Getting better grades does not change the facts they discover at all. Isn’t it about the evidence? If you are saying they are manufacturing evidence because they are apt to get a better grade, then say so. If not, it is just prosecutors poisoning the well.
I’d say it is an amazing abuse of power, but nearly all people given unchecked power will do this sort of thing. Prosecutors, police and judges have an incredible amount of power in our society and it is abused too often. What shocks me is that not only has this particular abuse of power been unchecked by the courts (I’m hopeful that it will be), but it has also been unchecked by any sense of shame from the local bar and the local community.
There’s few things more disgusting than the smell that comes from lawyers sitting around for days on end dreaming up ways to screw their opponents. One of the things more disgusting than the smell are the legal documents they draw up.
God bless the professionals with ethics. Damn the pusher man.
I don’t think this is as big of a deal as people are making it.
The prosecutor’s job is to convict people they believe are guilty, and to investigate fully any of these claims. The problem here is that a lot of Innocence Project cases are not your “DNA frees man” cases. A lot of their cases are based on less certain evidence, such as in this very case where it comes down to 31 year old testimony, collected by students, who might have pressured people or shaded their report.
Furthermore, it is the prosecution’s job to defend claims of wrongful conviction. They are not supposed to roll over and say “Ok then, these students win”. The prosecution does not, and should not, just accept the word of some student group that so-and-so is innocent.
Now, asking for grades is a little silly. But some of the other stuff they asked for is not; it is info that might be helpful for the state in building a more truthful picture than the one that might have been presented to them by the IP group sans subpoena. I certainly don’t think it’s unheard of that an advocacy group might have some bias or shade things to make them a little more favorable to their side, especially when the group is composed primarily of students, many of whom might be a little enchanted by the idea of breaking some big case and being a hero. The state certainly has the right to investigate using all of the available information.
And to answer some other posters, no it is in no way prosecutorial misconduct or another ridiculous charge that the Jr. lawyers who watch Law and Order can think of. It’s simply asking questions, questions that the student group can refuse to answer if a judge agrees with their point of view.
And what’s with the outrage over questioning the groups status as journalists? The first thing I think of when someone talks about an Innocence Project group is not “Journalism”. They are a group primarily interested in advocacy for a cause, not in reporting facts to the public. They aren’t lawyers or therapists wrt client confidentiality, and protecting their “sources” is a bit inane given that they will probably be expected to testify in open court.
So yes, it’s a little ham-handed, but hardly deserving the sort of polemic that some of our less critical thinkers are spouting. Hey, watch out, I think that’s a piece of sky coming down.
It doesn’t matter whether the information is coming from students or professional reporters; they’re not lawyers, and they have no subpoena power.
As with reporters, witnesses who speak to them do so on an entirely voluntary basis. Evidence they examine is all in the public record, except things the convict has to sign a release for (medical records, tax returns, and so on).
If they find evidence of a wrongful conviction, the convict gets a new trial, where all new (or reinterpreted) evidence is examined by the court, just as it ought to be, including witnesses/testimony.
It’s not like they summarily let people go on the say-so of the Innocence Project people.
ETA: …contrary to what ivn is implying above.
*I’m *not saying that at all. I picked that quote to use because it’s a very specific reason the prosecutors have given for requesting the information. I invite somebody better educated that myself to provide a reasoned counter-argument, and so far I’ve just seen people howling about fishing expeditions and abuse of power. (Yeah, I know this is the pit. I should probably just give it up.)
I’m honestly not trying to be snarky here; I truly want my ignorance fought.
Oh yes, and it’s a fucking subpoena, by the way. Subpoenas get challenged all the time, they are hardly some sort of Wrath of God legal maneuvering. For fuck’s sake, I can and do issue them myself, and it’s not like every time I print one out I laugh manically and shout “Yes, now you will feel my true power. Burn, Infidel!”.
This is what a subpoena says:
Please give us the following documents: A, B, C, D. If you do not, you better have a good reason, because this is for a court case, and the judge might be unhappy if you’re jerking us around. Thanks!
Hardly a mephistophelean writ, conjured from the depths by a demonic committee of… state employees.
It’s pretty clearly an attempt to intimidate the students.
There is no reasonable evidence that this investigation will turn up evidence of wrongdoing, but certainly a reasonable expectation that it will scare the hell out of the students.
It’s perfectly reasonable for the students to subpoena witnesses and their associated records. The students themselves are not witnesses.
Really? They collected evidence relevant to a criminal case, and presented said evidence to the authorities. That would make them, wait for it…
witnesses.
