Chicago student-journalists probed for motives

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A group of university students who claim their research exonerated a convicted murderer were in court themselves on Tuesday, accused of sloppy work and credibility problems.

Cook County Prosecutor Anita Alvarez has issued a subpoena demanding e-mails, grades and other information from Northwestern University students in journalism professor David Protess' graduate classes from 2003 to 2006.

Alvarez's office said the students' interviews and affidavits, which drew the conclusion that Anthony McKinney was wrongly convicted in 1982 of the 1978 murder of a security guard, is full of holes.

McKinney had asked the university's Innocence Project for help, saying police had pressured him years ago to confess. The project, run by journalism Professor David Protess, has succeeded in producing evidence that since the mid-1990s has led to the exoneration of 11 convicted inmates, including five men on Death Row.

The project's well-publicized success has won it a good reputation, and prosecutors investigate their findings.

The students interviewed witnesses from McKinney's 1982 trial, some of whom recanted. They also turned up new witnesses, including a man who said he was present when two other men, one of them now dead, shot the guard.

In Tuesday's submission in support of the subpoena of students' e-mails and grades, which the school is fighting, prosecutors argued that the students' investigation was flawed and may have included pay-offs to witnesses.

Prosecutors said they want to know if the students' motivation to find exculpatory evidence was driven by a quest for better grades.

In the instance of the witness who identified other men, prosecutors said he bought crack cocaine with change from $60 cab fare paid for by a student.

Witnesses said students had "flirted" with them and provided them meals and small amounts of money, according to prosecutors.

HEAT, NOT LIGHT

Protess said outside the court the accusations were false, and he was prepared to bring in students he awarded A's who did not find any such exculpatory evidence in another case.

On the other hand, Protess said the prosecutors deserved an "F" for inaccuracies.

"The question is what does Anita Alvarez have to fear? Is she embarrassed that the state sought the death penalty against a man who is now shown to be innocent?" he said.

In a heated confrontation on Tuesday in a Cook County criminal court filled with some two-dozen students, Judge Diane Cannon chastised the students' attorney, saying his brief to the court was "dripping with sarcasm that is so irrelevant to the law it is reprehensible."