I am responding to Michael Miner’s November 29 column [Hot Type]–specifically to comments he attributed to me which I feel were taken out of context. Miner and I spoke for at least a half hour regarding Rene Brown’s role in the Ford Heights case, and about David Protess’s contribution. He quotes me quite accurately about Brown.
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Let me ask your readers a question: Which Chicago journalist leads the pack in getting people out of prison who were wrongly convicted of murder? Answer: Protess. Who are the grateful former prisoners? Answer: David Dowaliby, Kenneth Adams, Verneal Jimerson, Willie Rainge, Dennis Williams, Steven Linscott, and others. Did Protess do all this by himself? Of course he didn’t. But did he help put together the legal investigative and journalistic teams to get it done? You bet he did.
Now should Protess be vilified as some kind of glory hound because a never-licensed amateur investigator, Rene Brown, is really pissed about not getting what he believes to be adequate credit? What did Brown do with the information he claims to have had since 1980? Get real. This isn’t about Brown’s supposed quest for “truth,” as he tells Miner. This is about envy and an inability to cash in.
Private Investigator
