The Medill Innocence Project

The Medill Innocence Project was founded in 1999 at Northwestern University allows undergraduate students to investigate wrongful convictions under the tutelage of Professor David Protess, the Project's director. Upon being freed from death row on February 5, 1999, Anthony Porter embraces Professor David Protess as the students Syandene Rhodes-Pitts, Tom McCann, and Shawn Armbrust watch. Porter was scheduled for execution just 50 hours before his exoneration with evidence which was developed by Protess and his student team. Protess and his students have uncovered and developed evidence that have set free 11 innocent men, five of which were on death row. The Project's work, which has been featured on "Dateline NBC", "60 Minutes", "48 Hours", and the front pages of The New York Times and the Washington Post, has been cited for stimulating a national debate on the death penalty.

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan credits the Project's investigations in freeing Anthony Porter (a death row inmate) in 1999, and, in January 2000, helped to persuade him to establish a moratorium on the death penalty and the following decision for all death row inmates to be granted clemency before he left office in January 2003. Aaron Patterson was one of the four prisoners whom the Govoner exonerated outright, had, since it's inception, been the subject of the Project's investigations. The exoneration came on the basis of new evidence of his innocence and the guilt of two other men in the crime for which Patterson was accused was developed by Protess and his students. "A system that depends on young journalism students is flawed," Ryan said during his speech which granted the blanket clemency. During his speech he praised Professor Protess for being a teacher who has "poured his heart and soul" into helping his students free innocent men.