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and said the release of the memo held little real weight in the case. The attorneys suggested the release of the memo was an attempt to influence the jury pool in the wake of the approaching trial.
A few weeks later, Mills left the Tribune after more than two decades.
The pattern of wrongdoing alleged in the Simon law- suit suggests that other cases Mills covered as wrongful convictions/police misconduct are also false, including his reporting that Madison Hobley, released in 2003 for the ar- son that killed seven people, was also a wrongful convic- tion.
What does all this have to do with Kenny Boudreau?
Ever since Mills’ article about Boudreau in 2001, Bou- dreau has been targeted by wrongful conviction attorneys and activists. Boudreau is facing allegations that confes- sions were coerced from four men for the gang rape and murder of a woman in 1994 on the south side in the infa- mous Englewood Four case.
The county has already settled with one of the men, Ter- rill Swift, for more than $5 million, even though the detec- tives were led by Swift to a nearby lagoon where he said the offenders dumped a mop handle and a shovel. The detec- tives found both items in the lagoon.
In the coverage of this story, journalists at the Tribune still cite Mills’ 2001 article about Boudreau. None of the ev- idence that Mills got at least some wrongful conviction sto- ries completely wrong affects the coverage from current re- porters, even in the face of Mills’ most recent articles about
the Valentini memo.
In a July 20 article about the Englewood Four case, Tri-
bune reporters Jason Meisner and Dan Hinkel wrote: “Among the men sued was Kenneth Boudreau, a former detective whose history of obtaining dubious confessions
was detailed in a 2001 Tribune series.”
And from a May 18, 2017 article by Tribune reporter Steve
Schmadeke:
“Among the officers sued is Kenneth Boudreau, a long-
time detective whose history of obtaining dubious con- fessions was detailed in the 2001 Tribune series Cops and Confessions.”
Isn’t it time for the Tribune to conduct a review of Mills’ work? Isn’t it time that reporters vet his coverage before they use it as a source for their current stories? Isn’t there enough suspicion surrounding Mills’ coverage to consider that Boudreau is wrongfully accused, just as the detectives in the Porter case were?
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics re- quires that journalists must “...expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.”
Don’t journalists at the Tribune have an ethical and pro- fessional obligation to investigate the suspicious reporting of one of their own reporters before they cite his question- able conclusions in their own reporting? Isn’t this the very least the Tribune should do, given its almost weekly articles claiming a “code of silence” among the police?
Until Tribune reporters and their editors do so, they give new life to the “fake news.” d
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