Should Innocence Projects Publicly Disclose When The Investigation Shows Guilt? Medill IP Just Has….

Fisk Hall, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

The Medill Innocence Project apparently has adopted a new policy to publicly disclose facts uncovered in their investigation which suggest guilt.  Their first disclosure of “bad facts” was this week.  This policy raises interesting ethical and moral questions (as well as structural and administrative questions).  From the article:

Last December the Medill Innocence Project posted on its website the results of a ten-week investigation into Gomez’s case by seven Northwestern students. They’d raised what the site called “serious questions” about Gomez’s conviction.

On Wednesday the Innocence Project did something remarkable. It posted new material on Gomez that challenges his claim that he’s innocent. The widow of Diaz is interviewed. “If he’s innocent, or not innocent, God will forgive him. It doesn’t matter to me,” she says. And a long-lost witness is tracked down, the only one of the four other teens in the car whom Medill students hadn’t already interviewed.

““He’s guilty,” he tells the Innocence Project. “He is guilty, and this is coming from a longtime friend.”

The Medill students haven’t reversed themselves here. Diaz’s widow has no new light to shed on the crime beyond conveying her ongoing loss and sadness. There are all sorts of inconsistencies in the account of the new witness, and the website points them out.

But it’s hard to see how the new material will do Gomez’s cause any good. Prosecutors welcome any excuse for letting sleeping dogs lie and murder convictions go unrevisited.But what the Innocence Project clearly has accomplished is to put more distance between its present operations under professor Alec Klein and its old operations under its founder, David Protess. The new material was announced by a news release whose message, despite some clumsy wording, is clear:

“For the first time in the Medill Innocence Project’s 13-year history, students tell the victim’s story and publish an article about co-defendant of Illinois inmate Ariel Gomez who disputes Gomez’s claims of innocence.”

More here.