time to read. It's about the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney, who's been in prison for thirty-one years for a murder he did not commit. I'm posting the relevant portions below.
snip
McKinney has long maintained his innocence. Based on newly uncovered evidence, there's strong reason to believe that he has spent thirty-one years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
snip
In 2003 Protess and his students began examining McKinney's case. Over three years of painstaking reporting, they unearthed startling new evidence: the prosecution's two main witnesses, 15 and 18 at the time of the trial, recanted their testimony during interviews with the students, claiming they were beaten by the police and intimidated into doctoring the facts; McKinney alleged that he was beaten with a pipe by a detective with a history of police brutality before signing a sham confession; TV logs proved that both witnesses were watching a boxing match at the time of the shooting and thus could not have seen the murder; an ex-gang member, Anthony Drake, confessed on tape to being at the murder scene, named two perpetrators and said McKinney was not involved; current and former residents of the neighborhood confirmed they heard Drake and two other suspects confess to Lundahl's murder.
In 2006 the Medill Innocence Project turned over its findings to the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern's law school. The center shared the evidence with the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, which began an internal investigation the following year. After more than a year of delay by the state, the center filed a postconviction petition on behalf of McKinney in October 2008, calling for a new trial or his immediate release. Following her election that November as Cook County State's Attorney, hardline career prosecutor Anita Alvarez fought the discovery of new evidence, and in May she issued a sweeping, unprecedented subpoena ordering Protess to hand over all material related to the McKinney case--including students' private memos and grades. Alvarez insultingly suggested that students might receive better grades for uncovering exculpatory evidence and claimed that Protess and his students were "investigators," not journalists, and thus not subject to the Illinois shield law...Apparently Alvarez has never heard of investigative journalism.
...The state's subpoena, wielded to stall justice and intimidate those who seek it, sets a terrible precedent. Lawyer Barry Scheck says that in his seventeen years at the Innocence Project in New York, he's never seen a subpoena of this nature directed at journalists or lawyers. Concludes Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, "It creates an enormous chilling effect that's positively glacial."
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/143817/students_who_exposed_30-year-old_wrongful_conviction_being_targeted_by_chicago_da
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
