December 9, 2003
Project Will Help Exonerated Prisoners
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." |