The following story was published by CNN on Dec. 13, 2023.
"A man wrongfully convicted in the 1988 murder of a 6-year-old boy in Illinois is free after 35 years behind bars, the Cook County State’s Attorney Office said.
Brian Beals, who was a college athlete studying to be a police officer when he was arrested, was released after a Cook County court granted a petition to vacate the conviction, according to a statement from the state’s attorney’s office.
Beals, a Southern Illinois University student at the time, was visiting home when he “became the unintended target of a local drug supplier’s threats,” the University of Illinois Springfield, the base of the Illinois Innocence Project, said in a news release."