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jerwin wrote:

Prosecutors Turn Tables on Student Journalists

Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better, a spokeswoman said, is whether students believed they would receive better grades if witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney.

Prosecutors hate having cases overturned, and by extension, hate groups that try to do it. This is pure intimidation, under the guise of jurisprudence. The grab for notes is bad enough, but the grab for grades is over the top. The judge needs to slap this idiot prosecutor down, and move on.

The only gray area is whether student journalists are considered true journalists for the purposes of legal protection. It's an extension of the blogging debate - are unpaid, unassociated bloggers (or in this case students) legally considered journalists? I believe they are, and as such, can and should refuse to turn over notes or sources.

On the flip side, groups devoted to this need to make sure they are correct before going to the courts. They have a responsibility to make sure they don't premature free the guilty, as they are trying to free the innocent.

From the article:

A spokeswoman for Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney, who was elected last fall, said the prosecutors were simply trying to get to the bottom of the McKinney case.

Ironically, perhaps if the prosecutor had done such due diligence in the first place the subsequent investigation would have been unnecessary.

D'Eyncourt wrote:

From the article:

A spokeswoman for Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney, who was elected last fall, said the prosecutors were simply trying to get to the bottom of the McKinney case.

Ironically, perhaps if the prosecutor had done such due diligence in the first place the subsequent investigation would have been unnecessary.

No, this is Illinois and pure corrupt lawyers and judges.
Even when they say they are trying to investigate, they are trying to cover up and make the problem go away.

Pariah wrote:

radarman wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

If they find evidence of wrongful convictions, that will undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system. We just can't have that.

This has nothing to do with public confidence in the criminal justice system. This has everything to do with prosecutors hating to be overturned, or proved wrong. Thing ego, not public policy.

It's the corruption inherent in the system.
Prosecutors are just politicians looking to pad their resume to get to higher office. A good conviction rate is how they do that.
Even a completely honest and dedicated prosecutor is going to be subject to the unconsciousness draw of self interest in their decisions about how to pursue cases.
Judges are also subject to the same political pressures. Unfortunately a judge that is "tough on crime" is more likely to appeal to voters than one who has a reputation for high judicial standards.
So two out of the three parties in a trial have a self interest bias in favor of conviction. It's a corrupt system.

One reason why elected judges ain't such a good idea.  Kinda like elected senators.  Checks and balances don't work too well when everyone wants to brown nose the voting public.

Pariah wrote:

We have so many people in prison for two reasons, too many things are illegal and we dont really give a smurf about locking up the innocent.

Both those points are valid.
However, it also needs to be pointed out that we have disproportionally high number of Black and Latino inmates.
That's a problem that needs to be solved as well.

resedit wrote:

Pariah wrote:

We have so many people in prison for two reasons, too many things are illegal and we dont really give a smurf about locking up the innocent.

Both those points are valid.
However, it also needs to be pointed out that we have disproportionally high number of Black and Latino inmates.
That's a problem that needs to be solved as well.

Our prisons are full of the poor of all colors.
Economic class is a better predictor than race is, it's just that here in the USA we see everything thru the lens of race and deny that class exists at all.

Jokotai wrote:

Exactly.  There's a corellary here.

Drive to your nearest ghetto.  Door locks are optional.  Make an observation of the ethnicities you see there.  Get a feel for proportion.  Compare those proportions to those in federal prisons.

However, beware of post hoc ergo propter hoc.  Poor does not mean criminal, just as no ethnicity is more apt to poverty.  It just so happens that the lower class has less to lose and everything to gain by betraying the system that always seems to try to keep them down.

I guess we can think of our prison system as a mechanism to hold down unemployment.

resedit wrote:

Jokotai wrote:

the lower class has less to lose and everything to gain by betraying the system that always seems to try to keep them down.

That's part of the problem - it is continually preached that the system wants to keep them down, and they believe it. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

No, the problem is that "the system" actually does hold them down. The problem is economic "growth" that has only touched the upper 20% of income earners while the bottom 20% has actually lost ground.