Rob Warden is a co-founder of Injustice Watch and executive director emeritus and co-founder of the Center on Wrongful Convictions (CWC) at Northwestern University School of Law. During his 16-year tenure, the CWC was instrumental in exonerating 31 wrongfully convicted men and women in Illinois. Before launching the CWC, Rob was editor and publisher of Chicago Lawyer, where his investigations into Illinois capital cases launched a movement that culminated both in the founding of the Center in 1999 and abolition of the Illinois death penalty in 2011. His reporting at Chicago Lawyer was instrumental in 13 exonerations, including that of Gary Dotson, the nation’s first prisoner to be exonerated by DNA. Before that, Rob was a prize-winning investigative reporter for the Chicago Daily News and Washington Post. He has won more than 50 journalism awards and is the author of seven books.
A decade ago, a gang member Tony Rosalez was convicted of an Elgin drive-by murder after two other gang members gave statements to police that Rosalez had pulled the trigger. Both have now recanted and said Rosalez is innocent, leaving Rob Warden to question what Rosalez is still doing behind bars.
Rob Warden writes that though he opposes the idea of defamation suits, he can’t help taking pleasure in the Illinois Appellate Court this week reinstating a libel suit by a private investigator who contends that he was falsely accused of misconduct in the course of a high-profile exoneration.
Injustice Watch co-founder Rob Warden reflects on the death of Jim Tuohy, a journalism legend who helped expose the kind of judicial corruption ultimately exposed in Greylord.
Father George Clements, who died last week, did many great things in his life. But Rob Warden reveals one about which nobody knew.
Nobody doubts that Charles Ray Jarrell Sr. shot and killed Marlin Shuler, a marijuana dealer, in 1990, after the two had been drinking beer together by a northern Alabama lake.
Four years after the naked and battered body of Barbara Jean Horn was found in a trash bag in Philadelphia, the police had made no arrests despite having a series of suspects.
Two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigators were on their way to dinner in October, 1988, when a man armed with a handgun suddenly emerged from between cars parked in a Houston lot and robbed them.
In January, 1982, a Greenwood, South Carolina resident was found dead in her bedroom closet by her neighbor, Jimmy Holloway.
Responding to Darlie Lynn Routier’s frantic 911 call from her Dallas County home in 1996, police found her two sons, Devon Routier, 6, and Damon Routier, 5, dying of stab wounds.
This is the first in a series of cases that Injustice Watch is featuring over coming weeks called “Unrequired Innocence.” Each of the
cases involves defendants given death sentences who have not been exonerated, despite significant evidence that emerged casting doubt on their guilt. The case of Larry Swearingen represents the only one of these cases in which the defendant has been executed.