Exoneration 101
When you’re investigating potential wrongful convictions, a variety of skills are necessary — some journalistic, some legal. That’s why a new partnership between journalism and law students at UBC makes perfectly good sense. Cecil Rosner reports.
Investigative journalism, almost by definition,
requires a significant commitment of time and resources – commodities that are
in short supply at most news organizations.
That’s why it makes perfectly good sense to harness
the talents of students to help with the research work that any good
investigative project entails. Properly trained and mentored, a team of
students can provide the research muscle for any ambitious project.
This lesson has been grasped well at the UBC Graduate
School of Journalism, where a team of students and faculty won an Emmy award
this year for a documentary about electronic waste. And a recent initiative by
the school to partner with law students could play a significant role in
uncovering new cases of wrongful convictions in Canada.
Earlier this month, the school announced a partnership
with UBC’s law faculty to investigate miscarriages of justice in BC. Since
2007, the law faculty has run an Innocence Project that has been looking into
more than 20 murder cases. The joint-venture is the first of its kind in Canada.
UBC’s Innocence Project is one of three across the country. The
others are at Osgoode Hall and McGill, and all involve law faculties. Merging
the talents of law and journalism students seems like a no-brainer, but no one
has done it before in Canada. So it is encouraging to see such a partnership
come to fruition.
Tamara Levy, a law professor and director of the UBC
project, says on the university’s website that the journalism students “bring
unique skills that will help us shed some light on our investigations and move
them forward more quickly.” Mary Lynn Young, director of the journalism
school, sees it as “a great opportunity for students to learn investigative
journalism skills” in collaboration with the law faculty.
Students have played a pivotal role in overturning
convictions in the U.S. for years. Most famously, the Medill journalism school
in Chicago developed evidence that has freed 11 innocent men, five of them from
death row, since 1996. Former Illinois governor George Ryan credited the
school with helping provide the impetus for his moratorium on the death penalty
in 2000.
One of the most memorable and gratifying projects in
my own career involved an investigation into the wrongful conviction of David
Milgaard. Through news stories, documentaries and eventually a book, we were
able to document an extraordinary case of a man who spent 23 years in jail for
a crime he didn’t commit. Seeing how that work impacted both the justice
system, and one man’s eventual freedom, was humbling.
What better training could there be for journalism students than to be involved in a similar pursuit?
To get some idea of how life-changing those experiences can be, you just have to peruse the stories of Medill alumni and read their descriptions of watching an innocent man walk free – in part, because
of their work.
There will be no shortage of cases in Canada to
investigate. It’s estimated that as many as five per cent of convictions could be faulty. It is only the fortunate few who link up with a lawyer, family member or journalist who are persistent enough to spend the time and resources to investigate their case.
The UBC project says it hopes to put forward its first
case for ministerial review by the end of the year. With the new potent partnership of law and journalism students, there is little doubt that we will soon be learning about new cases of wrongful convictions from British Columbia.
November 17, 2010
Sorry, folks. Journalists —
Sorry, folks. Journalists — and journalism students — must act independently. Collaboration with activists, even in pursuit of a worthy cause, is bad. The best reporters dig up their own facts.
November 18, 2010
Don, I think your comment
Don, I think your comment expresses a common misperception about the nature of journalistic objectivity. By “activists” are you referring to the UBC law students who will be looking into the wrongful convictions? I don’t think they will be advocating for anyone until they are convinced the evidence so warrants. There is a difference between “activism”, as you call it, and inviting audiences to draw conclusions on the basis of journalistic research. And if “collaboration with activists” is a problem, by the way, then any investigative journalist who has relied on an insider or whistleblower for information is in serious trouble.
The CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices handbook, for instance, has this to say in the section on Investigative Journalism: “Programs may lead the audience to conclusions on the subject being examined. These must be logical conclusions derived from the facts and not from expressions of editorial opinion or unfair methods of presentation.” In other words, if a comprehensive investigation leads journalists to conclude that a David Milgaard or Guy Paul Morin or Steven Truscott is innocent, journalists should not feel shy about saying so, and inviting audiences to draw that conclusion.
Journalists who begin their investigations with the aim of proving a predetermined thesis, and then express their opinions in support of that thesis, are indeed betraying objectivity and exhibiting bias. But those who set aside preconceived notions and seek out the facts, then arrive at conclusions based on those facts, have no reason to be afraid of inviting audiences to draw appropriate conclusions.
Not every investigation into a wrongful conviction leads to an exoneration. Some lead to a conclusion that the accused is guilty as charged. I am confident the faculty and students at UBC will do good investigative work in this regard. Their part of the work is journalistic. Once a worthy case is identified, it will be up to the law students to take it forward from there. Without this kind of journalism, many innocent people in Canada would still be behind bars.