Ethics

That's what 60 Minutes claims it's doing with its coverage of Alton Logan's case.  But it's hard to see how the story accomplishes that goal; the reporting of Logan's seemingly wrongful conviction focuses almost exclusively on two criminal defense lawyers for another man, Andrew Wilson, who confessed to the crime many years ago.  Indeed, in the television interview, the reporter subjects Wilson's lawyers to some rigorous questioning about why they didn't disclose Wilson's confession at the time of Logan's initial trial.  (For a nice discussion of admissibility issues in the case, see here.)

The problem with the story, which is otherwise a good one, is that it fails to explore the true cause of wrongful convictions.  If the reporters really wanted to "cut to the core of America's justice system," they would have questioned the prosecutor about why he/she focused on Alton Logan in the first place.  They would have questioned the jury, which nearly sentenced Logan to death, and asked them why they found the case against Logan to be so compelling.  And they would have spoken to the three eye witnesses, who all fingered Logan in the crime.  Why were they all wrong?  The answers to these questions would cut to the core of the American justice system, but they received nary a mention on the show. 

So before anyone, including the press or the public, criticizes Wilson's lawyers, ask why the system seems to have failed in Logan's case and why it has failed so regularly in Illinois and elsewhere.