J. Carl Ganter is co-founder and director of Circle of Blue, the international network of journalists and scientists that reports on global water issues. He is a reporter, photojournalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared across all media, including National Geographic, Time, Rolling Stone, National Public Radio and WMAQ-TV. His photos of the principals in the Dowalby murder case appeared in David Protess and Rob Warden's book, "Gone in the Night." He has presented at the World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative and Aspen Ideas Festival. Mr. Ganter received his master's degree from Medill in 1991 after graduating with honors from the University’s American Studies Program in 1987.
It was the day my DNA would change. Forever.
Journalism must be genetic for relentlessly driving David Protess, Rob Warden, me and others to dig deep into a controversial Chicago murder case. Mountains of notes left behind by a dying investigator, a court system run by political expediency and a man who might not have done it. It was 1990, and David Dowaliby had been convicted of murdering his adopted 7-year-old daughter, Jaclyn.
Over 18 months or so, our journalistic tag-team had unraveled a complicated case that, it became clear, had led to Dowaliby's wrongful conviction. After thousands of hours of gumshoe reporting and back-room research, David Dowaliby would be freed and I would drive his wife, Cyndi, to meet him at Stateville, the maximum security prison in Joliet, Illinois.
The experience, much of it documented in Protess and Warden's book, "Gone in the Night," was exhilarating, depressing, enticing and exhausting, but always rewarding and simply life-changing. I now run an international nonprofit journalism project and have recently presented at the World Economic Forum, Aspen Ideas Festival and Clinton Global Initiative. The Dowaliby case and my experience as a student of David's at Medill forever shape my vision of what can be done when truth is held to power. I have lost count of the moments when I've mentally rewound the Dowaliby tape, playing back the experiences that underscored the power of persistence and dogged reporting.
When people ask me about the value of story, about the impact of journalism, I ask them if they have a moment to hear about a day when my metaphorical DNA changed. The day when I saw an innocent man walk free.
Shawn Armbrust is the Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, where she works to prevent and correct wrongful convictions in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and earned a journalism degree with honors from Northwestern University, where she helped free Anthony Porter, an innocent man on Illinois' death row. Before entering law school, she was the case coordinator at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law. While in law school, she interned for the Mississippi Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, participated in the Criminal Justice Clinic, and was a Senior Articles and Notes Editor of the American Criminal Law Review, where she wrote her note on the compensation of the wrongfully convicted. Following law school, she served as a law clerk to Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She also is an Adjunct Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Georgetown Law, is the director of Georgetown’s Public Interest Law Scholars program, and is a member of the National Committee on the Right to Counsel.
It would be hard for me to exaggerate the impact that David’s class and the Porter case have had on my life. I’ve often said that I signed up for the class because it sounded cool and because I wanted to avoid taking another writing class. No one seems to believe that, but it’s true. I definitely didn’t come in with the expectation that – 10 years later – I’d be running an innocence project.
I can’t put my finger on exactly what made me love this work so much, but it was instantaneous. The first thing that made is so appealing was David’s enthusiasm. As a student, seeing a professor who is so passionate about what he does immediately makes it interesting. The opportunity to meet Dennis Williams and Kenny Adams [two of the Ford Heights Four] in our second class solidified the importance of the work; if you’re lucky, you'll have the chance to help someone regain their freedom. Finally, I loved the nuts and bolts of the work: reading trial transcripts, digging up documents, and – most of all – interviewing witnesses.
I was lucky. I chose to work on the Porter case, which ended in exoneration. I can’t really describe how many doors that opened for me. Doing both the investigation and the media interviews that followed gave me a confidence and poise at a young age that I never would have been able to obtain otherwise. In high school, I had to quit playing the piano because I was so nervous that I shook profusely during recitals. Four years later, I was interviewing witnesses in prisons, doing live television, and giving speeches in front of U.S. senators.
Tangibly, my work on the Porter case got me a great job after college graduation at the Center on Wrongful Convictions and got me into the Public Interest Law Scholars program at Georgetown Law. It made law school much easier, both academically and because I had a keen sense of why I was there. It enabled me to meet an amazing assortment of people – senators, exonerees, criminal defense lawyers, investigative journalists, and even my husband. It introduced me to work that I love and that has a very real impact on the lives of people who have nowhere else to turn. And it informs the work I do every day at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, from the way I teach my own students to investigate to the way I think about my cases.
It’s hard for me to imagine the path my life would have taken without David’s class, but I have a hard time believing that it would be as fulfilling or interesting as the life I have now.
Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine, covering US politics, and an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. He’s also written for The New York Times, Editor & Publisher, The Guardian and the Huffington Post and appeared as a political commentator on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, C-Span and National Public Radio. His first book, about the transformation of the Democratic Party from Howard Dean to Barack Obama, will be published next year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
David Protess was the best teacher I had at Northwestern University and his Investigative Reporting class was the best class I took. But it was so much more than that. It was one of the most challenging, agonizing and rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. My work on the Anthony McKinney case taught me to be a persistent, meticulous, driven reporter. It helped me feel comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings and make difficult decisions in a quick and decisive manner. It taught me the essential values of justice and empathy, which I strive to uphold every day.
David empowered us as students to think for ourselves, take ownership of complicated, sometimes dangerous issues, and made us believe that we could play a powerful role in rectifying terrible instances of injustice. He was a mentor, a guide and an adviser, but he insisted that we do the work. The task was daunting from the start and often it didn’t get any easier. We learned on the go, began to trust our instincts, carefully gathered facts and navigated incredibly fraught, tricky circumstances the best we could. David wanted us to not only eventually accomplish a tremendous goal—getting to the bottom of terrible miscarriages of justice—but to grow as people and professionals in the process. You can’t describe what it’s like to work on a wrongful convictions case until you’ve actually done it. The work stays with you and wrenches at your heart. As tough as it was (and still is), I’m forever grateful for the experience.
Stephanie Chen is a features writer and producer at CNN.com in Atlanta, covering a wide swath of topics including crime, travel, entertainment and technology. Previously, she worked at the Wall Street Journal for two years, writing about economics and politics in the Southeast. She has also covered crime and local news at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans and The Miami Herald.
My work at the Medill Innocence Project has inspired me to continue investigating miscarriages of justice and exposing the stories of people affected by such wrongdoing. While at CNN.com, I have investigated corruption in the juvenile justice system, explored the stories of youth sentenced to life in prison without parole and written about the effects of incarceration on family members. At the Wall Street Journal, I wrote about the expansion of private prisons in the U.S. and Georgia’s Draconian sex offender policies. In March of 2007, I took my interest in prisons and the criminal justice system abroad, reporting about the mounting HIV rates in South Africa's prisons.
At the Medill Innocence Project, I spent six months investigating the case of Christopher Abernathy, interviewing numerous sources from all walks of life. My team traveled throughout the Midwest to investigate leads. I learned to locate and interprete complicated court documents and build a case from the paper trail. These experiences endowed me with the reporting skills, patience and persistence that have been vital to my success in the professional world.