Illinois Innocence Project
American legal non-profit founded 2001
The Illinois Innocence Project, a member of the national Innocence Project network, is a non-profit legal organization that works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
The national Innocence Project was founded by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992.
Founding
The Illinois Innocence Project, formally known as the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, was founded in 2001 by Larry Golden, Nancy Ford, and Bill Clutter. The Project is housed in the Center for State Policy and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
Current staff
The current staff of the Illinois Innocence Project are:
John J. Hanlon, Executive and Legal Director
Larry Golden, Founding Director
Gwen Jordan, Staff Attorney
Lauren Kaeseberg, Staff Attorney
Exonerees
The Illinois Innocence Project's work has led to the exonerations of many wrongfully convicted prisoners in Illinois.
Keith Harris (2003)
Keith Harris, the first inmate helped by the Illinois Innocence Project, was wrongfully convicted and spent 22 years in prison despite the lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime, as well as being misidentified by the victim after seven line-ups in which he appeared. Following Keith's conviction, Girvies Davis and Richard Holman confessed to the crime, and the investigation resulted in new ballistics evidence that supported his innocence.
In 2003, Keith received a full pardon from then Governor Ryan. Keith's pardon is a full pardon, based on actual innocence. His criminal record was expunged.
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This entry incorporates text from “Illinois Innocence Project” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.