Midwestern Innocence Project Experience
One of my most valuable experiences at the Missouri School of Journalism has been in my work with Professor Steve Weinberg and the Midwestern Innocence Project. I have learned, and continue to learn, about the many problems with our criminal justice system. More importantly, I’ve learned how to confront those problems as a journalist and investigator in an immediate, purposeful way. The Midwestern Innocence Project, in combination with the knowledge I gained in Professor Weinberg’s Intermediate Writing course, has provided me with the power and means to work with a UMKC law student on an actual innocence claim. I started work on this case in January 2009, and have spent much of my final semester of college traveling to southern Missouri to conduct numerous interviews as well as reading and organizing nearly fifteen boxes of paperwork on the case. Although I have enjoyed many story assignments I’ve been given in the journalism school, this experience has allowed me to use and strengthen my skills as a reporter and writer, and created a path for my future that I am equally passionate about and confident in pursuing.
In sum, the Midwestern Innocence Project, specifically the case that I have worked so diligently on with my partner, has taught me to be a more daring journalist. It has taught me to care more, ask both simple and complex questions and to be outraged by my findings when necessary. The case I’m working on involves a man who was co-convicted of murdering a 15-year-old girl. There is no physical evidence or DNA connecting our client to the murder. The entire case was built according to a single witness testimony that was later inflated by several people who received deals in return for statements. Our client has been in prison since 1997 for a murder I am 90 percent sure he did not commit, and my certainty increases daily.
I learned to care when I discovered the sheer magnitude of wrongful conviction cases. This was primarily in Professor Weinberg’s class, where I began and continue to pursue a profile of one of the attorneys on the board of directors at the Midwestern Innocence Project. I quickly learned how busy she was, and I committed at the point to volunteer in some way with the project in hopes of lightening the work load and to connect with the person I wanted to profile. My mind wouldn’t rest with the new knowledge that innocent people were trapped in prisons all over the country. At first, I didn’t know how much time I would be able to devote. Now I give as much of my free time as possible to the case. I find myself constantly talking about wrongful convictions, and I’m encouraged because so often the people I talk react in shock, as I did, prior to being introduced to the world of wrongful convictions.
I learned to ask a variety of questions in the interviews I’ve conducted on this case. So many professors preach that you have to ask the easy questions in order to ask the more difficult ones. I’ve learned that you have to ask both kinds of questions not because one yields the other, but because they both generate extremely valuable information. I think the best example of this in an interview I recently conducted with one of the prosecuting attorneys in our client’s case. In the very beginning of the interview I noticed a large black briefcase sitting next to my chair. Of course I began the interview by explaining who I was and a little bit about the Innocence Project, but some of my first questions were about his confidence in the use of a “Voice Stress Analyzer Test” he used in the mid-90s. He responded that he thought it was credible and that it was proven in most cases to be consistent with polygraph tests (which are also completely fallible). As he was answering I looked down at the briefcase and asked what I thought was a filler question: “Would this happen to be one of the voice-stress test machines?” It was. At that point, I didn’t necessarily find this valuable information. However, I continued to press him about the device, got to see it first hand and discovered that somehow he is still using this faulty equipment. This is when I learned that it is OK to be outraged.
When I say I learned to be outraged, I don’t mean I learned to scream or lash out at people. I’m a relatively controlled person. What I mean is that the feeling of utter frustration I experienced in the above interview has led me to speak out about the ignorance and arrogance of many people in the criminal justice system. I learned to push through the fear of the uniform and the business suit and question people until they provide a legitimate answer to the question I’m asking. In this case, my partner and I discovered the two questions people wouldn’t answer right away: What makes you believe he is guilty when the physical evidence does not match and how do you explain the lack of DNA evidence? The most common response from jurors, attorneys and law enforcement alike: “He just looked guilty.” Outrageous. And the very reason I am continuing work on this case following my graduation in May. I know now that I want to pursue a career in the criminal justice system. I’m still in the process of deciding if I want to do this as a journalist, a lawyer or in some other way. However I choose to go about it, my experience with the Midwestern Innocence Project has put me in the field and given me a memorable, real-world encounter with the injustices in our justice system.
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