Gordon “Randy” Steidl is scheduled to be freed from an Illinois prison today (May 28th), 17 years after he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to die for the 1986 murders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads. He will be the nation’s 114th death row inmate to be exonerated and the 18th freed in Illinois. The case against Steidl has long drawn criticism from journalists such as Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune, and investigators familiar with the facts of the crime. An Illinois State Police investigation in 2000 found that local police had botched their investigation so badly that innocent men, Steidl and his co-defendant Herbert Whitlock, had been wrongly convicted. Steidl won a new sentencing hearing in 1999 because of the poor representation he had received at trial. At the conclusion of his re-sentencing hearing, he was given a sentence of life in prison. In 2003, a federal judge ordered a new trial for Steidl, stating that if all the evidence that should have been investigated had been presented at trial, it was “reasonably probable” that a jury would have acquitted Steidl. Following the federal ruling, the state reinvestigated the case, including tests on DNA evidence, and found no link to Steidl. Based on the results of the investigation, State Attorney General Lisa Madigan decided not to appeal the federal ruling and Edgar County prosecutors plan to announce today (May 28) that they will not retry the case. Steidl has maintained his innocence since his arrest. (Chicago Tribune, May 27, 2004) See Innocence. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois had pardoned 4 death row inmates based on their innocence in January 2003, while commuting from death to life the sentences of 167 other inmates. Thirteen other death row inmates had been freed earlier in Illinois, leading to the moratorium on executions that remains in place today. See Illinois Developments.