JOMC 254 – Specialized Reporting

Fall 2000

253 Carroll Hall, 3:30 – 6:15 p.m. Tuesday 

Instructor: Philip Meyer       Office: 376.  Hours: By appointment (see Mrs. Pawlow in 377);  drop-ins welcome.   

Adjunct: Pete Weitzel           Office: 369. Hours: 1-3:30 Tuesday, 9-noon Friday.

The work of the course

The innocence project 

            This course will be the introductory effort of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, a joint project of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the UNC-CH School of Law and the Duke Law School. Our piece of it is to kick off the investigative phase.

            Our premise is that the North Carolina prison system includes some inmates who were sent there unjustly. Our task is to discover one or more of them and impart the truth about their cases. 

            We envision a main story that analyzes the problem of criminal justice in general. Each member of the class will do part of the reporting for this story and everyone will write a first draft. The writer of the best draft will be asked to do the final version, incorporating reporting from the entire class. 

            Each member of the class will also carve out an individual project. In most cases, this project will be a case study of a specific individual and how the system treated him or her.

Starting schedule 

August 22            Weitzel presents cases for possible investigation. Initial assignments will be made and teams formed.We’ll brainstorm background on the broader social issue of flawed justice. 

August 29       Richard Rosen of the Law School will discusse the death penalty in North Carolina.  Students will present their proposed strategies for pursuing individual cases for class discussion and critique. 

September 5             David Loomis will discuss the Little Rascals case and the evolution of attitudes toward accusations of sex offenses. Students will present the first results of their investigative efforts. 

September 12             Two speakers: Gene Miller, the Miami Herald reporter who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for getting the unjustly convicted released from prison, and Warren Holmes, the polygraph specialist who helped him. 

Plans for September 19 and beyond will be announced as developments unfold.

Project office 

            We expect to generate a lot of paper in this project. We’ll maintain files in Room 369, and class members can get access by borrowing the key from Nancy in 377.

Textbook 

     Actual innocence : five days to execution and other dispatches from the wrongly convicted / Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck. New York : Doubleday, c2000. 

Suggested readings 

A promise of justice  /   David Protess, Rob Warden,  Hyperion, New York, 1998. 

Convicted by juries, exonerated by science:  case studies in the use of DNA evidence to establish innocence after trial.  /  U.S. Department of Justice.     Office of Justice Programs.  National Institute of Justice.  1996. 

A broken system:  error rates in capital cases, 1973-1995.  /  The Justice Project. James S. Liebman et all.  Columbia University.   Can be downloaded with Acrobat Reader at www.The JusticeProject.org 

Invitation to a lynching / Gene Miller.  Garden City, New York : Doubleday, 1975. 

Satan's silence: ritual abuse and the making of a modern American witch hunt.  /   Debbie Nathan, Michael Snedeker,New York: Basic Books. 1995[LOCATION:

Davis Library -- CALL NUMBER: HV6626.52 .N379 1995]