Medill Innocence Project
For the Law School project, see Center on Wrongful Convictions.The Medill Innocence Project began in 1999 as an effort by Medill faculty and students to reinvestigate murder convictions in Illinois and determine if people were wrongly convicted. This effort has helped to free 11 innocent men, including Anthony Porter. Medill Innocence Project work is credited with prompting Illinois Governor George Ryan in 2003 to suspend the death penalty and commute all death sentences.
From 2009 to 2011 the project was involved in a dispute with the Cook County, Illinois state's attorney over the handling of the Anthony McKinney case. The university claimed reporter's privilege in resisting a subpoena for Innocence Project records of the case, while the state claimed the project had been acting as investigators in behalf of McKinney's counsel. Medill faculty member David Protess, Innocence Project founder and director, was suspended during this dispute. In 2011 Protess left to found the Chicago Innocence Project and blog for the Huffington Post while the school gave up the records.
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Famous quotes containing the words innocence and/or project:
“Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“In 1869 he started his work for temperance instigated by three drunken men who came to his home with a paper signed by a saloonkeeper and his patrons on which was written “For God’s sake organize a temperance society.””
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)