Chicago prosecutor threatens student investigators

[tangaroa]

The Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University in Illinois has investigated the cases of people sentenced to death, often finding evidence that the convicted are innocent. The Project's work led then-Governor George Ryan to cancel all death sentences in the state in 2003 and has recently persuaded the University's law school to represent convicted murderer Anthony McKinney in an attempt to gain him a retrial.

Cook County prosecutor Anita Alvarez has responded by issuing a subpoena for Medill Project students' grades and communications in a clear attempt to look for anything that can be used as a weapon against the Project, whether in a legal or a propaganda sense, and to scare people from questioning the police lest they gain the attention of the authorities.

CNN has a report from a journalist who worked with the Medill project on the McKinney case as a student.