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.
Eighteen days before Stacey Lee Stites was supposed to be married to a rookie police officer, her body was found in April, 1996 by a passerby in the brush on the side of a road in a rural county not far from Austin.
This is the third 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. Thomas Ward and Karl Fontenot have not been exonerated despite evidence that their “dream confessions” are proven fiction.
In their new study, Injustice Watch co-founder Rob Warden and reporter John Seasly have identified a troubling category of cases: Defendants sentenced to die who have not been exonerated despite significant evidence of their innocence.
A young woman long ago admitted to making a false accusation. But almost a decade later, the conviction remains intact.
A Chicago law firm for the past 50 years has worked to protect civil liberties and oppose government oppression. That firm is the People’s Law Office, and in honor of its milestone Rob Warden reflects on its history.
Rob Warden reviews the case against two Oklahoma defendants wrongly convicted in a case in which prosecutors withheld significant evidence, and offers a suggestion on the appropriate remedy.
Kary Banks Mullis, who died last week, may not be a name well known in the world of criminal justice. But as Rob Warden notes, his work certainly was.
Rob Warden tells how a 16-year old could so vividly, but falsely, describe being raped — a story that put Gary Dotson, though innocent, behind bars for a decade.
Nationwide, approximately one in three of persons who have been exonerated by DNA had been convicted in whole or part on the testimony of witnesses who later recanted. Rob Warden writes on the 30th anniversary of Gary Dotson’s exoneration: It is long since time to stop distrusting the recantations?
Rob Warden asks: Should a gang-related murder conviction stand solely on recanted identification testimony of a single gang member?