David Protess

A few days ago, I wrote about a new report that documented the staggering scope of wrongful convictions: over 2,000 felony exonerations nationally in the last 23 years, an average of more than one case a week of officially acknowledged mistakes. Today, I will introduce you...

We see their broad smiles as they stride to freedom, exchanging embraces with loved ones and flanked by jubilant lawyers. We watch as they step to a bevy of microphones and briefly describe the prison hell they left behind and the uncertain future that lies ahead. For some, a decade...

Many Chicagoans came to know Christopher Drew from his artwork, which he hawked rain or shine on the streets of the Loop -- until he was arrested while protesting the growing restrictions on its display and sale.

Charged with violating the city's peddling law, Drew found himself in more trouble...

It is a saga of murder and injustice that spans three decades, and even now a surprising new chapter is being written.

Anthony McKinney, a black teenager, was convicted of the 1978 shotgun slaying of white security guard Donald Lundahl in South Suburban Harvey. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but...

Texas law enforcement officials have come up with some mighty creative legal arguments over the years to justify executing Hank Skinner without first testing evidence that could prove his innocence -- or confirm his guilt.

At times, they claimed the tests would be costly to the taxpayers. Then Skinner's legal...

Howard Morgan will soon begin serving a 40-year sentence for attempted murder, but putting him behind bars will not conceal the truth of what happened the night he was pulled over by Chicago police.

Morgan, a black railroad detective and former Chicago police officer, was driving near his...

When four white Chicago police officers shot a black railroad detective 28 times -- mostly in the back of his body -- it appeared that we would only learn what happened from statements by the cops. Their version: the man who was shot pulled a gun following a traffic stop...

What do we owe an innocent prisoner after he is freed? Apparently nothing in the 27 states with no laws to compensate the wrongfully convicted.

The innocents in those states are released with fewer resources than if they had done the crime and served the time. Rapists and...

On a blustery December afternoon in 2009, Chicago artist Chris Drew set out to break a municipal ordinance to make a point: the City was unfairly restricting the sale of artwork. Two cops obliged Drew by arresting him on misdemeanor charges as he hawked $1 art prints on State Street...

When Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez recently announced that she had created a unit to review questionable convictions, her critics were openly cynical. They doubted whether a career prosecutor who had repeatedly fought wrongful conviction cases would carry out her promised "change in philosophy" about mistakes by...

Rhythmically bouncing a faded orange basketball with his right hand, Stanley Wrice drives past a defender half his age, dribbles left and stops on a dime. Freezing a muscular youth in his tracks, Wrice pulls up and lofts the ball towards the rusted cylinder. Floating fifteen feet, the ball's arc...

"Okay, I know how bad it sounds, but they all really do look alike to me..." said the cartoon rabbit to police after viewing a "line-up" of several animals depicted on the other side of a glass partition.

Was the bunny racially insensitive? Did his comment invoke the cliché that...

Hollywood relishes tales of villains, victims and heroes, so it is not surprising that movies about miscarriages of justice have long been a staple of the film industry. Like vintage Westerns, there are plenty of black-hatted bad guys (cops, prosecutors, prison guards), innocents crushed by the power of the State...

Ask Lake County, IL prosecutor Michael Mermel who raped and murdered 11-year-old Holly Staker in 1992, and he'll insist that Juan Rivera broke into the home where Holly was babysitting and committed the crime. Rivera confessed, the head of criminal prosecutions for the north suburban county will tell...

They were young and in love, three happy couples from different times and places. They were planning to raise children and spend the rest of their lives together. They could not have imagined that they would die together without fulfilling their dreams, violently murdered at the hands of the lowest...

While abolitionists cheered the news that Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber had declared a moratorium on executions last week, the public reacted with surprise. Oregon has the death penalty?

Indeed, only two Oregonians have been executed in the last 27 years. (Texas killed two in the last month...

It was Chicago's feel-good story of the week. A Cook County judge on Wednesday overturned the convictions of four men who, as teenagers in 1995, falsely confessed to the rape and murder of a 30-year-old woman. The men were cleared by DNA evidence that linked a career criminal...

On the surface, Stanley Wrice is just another lifer, serving his 29th year of a 100-year sentence, killing time until time kills him.

The Illinois Department of Corrections website describes him as black, male, 5 ft. 11 in., 195 lbs. No marks, scars or tattoos....

The saga of Hank Skinner's fight for DNA testing, and for his life, reads like a Russian novel. Yesterday's chapter concluded with a stay of execution by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Texas high court agreed to decide whether a new state DNA law applies to...

On Wednesday, at 6 p.m. Central, Texas officials intend to strap Hank Skinner to a gurney, inject poisonous chemicals into his veins, and end his life. Only a stay by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, or a reprieve by Gov. Rick Perry, stand in the way of Skinner's execution.