[audio: David Protess on "Life After Exoneration"]

MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at (847) 491-4890 or w-leopold@northwestern.edu

December 9, 2003

Project Will Help Exonerated Prisoners

David Protess

EVANSTON, Ill. --- David Protess -- the Northwestern University journalism professor whose investigations with his Medill School of Journalism students have helped free eight men wrongfully convicted of murder -- plans to launch a pilot project to help exonerated prisoners rebuild their lives outside of prison.

Protess discussed his preliminary plans Thursday, Dec. 4, after he was awarded the 2002 Puffin/Nation Prize for Citizenship by the Puffin Foundation and The Nation Institute. He plans to use a portion of the $100,000 cash award as seed money to launch a pilot post-incarceration support program and will seek support from private foundations to institutionalize the project.

"David's concern for the exonerated after they leave prison is a natural extension of the concern he exhibits directing the Medill Innocence Project and teaching his remarkable undergraduate investigative reporting classes," said Medill School of Journalism Dean Loren Ghiglione. "Since 1992, David has focused his classes on searching out the truth by investigating -- and often helping to overturn -- possible miscarriages of justice."

Protess said he would name the pilot project the “Life After Exoneration: The Dennis Williams Project” in honor of the late Williams, who spent 18 years wrongfully incarcerated on death row in Illinois. Williams died of an apparent heart attack earlier this year. Working with Rob Warden, now executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, Protess and his students played a key role in establishing Williams’ innocence and the innocence of three other men who together came to be known as the Ford Heights Four.

"I truly believe that Dennis Williams would be alive today if he'd received adequate health care and counseling upon his release," Protess said. "Dennis never recovered from his ordeal in part because he received wholly inadequate support in the first few years after his release."

The wrongly convicted receive no support of any kind from the state upon leaving prison. They eventually may receive monetary compensation but the amount varies and, said Protess, "they often must jump through hoops to get it." Typically it takes at least two years for the wrongly convicted to receive any money from the state. Some wait a decade or longer. "It's during this time -- when they have little or no resources -- that intervention and services are needed," he said.

In accepting the prize, Protess said that it should also go to the students, lawyers, private investigators, journalists and others who investigate, report on or fight against miscarriages of justice. If it takes a village to raise a child, he said, it takes a community of journalists to raise an issue.

Aaron Patterson, who credits Protess for his release from death row almost a year ago, called the Medill professor a hero. Watching Protess work his miracles, he added, was like “something out of Perry Mason…Dave threw a rope to all of us on death row.”

"All of us at the Medill School of Journalism are extremely proud of David Protess, his students and everyone else responsible for the Medill Innocence Project’s achievements," said Dean Ghiglione. "Given the Project's successes and its transforming effect on the students who participate in it, I am delighted that the Puffin/Nation Prize will further the Project's important work."