Why Is Cook County AG Looking Into Students Studying the Wrongly Convicted?

October 27, 2009 | Filed Under Chicago, Cook County, Crime, Democrats/Leftists, Education, Government, Corruption, Journalism, Judges, Liberals, Media Bias, State Government, The Law, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

The work of the Medill Innocence Project has already led to the exoneration of 11 inmates in Illinois. In 2000 Governor George Ryan cited the Medill Innocence Project of Northwestern University as one of the reasons he suspended the death penalty in the Land of Lincoln. It has yet to be fully reinstated.

The Medill Innocence Project has recently set its sites on the case of Anthony McKinney, convicted of murdering a security officer in 1978. The students of the Project feel that they have successfully proved that McKinney was wrongly convicted and have also succeeded in getting a judge to review the case.

One might think that thanks and accolades should be the student’s reward for their efforts to repair justice in Illinois. But for some reason Cook County prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mails of the students of the Project. You heard that right. Prosecutors seem to be investigating the students!

The state’s attorney’s office claim that they need “every pertinent piece of information” in reassessing McKinney’s case, but what the students and their class have to do with the case is hard to grasp. One would think that all the state’s attorney’s office would need is the Project’s research on McKinney. What purpose would the prosecutors have with the student’s e-mails and class syllabus?

Prosecutors claim that they are worried that the school could be forcing students to believe they might receive better grades if they find that an inmate was wrongly convicted. But, even if that were true, shouldn’t the evidence the students present speak for itself?

The claim from the state AGs office just doesn’t wash as far as I am concerned. It just seems like harassment of the students and the school to me. Naturally the school agrees with me on this.

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.

I hate to agree with a University professor on much of anything (can’t tell you how many times I’ve railed against our degraded system of education in this country) but this guy is right. Investigating the students is unrelated to the McKinney case. As I said, the student’s evidence exonerating McKinney is all that is relevant to Cook County prosecutors. The student’s lives and class organization have nothing at all to do with any of the criminal cases that might need to be reexamined.

This seems like harassment and little else.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.

He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston

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