For the past several months, students at The Innocence Project, a program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, have come under fire from Cook County, Ill. Prosecutors aren't happy with their habit of turning up evidence demonstrating that defendants have been wrongly convicted. They've allegedly exposed the wrongful conviction of Anthony McKinney, a Chicago man jailed for 31 years on a false confession.
Discomfited prosecutors have responded by subpoenaing everything related to the students' investigation about the McKinney case: notes, interview records and even classroom grades. According to the prosecutors, the students aren't journalists, but an "investigative agency." This is a distinction that has legal bite because journalists' notes are protected under an Illinois journalist shield law.
