Talk:Murder of Nathan Blenner

Should we change the name of the article?

Thanks for writing this article! I'm wondering if it might be better to change the title of the article to Convictions That Were Wrongfully Overturned. He is notable and has gotten enough media coverage to justify a wikipedia article. I'm not sure we have enough information on Blenner's history or his murder, and I'm not sure that his murder is notable. As is, pretty much the entire article is focused on the wrongful conviction, which I think is the correct move, that's where the notability is, that's what all the press coverage is about, but it's awkward for the reader that the title is about one person, then the article is about another. If we keep the article about Blenner, I think we would need to find more about the murder as opposed to just the move to get these two guys freed. What are your thoughts, Werldwayd? Bali88 (talk) 05:27, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I have some concerns about changing the title for two reasons. First without the murder case, there is no notability anyway. So we are just replacing the name of the main victim, Brenner, with the name of a partial victim of due judicial process. Second concern is that Willie Stuckey was subjected to exactly the same wrongful conviction and stayed 16 years in prison and died in jail. Why would we then give preferential treatment to the injustice (wrongful conviction) suffered by David McCallum who stayed for 29 years in prison but survived and could see the light of day and now enjoys freedom. I think the fate suffered by Stuckey of not seeing freedom for even one day beyond his 16 years when the crime happened was much worse dieing in prison... But the worse was the fate suffered by Nathan Blenner himself. In any case, mind you, the article as it stands now is about the case, not the Blenner "person". As for the imbalance, it can be remedied by adding more details about the murder case and the original trial as well. At the end though, this is a matter of discussion as Wikipedia is a collective work. I am just one contributor, but was surprised that no one had bothered to cover the case in Wikipedia despite the Canadian documentary which I had the chance of watching during Hot Docs that I attended. That film created great interest actually.... and I am just happy the page is there now. You may take the naming issue though to discussion to get a wider feedback from fellow editors. werldwayd (talk) 08:56, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't know there was a Canadian documentary! I'll have to look into that. Certainly Stuckey deserves as much recognition as McCallum, but the fact is that he died before being exonerated and the majority of the media coverage that I've seen focuses on McCallum. To me, it makes more sense to focus on him because that's where the media is focusing. It's just that Wikipedia doesn't typically think about who "deserves" an article, just that they are notable. We could even do Wrongful conviction of David McCallum and Willie Stuckey, I've seen a few wrongful conviction articles titled in that way. I'll see what I can find in terms of info about the Blenner case to see if we can justify the article titled after him. Bali88 (talk) 00:45, 18 October 2014 (UTC)