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Posted on 02.29.08 by dancurry @ 6:33 am
At CBS’ 60 Minutes, another Dan Rather-like problem may be emerging. A show Sunday that smeared Karl Rove with a very questionable “witness” is drawing fire here and elsewhere. At another corner of CBS, top executives made a prudent decision in a matter I had a role. Top officials at the 48 Hours show told me yesterday they have decided to rewrite the script for its upcoming program to remove all references to a successful Paris, IL. businessman and entrepreneur who had been unfairly included in a past segment and was to be included Saturday before our intervention. The show will take its third look at the 1986 murders of Dyke and Karen Rhodes in the east central Illinois town. This new episode will highlight the release recently of former defendant Herb Whitlock. My thoughts and participation in the case can be found here. The businessman hired me several years ago to counteract the smear job he was receiving by lawyers, the news media and other connected to the defense of Whitlock and Randy Steidl. Most of the baseless rumors about the businessman have subsided after he passed a pair of polygraphs and answered all questions of authorities without a lawyer present. It was unfair that he even had to take these steps, but he was tired of hearing the malicious gossip. The businessman reengaged my firm’s services after hearing this week that his name was going to be mentioned in the upcoming 48 Hours show. In this instance, the 48 Hours‘ execs were receptive to the arguments and facts we presented and quickly agreed that it would not be fair to include his name any longer in their show. We’ll be watching Saturday but they gave us a unequivocal promise that the changes would be made to the script. Technorati Tags: |
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Posted on 06.07.06 by dancurry @ 11:13 pm
When a “whistleblower” points his whistle in the “right” direction, the news media heels like an obedient dog and is willing to look past faults of its owner. Joe Wilson of “Plamegate” fame was glorified by the national media because he took on a president it hates, even though Wilson was found to be lying about quite a few things. In downstate Illinois, former Illinois State Police detective Michale Callahan is another media darling of sorts. He has enjoyed a string of positive press coverage ever since he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against colleagues in his department and eventually won a $360,000 judgment. But his fortunes have abruptly changed. As I pointed out earlier this week, Callahan had pointed a finger at my client, a Paris “businessman of interest” as being responsible for the murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads in 1986. The only problem is that my client had nothing to do with the murders, as evidenced forcefully this week with the news that he passed an ISP polygraph exam and answered all questions of ISP and FBI officers without a lawyer present. It was the second polygraph he passed. Without going into laborious detail, my examination of Callahan’s work product in arriving at his conclusion was revealing. His memos outlining the “case” against my client were embarrassing pieces of work, riddled with factual errors, outrageous conjecture, and third- and fourth-hand hearsay unworthy of a professional. A few days earlier, Callahan suffered an even bigger blow. The U.S. Supreme Court decided 5-4 in Ceballos v. Garcetti that employees have a First Amendment right to voice their opinions outside the office and they have the right to point out wrongdoing in the office through established whistleblower procedures. But the high court said that protection did not extend to employees who voiced disagreement with decisions while performing duties of their office. That, in a nutshell, was Callahan’s federal case: that he was transferred because he disagreed with his bosses. Legal analysts I talked to say it is likely that a court will now void Callahan’s judgment. The news media has been running with Callahan’s side of the Paris murder case for some time now. But the facts are backing up on him. They are showing that Callahan was as much a bumbler as a crusader and that those who questioned his facts were not villains but co-workers who happened to be right. Callahan’s fame clock is at about 14:58 and counting. Technorati Tags: 48 Hours, exoneration, Illinois, murder, mystery |
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Posted on 06.05.06 by dancurry @ 2:47 pm
I’m involved in an infamous Downstate murder case where the news media is generally following along a storyline that says two men were wrongfully convicted of murder and those who are fighting on their behalf are right and everyone else is wrong. What isn’t getting as much attention is that advocates for the two men are insidiously throwing mud at an innocent man. I represent that innocent man and I’m happy to report today that piece-by-piece, we are washing off the mud that has been unfairly thrown at him. Known in the news media as the Paris “businessman of interest,” my client answered hours of questions from the Illinois State Police and FBI without bringing a lawyer and then passed a state police polygraph. It’s the second polygraph he passed; the first one he paid a private firm to test him. The questions revolve around the 1986 murders of Karen and Dyke Rhoads in Paris, Illinois, a town of about 9,000 near the Indiana border southeast of Champaign. Karen and Dyke were stabbed multiple times and their house was set on fire. Convicted of the murders were Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock. Steidl was granted a new trial by a federal court and state prosecutors declined to re-prosecute him. He is free and has asked the state to grant him clemency or lifetime immunity from re-prosecution based on “actual innocence,” a request pending before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Whitlock was denied a new trial by a state court and remains in state prison. Defense lawyers know that in Illinois the news media is ready, willing and able to promote any case of innocence and that they will gloss over inconvenient facts. CBS’ 48 Hours has done two shows on the case, in 2000 and 2005, using Northwestern University journalism students’ “reinvestigation” of the case as the news hook. Their professor, David Protess, pointed the finger at my client on national television and then made an outrageously false claim about a key fact in the case. He said Steidl and Whitlock were nowhere near the murder scene at the time Protess conjectured it occurred even though Steidl himself has admitted he was driving nearby in the early morning hours to mail an unemployment form. The Tribune’s Eric Zorn has been a pivotal advocate on behalf of Steidl’s and Whitlock’s innocence and has laid out many of the problems of the case from their point-of-view. His writings have ignored some important evidence that would weaken his argument, such as some holes in their alibis, the documented cocaine selling relationship between Herb Whitlock and Dyke Rhoads, and public statements by Steidl and Whitlock that they didn’t know Dyke Rhoads when it is obvious they did. Anyway, my point is not to judge whether Steidl and Whitlock are guilty or innocent. I don’t know. I agree there are serious questions about the original case and the legal representation Steidl and Whitlock received. I do know what has been printed is blatantly one-sided and ignores important information. I could go on for a long time about some of the details of the case but won’t right now. My focus is on the smear campaign against my client. Retired Illinois State Police detective Michale Callahan, who had never headed a murder investigation, has been regaled by the media as some sort of hero. He has been the subject of fawning profiles in the Illinois Times and on a segment in the second 48 Hours piece. He was assigned to reinvestigate the case after the ISP learned 48 Hours was snooping around in 2000. He bought the theories of a defense lawyer’s investigator and quickly stated that Steidl and Whitlock were innocent and that my client ought to be investigated. His basis for that theory was contained in a series of memos that I obtained that are so riddled with factual errors I can’t believe they were written by a professional law enforcement official. Some colleagues in the State Police were dubious of the factual basis of Callahan’s theories and friction resulted. Eventually, several people were transferred, including Callahan, and he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that he mostly won on the point of whether his rights were violated, not whether he was correct about the case. It’s possible Callahan is right about the innocence of Steidl and Whitlock. But he is dead wrong about my client and he ought to say so. So should David Protess and Michael Metnick, Steidl’s attorney, who has littered the clemency petition and a civil lawsuit with the half-baked Callahan theories. Steidl and Whitlock have an absolute right to show they were unjustly accused but they don’t have the right to frame an innocent man in the process. |
