The for­tu­itous inves­ti­ga­tion of a case by per­sis­tent jour­nal­ists, rather than the work­ings of the lim­it­ed appel­late process, has led to the exon­er­a­tion of a num­ber of inno­cent indi­vid­u­als. Maurice Possley (l.), a for­mer reporter for the Chicago Tribune, recent­ly wrote how he and fel­low-jour­nal­ist Steve Mills (r.) helped free Daniel Taylor (c.) in Illinois, where he had spent more than 20 years in prison. In 2001, the reporters pub­lished a sto­ry expos­ing the false and coerced con­fes­sion that led to Taylor’s con­vic­tion, but it would be more than a decade before Taylor was freed. Evidence showed that Taylor was arrest­ed for fight­ing and was in jail on the night of the mur­ders in ques­tion. Eventually, the state dis­cov­ered doc­u­ments in the prosecutor’s files that had remained hid­den for 19 years indi­cat­ing police offi­cers were cer­tain Taylor was in jail and could not have com­mit­ted the crime. Taylor’s is among the 1,200 wrong­ful con­vic­tions list­ed in the National Registry of Exonerations. DPIC’s Innocence List includes 142 death row inmates who have been exon­er­at­ed and freed. Such inves­ti­ga­to­ry report­ing con­tributed to Illinois’s deci­sion to abol­ish the death penal­ty in 2011.

Taylor was freed on June 28, 2013. He had not been on death row, but 20 oth­er men who were con­vict­ed of mur­der and sen­tenced to death have been exon­er­at­ed and freed in Illinois.

(M. Possley, ​“How Two Newspaper Reporters Helped Free an Innocent Man,” The Atlantic, August 29, 2013; pic­ture cour­tesy of M. Possley was pub­lished in The Atlantic arti­cle). See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

Citation Guide