Michigan Prosecutor Wants To Question A Journalist, Peggy Lowe, And Several Law Students About Their Role In Gathering Evidence In The Dwayne Provience Case Showcased In This YouTube Video
Journalists and law students have been investigating criminal cases for years. Much of their work has been used to convince judges to free prisoners convicted of serious crimes such as murder and rape. For years, judges and prosecutors have accepted the evidence gathered by journalists and students and have never questioned the authenticity of their new evidence. That is now starting to change. In the last few months we have seen Cook County prosecutors subpoenaing student records - searching for why and how witnesses are changing their stories after all these years.
Now, it appears this trend is moving to Michigan. The metro times is reporting: that a Wayne County prosecutor wants University of Michigan Law School students to testify against a man they've been working to exonerate. Innocence Clinic co-director David Moran is asking Wayne County Circuit Judge Tim Kenny to strike the students from the witness list, as well as a journalist who sat in on some of the clinic sessions last year as part of a fellowship. Moran argued at a hearing Monday that the students have the same confidentiality privileges that lawyers have, and that assistant prosecutor Robert Stevens should not be able to call them to try to make his case. "What Mr. Stevens has requested would decimate our legal team," Moran said.
As part of their work with the Innocence Clinic, the students helped their professors last year convince Kenny to set aside Dwayne Provience's 2001 murder conviction. At the time, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy agreed evidence was withheld from Provience's defense at his trial and that he should be granted a new one. Kenny released the 36-year-old Detroit man from prison and scheduled a new trial for April 5. Provience had been serving a 30-to-60-year sentence for the March 2000 death of Rene Hunter, who was fatally gunned down at a northwest Detroit intersection. Police have said it was drug-related.
Stevens filed his witness list March 5, and it includes six students who have been enrolled or interned with the clinic, another law student who was present at witness interviews and a California journalist named Peggy Lowe. A writer for The Orange County Register, she was part of the prestigious Michigan journalism fellowship program last year, and attended clinic sessions and interviews.
At Monday's hearing, Stevens responded to Moran's objections to the students' possible testimony. Stevens said because the students have had statements published in newspapers, have interviewed Wiley and appeared in a YouTube video about the case, he should be able to call them to the witness stand. "All this is fair game," Stevens said in court. "I need to know the context of [Wiley's] conversations with each of these persons. Each one of those persons is a prosecution witness." Kenny requested a written argument from Moran due March 25, and scheduled a hearing for March 29. "I think I need you to brief this issue as to how, in effect, law students become attorneys for the duration of the entire trial," he said.
Scott Burns, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, says the students' research raises interesting questions that could affect how far any confidentiality privilege extends. "Are they detectives? Are they investigators? Are they now inserting themselves into the criminal justice system, which is fine, but not necessarily as defense attorneys?" Burns asks. Roles other than as defense attorneys could make them prosecution witnesses, he says.
We will be following this story. Hope to see more questioning going on. Why after all these years and a couple of interviews by law students and journalists are witnesses recanting? Whats the real story? The students and the journalists should come clean. Once again - we've said it before - if there is nothing to hide, than there is nothing to worry about - or is there......
