Charles Palmer

The Illinois Innocence Project (IIP) is very pleased to announce that our client Charles Palmer was exonerated and freed on Wednesday November 23, 2016, after 18 years of incarceration for a murder that DNA proved he did not commit. The case involved the 1998 murder of a man in Decatur IL.  The victim had expired with an unknown person’s tissue under his fingernails, and another person’s hair in his hand, both of which went untested prior to trial.  DNA testing of these items was litigated successfully by the Illinois Innocence Project, over the State’s objection.

Innocent McHenry County woman represented by the UIS Illinois Innocence Project walks free after 19 years of wrongful imprisonment

Walks out of prison

The Illinois Innocence Project (IIP) at the University of Illinois Springfield is pleased to announce its client Jennifer McMullan has been released after more than 19 years of wrongful imprisonment for a murder she did not commit. At a court hearing on Wednesday, June 16,at the McHenry County Courthouse, the State vacated McMullan’s murder conviction and sentence, and presented a plea agreement that would release McMullan that day with her sentence considered “time served.”

Innocent man represented by UIS Illinois Innocence Project receives pardon 30 years after wrongful convictions

The IIP argued Propst's case before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board in 2019.

The Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield is pleased to announce that its client Norman Propst, who was wrongfully convicted twice – in 1991 and 1997 – in Cook County has been pardoned, based on actual innocence, by Gov. JB Pritzker. 

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