A Constituency for the Innocent
About the Center on Wrongful Convictions (Updated December 10, 2011)
Since its founding following the 1998 National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty, the Center has been instrumental in the exonerations of 34 innocent men and women in Illinois. Before the founding of the Center, members of its staff were instrumental in 14 additional exonerations — including that of Gary Dotson, who in 1989 became the first person in the world to be exonerated by DNA.
Of the 48 exonerees, 13 had been sentenced to death. In all, they languished 478 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit. At an average cost per prisoner of $25,000 per year. The taxpayers’ tab for the wrongful imprisonment of the 37 innocent men and women (three of the latter) well in excess of $15 million — which pales beside the social costs of lives and careers destroyed and families devastated. Not to mention the death and destruction that resulted from leaving violent criminals on the street.
The Center was one of the first university-based innocence project to accept non-DNA cases as well as DNA cases. Of the 48 exonerations in which the Center or members of its staff have been involved, 22 were non-DNA cases. Typical of the non-DNA cases are those of Gordon “Randy” Steidl, Tabitha Pollock, Julie Rea, Robert Wilson, and Jacques Rivera (our most recent non-DNA exoneree). Among our pending cases non-DNA cases outnumber DNA cases more than two to one.
Non-DNA cases are moving increasingly into the forefront of the criminal justice reform movement as the era of post-conviction DNA exonerations comes to an end (because almost all DNA testing now is done prior to trial). Through our investigation and litigation of non-DNA cases, we have developed cutting-edge expertise in cases involving false confessions, jailhouse informants (snitches, in the vernacular), and fire deaths.
The Center was a driving force behind both the moratorium on executions declared by former Governor George Ryan in January 2000 and his decision to commute all Illinois death sentences in January 2003. In recognition of the Center’s role, the Governor chose Lincoln Hall at Northwestern Law School as the venue for his blanket clemency announcement.
Center research on factors leading to wrongful convictions also was a driving force behind a comprehensive package of criminal justice reforms approved overwhelmingly by the Illinois General Assembly in November 2003. Perhaps the most significant reform is a requirement that police — as a safeguard against coerced confessions — electronically record all custodial interrogations of suspects in murder cases. (Coerced false confessions were factors in 16 of the 37 aforementioned exoneration cases.) Illinois was the first state to address the problem by statute, which makes statements inadmissible unless the entire interrogation has been recorded. Six other states have since followed the Illinois lead — Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
Although Center attorneys focus primarily on post-conviction cases, occasionally they serve as co-counsel with experienced trial lawyers, working pro bono, in the retrials of cases that have been reversed and remanded. Ronald S. Safer, the managing partner at Schiff Hardin LLP, joined Center attorneys in the retrial of Julie Rea, who was acquitted of murder following a two-week retrial in Clinton County, Illinois in 2006.
In 2004, Center attorneys, students, and staff were instrumental in persuading Indiana Governor Joe Kernan to commute the death sentence of a young African-American prisoner named Darnell Williams, whose case became the subject of an American Justice episode entitled Countdown to an Execution that aired on A&E in 2005. In 2006, the Center won the posthumous exoneration of Clyde Kennard, a Mississippi civil rights pioneer who was framed in a 1960 burglary case and sentenced to seven years in prison after attempting to integrate the University of Southern Mississippi; Kennard died of cancer in prison in 1963. In 2008, the Center joined pro bono attorneys from Washington, D.C. to secure a sentence commutation for John Spirko, who faced imminent execution in Ohio for a murder he almost certainly did not commit.
The Center has been amicus curiae in seven cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and the supreme courts of various states in support of issues of importance to the wrongfully convicted. In 2008, the Japanese Supreme Court accepted a Center brief in a notorious mass murder case in which a confession of an 81-year-old defendant named Masaru Okunishi may have been coerced. It was the first such brief ever filed in Japan by a U.S. legal organization.
The Center regularly sponsors forums designed to raise public awareness of the causes and social effects of wrongful convictions and to foster reforms to improve the fairness and accuracy of the criminal justice system. One such forum, in February 2008, highlighted the plights of five innocent Center clients who, although officially exonerated, have been waiting years for compensation that is supposed to be automatic under Illinois law. After the forum, the Illinois General Assembly approved a bill that will make it possible for courts to speed the compensation process.
The challenges before us
Reforming the criminal justice system to reduce the numbers of men and women sentenced to prison for crimes they did not commit will remain a Center priority for the foreseeable future.
Needed reforms include:
- Expanding the Illinois law requiring police to electronically record interrogations in murder cases to all cases, particularly child sexual assault cases.
- Forbidding police interrogators to lie to suspects about the evidence.
- Abolishing the use of polygraph examinations during interrogation.
- Reforming police lineup procedures to reduce erroneous identifications by victims and eyewitnesses. (Psychological research has shown that replacing traditional lineups with a sequential double blind process reduces misidentifications by half.
- Holding police and prosecutors accountable for misconduct in criminal investigations and prosecutions.
- Increasing and speeding compensation for the wrongfully convicted.
Non-DNA cases
DNA often is regarded as the gold standard or proof of actual innocence, but it isn’t the only standard as these Center clients illustrate:
Gordon “Randy” Steidl was sentenced to death for a 1986 double murder based on the testimony of two alcoholics who falsely claimed to have seen the crime. The Center won Randy’s release on a writ of habeas corpus in 2003 and the charges were dropped the following year. Tabitha Pollock was sleeping when her live-in boyfriend killed her 3-year-old daughter in 1995. Tabitha was convicted of first-degree murder based on the prosecution’s contention that she “should have known” the boyfriend posed a danger to the child. The Center won an outright reversal of the conviction in 2002.
Julie Rea was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 65 years in prison for the murder of her 10-year-old son in 1997 in Wayne County — a crime that in all likelihood was committed by a serial killer who committed similar crimes in Missouri and Texas. That killer, Tommy Lynn Sells, confessed to the crime. After Harper won a new trial, she was acquitted by a jury in Clinton County, where Center attorneys tried the case on a change of venue. In addition to presenting the Sells confession, Center lawyers introduced extensive forensic evidence demonstrating that there was a third person in the house who not only killed Joel Kirkpatrick but who also attacked Harper. This evidence included injuries to Harper that could not have been self-inflicted and bloodstains on her clothing demonstrating that she had struggled with a third person.
Robert Wilson was convicted of a 1997 slashing attack on a nurse based on an erroneous identification by the victim, who told police he was the wrong man — before they persuaded her otherwise. The victim came forward and apologized after the Center won a federal writ of habeas corpus in the case.
