She’s Done Worse
Life is war to reporters in Possley’s line of work. For the past several years he and a few colleagues have churned out investigations of prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions. These series have yet to win the Tribune the Pulitzer they deserve, and they’ve offended just about every prosecutor in America. Earlier this year Possley sat in the dock for weeks as a jury decided a defamation suit brought by one of them, Du Page County’s Thomas Knight. Possley prevailed, but Knight’s appealing.
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The two columns in the Long Island Press said last month what Possley and Mills had said last December–a Texas man was convicted of murder and executed on the basis of discredited evidence. “The main reason I was exercised,” Possley e-mailed me, “was because the story of Cameron Todd Willingham was a remarkable story. I think we came as close as anyone has yet–absent DNA–to showing that an innocent man may have been executed. Steve Mills and I found that case, we re-investigated it and we wrote the story. . . . This isn’t like reporting just on the execution, which was a quasi public event, widely reported. Without our story, none of those other stories that came later would have been written.”
Woliver says that after reading Possley’s e-mail he contacted the Press’s lawyers and started going through Fisher’s list of sources and the other reporting on the Willingham case he found online. He also called around to find out who Possley was–he figured anyone so hotheaded had to be a kid starting out. “I was actually surprised to see he had a lot of work under his belt,” Woliver tells me. “I heard from several people he’s very combative.”
“I will be consulting with our lawyers.”
The Press picked two bad examples. Amnesty issued an “urgent action” alert a few days before Willingham’s February 2004 execution because it opposes the death penalty. It made no mention of forensic evidence. Four days after Possley and Mills published their article Amnesty issued a statement citing it. The Daily Texan lifted quotes from the Tribune story, but it also cited the Tribune as a source.
Fisher’s story wasn’t fine. I won’t go so far as to call it plagiarism, but the unwritten code that governs journalists obliged the Press to give the Tribune credit. If only Possley had simply asked.
