Court hearing set on subpoena for student notes

State has been trying to obtain records for more than a year.

By Jamie Loo, First Amendment reporter

May 26, 2010

CHICAGO-Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane Cannon has scheduled oral arguments on the state’s attorney’s subpoena which will determine whether student journalists at Northwestern University will have to turn over their notes and interviews to the state.

The hearing will be on June 24.

The state’s attorney has been trying to obtain the notes, interviews, grades, class syllabus and other materials from student journalists who were part of a Medill Innocence Project investigation into a 32 year-old murder case. The Medill Innocence Project is part of the university’s journalism program and teaches students to use investigative journalism techniques to report on possible miscarriages of justice, particularly in death penalty or life without parole cases.

Anthony McKinney, who has been in prison since 1978 for murder, is believed to be innocent based on the work of nine teams of students who have examined the case since 2003. Although the students and their professor David Protess have turned over their published work, the state’s attorney’s office is still pursuing all of their class materials. The state argues that they should have the opportunity to review this work for McKinney’s post-conviction proceedings.

Protess has maintained that their work is protected by the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act. The shield law protects reporters from revealing their sources and information in court except in circumstances where the information must stay secret under state or federal laws, or where the public interest outweighs the need for confidentiality. The state has argued that the students were acting as investigators not reporters when they gathered their evidence.

The state’s subpoena is now more than a year old and has played a role in delaying McKinney’s fight for exoneration.

Who is a "reporter"?

The arguments over who qualifies as a reporter under the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act has been at the center of the subpoenas. Reporters privilege acts, commonly known as shield laws, protect reporters from revealing their sources and information in court except in special circumstances. These circumstances are defined differently in each state that has a shield law. Click here to read the full text of the Illinois Reporter's Privilege Act.