Northwestern U. Will Give E-Mail to Prosecutors

Northwestern University will hand over to local prosecutors some 500 e-mails exchanged between journalism students and the former head of the university’s Medill Innocence Project, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The university had argued that the students, who were investigating whether a convicted murderer had been unjustly imprisoned, should be treated as reporters, with their e-mail protected under an Illinois law privileging reporters’ communications. But the judge had ruled that, whether or not they were journalism students, they were working under the supervision of the Northwestern law school’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, and so were not covered by the Illinois law. In a statement, the university said it disagreed with the judge but would not appeal her ruling. The prosecutors had subpoenaed the e-mail as part of their own investigation of the case.