Editor’s note: Carolyn Nielsen is the faculty adviser for the Welcome Back issue of The Western Front. She did not take part in the writing or editing of this article.

Western assistant professor of journalism Carolyn Nielsen has successfully beaten two subpoenas served to her in March by lawyers for the Chicago Police Department.

A federal judge in Seattle on Aug. 18 granted Nielsen’s motion to quash, or dismiss, the subpoenas requesting she turn over her documents related to the 1994 murder trial of then-13-year-old Thaddeus Jimenez.

Nielsen wrote about the trial while a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Chicago, and noticed holes in the case against Jimenez as she was reporting for her articles.
Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington also granted Nielsen’s request for reimbursement of her attorney fees and costs, as well as a protective order stopping the defendants from seeking anything else from her.

Jimenez was convicted in 1994 and sentenced to 45 years in prison for the murder of an 18-year-old.

Eleven years later, Nielsen’s reporting on the flawed case caught the attention of lawyers from Northwestern Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions. In 2006, two witnesses recanted their testimonies.

Jimenez was exonerated in May 2009 after 16 years in prison.

After his release, Jimenez sued the Chicago Police Department and several individual officers and detectives. The defendants’ lawyers then subpoenaed Nielsen’s notes, as well as her correspondence with Jimenez, in an effort to build a case that they had probable cause to arrest Jimenez at the time.

In her motion to quash the subpoena, Nielsen’s lawyers claimed journalist’s privilege applied to her documents, which she used to write articles and had kept to someday publish a book.

The court agreed.

“All of the documents were created with journalistic intent from inception, and culminated or are intended to culminate in publicly consumable publication,” the order read.

For the defendants to prevail over journalist’s privilege, they needed to show that the information in Nielsen’s documents was relevant to the case and that they could not obtain it anywhere else. The court ruled that neither was true.

In her words

“It’s one of the first things they teach you in journalism school,” Nielsen said. “Never give up your notes.”

Could you describe how the process of fighting these subpoenas has been for you?

It’s been very stressful. It went on for a long time and it involved both a story that was very important to me, and the First Amendment, which is also very important to me. It was really stressful.

Why did you choose to fight the subpoenas?

Journalists should never be an investigative arm of the police. I fought the subpoena completely on principle. If I didn’t fight it, I would have been doing wrong by a profession that I love very much and respect very much, and I would have hurt other journalists’ ability to do the type of investigative work that we so much need to do.

What was your reaction to the court’s ruling?

I was so relieved. I think the biggest thing was relief, but I was also, honestly, proud to have been part of something that helped uphold reporters’ ability to do good work. So it felt really great to me personally, but I also thought that it was good to be a part of something that was good for journalism.

What are your hopes, if you care to share them, about Jimenez’s suit against the Chicago Police Department? Will you follow the proceedings?

I’ll follow them in the newspaper. Obviously, I have always seen that a tremendous wrong was done to [Jimenez]. That’s why I wrote the stories in the first place. I sincerely hope that the horrible wrongs that were done to him will be righted, as much as they can be. I don’t think you can really compensate someone for the loss of their childhood.I