ETA: By the way, I am not implying the authorities listen to the IP, I implied the opposite. But no one is going to do a new trial when there is DNA evidence or if the case is no longer viable. They will do a new trial if they still think the defendant is guilty and they have a case.
Sorry, RNATB I submitted my last post before seeing yours. This is the kind of thing I was asking for, and it makes more sense. Thank you.
Are you saying that IP beneficiaries are simply released? I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, but open to citation(s).
They collected evidence relevant to a criminal case and presented said evidence to the authorities, with the intention of proving the innocence of the accused (or reasonable doubt of his guilt, at any rate).
They ought to receive the same protections as defense counsel, if anything (though I am aware that they do not).
This facile analysis does a grave disservice to the truth.
Rebutting your points in no particular order:
It’s true that a subpoena is a not “Wrath of God” legal maneuvering. No one said it was. This is an example of a strawman argument: you have defeated a point that no one was advancing.
It’s not free to challenge a subpoena. Someone has to bear the cost of research and the court appearance if you wish to quash the subpoena, because you cannot simply ignore it.
The chief complaint in the OP is not the difficulty associated with quashing to subpoena. It’s the very fact that the prosecutors are spending time issuing such a subpoena in the first place – that their investigative focus is on the students, not on the evidence. Investigating the students suggests that their theory of defense will not be focused on the weaknesses, if any, in the evidence, but an attack on the methods and motives of the evidence gatherers.
Yes, the students are likely to be advocates, not neutral seekers of the truth. So what? Dan Rather was not a neutral seeker of the truth when he published the forged Bush documents; Sean Hannity is not a neutral seeker of the truth when he… um… breathes. But they are both clearly journalists.
And it IS prosecutorial misconduct if the prosecutors abandon one prong of their dual duty to be both advocates for their case and advocates for justice. And by choosing to investigate the students and not the underlying evidence of the crime in question, it’s a plausible inference that they have done just that.
Can subpoenaed parties require payment of their costs prior to responding to a prosecutorial subpoena?
That’s hilarious. It’s not the school’s inadequacies that result in overturned convictions. And so what if students get rewarded based on results? Does that make them so very different from cops, PIs, journalists, defense lawyers, or even prosecutors?
Having been on the receiving end of several subpoenas (as a corporate employee, not as an individual), I can assure everyone that the language is generally a bit more intimidating than that and generally conveys that the attorney is acting as an officer of the court with the authority and resources of the justice system behind him, and not to suggest that there is anything optional about compliance. Heck, the very word means “under (threat of) punishment.” But I’m pretty sure you knew all that already.
How so? Are they going to be taking the stand? The defense would call the witness or the person interviewed. The prosecutor can still cross examine the witness.
Actually, The Second Stone was advancing exactly that. Of course, beating him up is about the same as picking on a strawman, so I suppose I can concede your point.
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No, it’s not free. But it’s not terribly expensive, either. I am sure there are plenty of attorneys who would do it pro bono (have you put in your time this year?). And I already said it was a ham-handed approach.
But it seems clear to me that the state’s attorney is not ignoring the other aspects of the investigation, although that, being less controversial, is not the focus of the article in question. Additionally, a subpoena is really not much of a “focus” nor is it a serious time sink.
You, without being familiar with the case or the evidence, are not really in a position to say that the state is abandoning its duty to justice; perhaps, upon review of the case file, they feel that the defendant is absolutely guilty of cold-blooded murder, and that their duty is to make sure the conviction stands so that the people who were victimized by the murder have justice.
But bloggers are generally not journalists in the legal sense. I’m not a journalist. You’re not a journalist. Rather and Hannity were/are producing news shows. The IP is not. It’s certainly not clear cut in this case, though, so what I was pointing out is that the outrage associated with questioning the IP’s status as journalists is misplaced.
Because documentary evidence needs to have a foundation, someone to say “This is true, this is how we got it, etc”. They also talked to the witnesses who changed their story. Imagine a different matter where Vinnie Victim said “I talked to Tony Legbreaker, and then I remembered I was actually at the Ice Capades that night.” There is no question that the court might have some questions for Tony. The IP students are sources of credibility for some of the other witnesses.
You don’t think reviewing the IP’s entire file, plus their grades, intraoffice memos and so on is a time sink? You’re talking about a file that’s probably the same size of the prosecutor’s own files on the case, and largely duplicative anyway.
Quis prosecutet ipsos prosecutores? 
The Bar Association, silly.