Rushing to judgment in big-news crime cases

In the Globe, Eileen McNamara writes that sometimes police are too quick to name suspects. Noting that Imette St. Guillen grew up in Mission Hill, the neighborhood turned upside down in the Charles Stuart case, she writes:

... If Littlejohn is guilty, evidence will tie him to the crime. But am I the only one in Boston who gets shivers reading that detectives are going door to door interrogating every young black man in Littlejohn's Queens neighborhood who might have been an accomplice? ...

John Daley, who works for the Boston police, agrees premature release of investigative information is a problem. But he says the press must share the blame:

... What about the tremendous pressure that crime reporters receive from their editors to get something, anything, on a big crime story? Is that a factor? How about the reporters who cultivate disgruntled and often out-of-touch anonymous sources within the police department, manipulating them with fluff to get them to talk about things that they only know second or third hand? ...