The Last Avenue of Justice?

October 22, 2008
By Gary Smothers
Staff Writer

The office sits behind an innocuous looking door, located in a hallway most
students never have the chance to travel down. Inside, it’s a cluttered mess. Large ringed binders sit here and there. At the back of the room in a corner sits a metal bookshelf full of three ring binders all marked “Slover,” each of them with a different connotation as to their contents and purpose. This is the home of the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project.

The project is meagerly funded by the state (most recently its funds were cut by Gov. Rod Blagojevich by $240, 000) and private donations. People such as John Hanlon, Attorney for the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender as well as an instructor here at UIS, and Dr. Larry Golden, Professor Emeritus of Political Studies and Legal Studies, work to free
those accused of felonies within the state after all other recourses have been exhausted.

What they do not do is obtain exonerations via legal technicalities. The innocence project instead focuses on eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, ineffective counsel, unreliable forensic evidence, and misconduct by both prosecutors and police.

They are often viewed by some with a skeptical eye. Some cases provoke emotion, the need for revenge, biblical justice if you will. Others believe that “the law” most always gets things right.

Hanlon freely acknowledges that while our legal system is the best in the world, it is broken.

The probability of it ever being fixed? “Not as long as there are politicians.”

Sitting is his office surrounded with mounds of case file, Hanlon asks with an emphatic wave of his hand, “Do we trust the government to fix our roads, spend our money why would we trust them with this?”

“We arrive at the truth, not by reason only, but also by the heart.” --Blaise Pascal--

He further explains the necessity of the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project. “There’s a lot of power in prosecuting. Like everything, there needs to be a balance.” He continues on with an analogy explaining that to dip a net into the water to catch one particular fish, one comes up with several. He likens these “other fish” to the mentally ill, developmentally delayed, wrongly-accused, and those possessing too low of an IQ to stand up for themselves, to demand justice. Eventually, it is too late for them.

In steps the Innocence Project.

Currently, the project is focusing much of their efforts on the 1996 murder of Karen Slover. In 2002 Michael Slover, Jr., Michael Slover, Sr., and Jeanette Slover, were convicted and sentenced each to 60 years in the first degree murder of Karen Slover.

The project believes that they were innocent of the crime and are pursuing their exoneration through illustrating the lack of evidence (including canine DNA and a rivet from a pair of jeans found on a car lot owned by Michael Slover Sr.), faulty police work involved with their conviction, and a well documented alibi for Michael Slover Jr. Innocence Project workers believe there is very good reason to believe that the murder was committed by others.

The Downstate Illinois Innocence Project is always looking for student volunteers and those interested in service through an Applied Studies Term. Hanlon points out that service in such a capacity offers a rare and exciting chance to actually participate in a real case, conducting live interviews, taking phone calls, and pitching in wherever is necessary.