Students conduct study to test guilt of prison inmates

Four journalism students are working with law students this semester to investigate claims by some inmates that they are innocent of the offenses for which they are incarcerated.

Three print journalism students and one broadcast student are in the first independent study of its kind that allows them to work with law students already involved with the Actual Innocence Clinic, the organization affiliated with the law school that reviews claims of innocence. Together the students conduct research, interview witnesses and visit prison inmates to gather evidence that may prove an inmate’s innocence.

Journalism lecturer Kate Dawson and clinical journalism professor Bill Minutaglio oversee the independent study, which began this fall. The journalism and law students meet in the John B. Connally Center for Justice every Monday evening.

“This is not Morgan Freeman and the ‘Shawshank Redemption,’” Dawson said. “The [inmates] are not exactly sympathetic characters.

They may have committed petty crimes [such as theft], but this is not a country that convicts people before they commit a crime [such as murder or rape].”

The clinic receives nearly 100 investigation requests from across the state per month, said Tiffany Dowling, the clinic’s staff attorney. Dowling screens the requests and decides which ones warrant further investigation. Cases are investigated until either the inmate’s innocence is established or it is determined enough proof of innocence does not exist.

Each student is looking at three to five cases. Broadcast journalism senior Kaitlin Lawrence went to Huntsville, Texas, to interview an inmate who claimed innocence for the first time last Thursday.

“I guess I’m used to interviewing people, but there were bars separating me from the person I was interviewing, and that’s obviously not normal,” Lawrence said. “I was basically trying to piece together, ‘Did you or did you not commit this crime?’

I expected it to be intimidating, but it really wasn’t. I was more or less judging [him] instead of trying to just get to the heart of the story. The important thing to consider is, ‘Do we really believe these people are innocent?’”

Dawson’s father, Bob, founded the Texas Center for Actual Innocence, a nonprofit corporation that operates the Actual Innocence Clinic, in 2003 with two colleagues, clinical law professor Bill Allison and adjunct law professor David Sheppard. Bob Dawson died in 2005.

“He’s the reason I’m doing this,” Dawson said. “[The clinic] is something that kept him alive probably two years longer than he should have. He wanted me to be involved with the clinic.”

There have been four exonerations in Austin, two of which were done by Allison and another done by Sheppard.

There are only two other innocence organizations in the country that actively work with journalists, Allison said.

“Of all the almost 500 exonerations obtained in the U.S. so far, there are only two groups involved in it: lawyers and journalists,” Allison said. “Journalists often have an innate curiosity that doesn’t exist in law students or is somehow beaten out of them.”

Many involved, including Dawson and Minutaglio, said they hope the study becomes a class in the future.

“In a time of some confusion and turmoil in the news media industry, I think there’s no more important time to get back to the sort of fundamentals of journalism and think about what it’s supposed to do for us in a democratic society,” said Tracy Dahlby, director of the School of Journalism. “One of those things is to play the role of the watchdog. There’s no better example than journalists studying cases where wrongful conviction might be a possibility.”

Dahlby said the class is in its beginning stages and that it may be too early to predict the future of the course.

“Eventually, it may take a different form,” he said.

Other journalism department staffers were “overwhelmingly supportive” of the project, said senior journalism lecturer Dave Garlock, who is not involved with either the clinic or the project.

“The project gives students a chance to do real journalism and maybe explore the ability to do things that help look out for people who can’t look out for themselves,” Garlock said. “I can’t think of a better way to use the students.”

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Fri Oct 9 2009 12:20

I have a son who was sentsced to 50 yea5rs for a murder he did not do! The real people who did it testifed against him! The guy who did it was on house arreest and cut his ancle braclet off and ran , When the police cought him he had the murder weapon and several thousand dollars cash on him the police belived his story about being scared of my son, right I need your help in getting him freed! Contact me at leadb0ttum@yahoo.com or at ( 317) 809-0192 my name is Milton Medsker thank you

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