Keith Harris, the very 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 h
On October 13, 1997, Julie Rea 10-year old son, Joel, was brutally stabbed to death in the middle of the night by an intruder. The crime shocked the small town of Lawrenceville, Illinois.
On July 6, 1986, newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoades were repeatedly stabbed and murdered and their home set on fire in Paris, Illinois.
On August 24, 2000, two different shootings occurred in Aurora, Illinois. The first one happened at approximately 3:00 a.m. at 412 Flagg Street and the second one occurred around 5:45 a.m. in front the of Lincoln Laundromat at 15 South Lincoln.
In 1998, Anthony Murray was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 45 years in prison. After the Marion County Associate Judge ruled that Mr. Murray had received ineffective assistance of counsel, Murray’s case was reexamined.
Peggy Jo Jackson was convicted of first-degree murder for her indirect involvement in the 1986 death of her husband William Jackson. William was an abusive husband, and after a week of violent beatings and sexual assaults, Peggy’s brother Richard entered the Jackson family home to confront William about the abuse. Meanwhile, Peggy fled the home with the couple’s three young children to take refuge at a neighbor’s house.
Christopher Abernathy was only 17 in 1984 when 15-year-old Kristina Hickey, a high school student and girl he knew, was brutally assaulted and murdered in Park Forest, Ill. (Cook County). The crime shocked and terrified residents of this small suburban community south of Chicago, and went unsolved for more than a year.
Angel Gonzalez was proven innocent by DNA testing and released from prison in March 2015 – after serving nearly 21 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.
His nightmare began on July 10, 1994, when a woman in Waukegan, Ill., was forced out of her apartment building into a waiting car by two men who drove her several blocks away and violently raped her.
Teshome Campbell walked out of prison a free man on January 29, 2016, after being wrongfully convicted and imprisoned 18 years for a murder he did not commit.
The Illinois Innocence Project (IIP) is very pleased to announce that our client Charles Palmer was exonerated and freed on Wednesday November 23, 2016, after 18 years of incarceration for a murder that DNA proved he did not commit. The case involved the 1998 murder of a man in Decatur IL. The victim had expired with an unknown person’s tissue under his fingernails, and another person’s hair in his hand, both of which went untested prior to trial. DNA testing of these items was litigated successfully by the Illinois Innocence Project, over the State’s objection.