MEDIA CONTACT: Pat Vaughan Tremmel at (847) 491-4892 or at p-tremmel@northwestern.edu

February 26, 2002

Conference Experts Will Argue Heirens Case

CHICAGO ---Remember William Heirens, who in 1946, at the age of 17, confessed to three murders? Now 73 and the longest serving prisoner in Illinois, Heirens will be the subject of an American Justice television show that will be premiered at a symposium on false confessions.

The symposium, which will reexamine the Heirens case in the context of what is now known about wrongful convictions, will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. March 7 at Northwestern University School of Law, 357 E. Chicago Ave. It is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Children and Family Justice Center at the School of Law, the symposium on false confessions will include several experts, including a media panel that will bring home the "Front Page" era of 1946, when the Heirens case made headlines on a daily basis.

Northwestern attorneys and their law students, who are seeking clemency for Heirens, will argue that his case is the "grandfather of false confession in Illinois" and one of the grossest miscarriages of justice in Illinois history.

They will demonstrate that the case is overwhelmingly tainted by prosecutorial and police misconduct; pretrial publicity orchestrated by police and prosecutors; incompetent defense; junk science; false confessions; and mistaken eyewitness testimony.

Symposium participants include:

Lawrence Marshall, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and Steven Drizin, associate clinical professor of law, Children and Family Justice Center, and their students, who will present arguments from a clemency petition for Heirens (filed by the Northwestern centers with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board last week) and findings from a new report on wrongful convictions

Richard J. Ofshe, a leading authority on false confessions at the University of California at Berkeley

Christopher Ochoa, who spent 12 years in prison after falsely confessing to a murder he did not commit

Jeanette Popp, mother of the 20-year-old victim in the crime to which Ochoa falsely confessed

Media panelists Vernon Jarrett, the Chicago Defender; John Drummond, formerly of Channel 2; Jack Lavin formerly of the Chicago Daily News; and Ed Bush, formerly of Chicago American.