PWAC backs Finkle in opposing demand for Baltovich research

The Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) is supporting Toro editor Derek Finkle in his fight against a court order that he turn over the notes from his book on the Robert Baltovich murder case. Baltovich was convicted of the 1990 murder of his 22-year-old girlfriend, U of T student Elizabeth Bain. The case is being retried after a conviction was overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal and the prosecutors are demanding Finkle's notes and documentation gathered in the course of writing No Claim to Mercy.

“In our view,” says PWAC President Suzanne Boles in a release, “prosecutors are attempting to use a writer’s good and professional work to build their case, and that is not how a free society expects their justice system to act. The principle of source confidentiality must be respected and protected, or our free press unravels.”

Finkle's 1998 book became a Globe and Mail "Book of the Year". In the New York Review of Books it was hailed by Joyce Carol Oates as "original and provocative...a model of investigative journalism." In 2005, Derek won a gold National Magazine Award for his investigative reporting into the Robert Baltovich case.