Far from Illinois, where Death Row is now empty, Laura Sullivan earns her living as a reporter covering the FBI and Justice Department for the Baltimore Sun.
Nearby, Shawn Armbrust is in her second year at Georgetown Law School, and Stacy Delo is working on a master’s degree in journalism at American University.
These women, who earned fame several years go by helping exonerate prisoners on Death Row as journalism students at Northwestern University, haven’t rested on their laurels. But Sullivan realizes that nothing will likely equal saving a man’s life.
“You get an experience like that once in a lifetime,” said Sullivan, now 29. “I don’t think you get that twice.”
When Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentences of every prisoner on Death Row Saturday, it served as a reminder that his historic and controversial act may not have been possible without the work of Sullivan, Armbrust, Delo and dozens of other NU students who took–and still take–professor David Protess’ investigative reporting class every year.
In 1996, Sullivan and Delo, along with Stephanie Goldstein, now a clerk for a federal judge, had signed up for the class for the winter quarter and were told by Protess to pick a case, go investigate it and come back with something new. They picked the Ford Heights 4.
If they hadn’t cracked the case, the next group of students might have picked the Ford Heights 4 case as well. But these students’ work helped exonerate Dennis Williams, William Rainge, Kenneth Adams and Verneal Jimerson by uncovering key evidence and getting a key witness to admit she was coerced by police to give false testimony. The men were all cleared in 1996. Armbrust and Tom McCann, now a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, were among another group of students taking Protess’ class who helped free Anthony Porter from Death Row in 1999. They made so much progress by the end of their 3-month class that Protess gave them the chance to sign on for another quarter to try to complete the job.
“For a long time the debate on the death penalty was theoretical,” said Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition against the Death Penalty. “The dramatic exonerations that these students brought about made the state’s leaders realize the death penalty was being administered in a very flawed manner.”
Few question whether the work of Sullivan, Armbrust, Delo and other NU students played a role in altering the tenor of the death penalty debate and contributed to Ryan’s decision to wipe the slate clean.
“I do think [we had an impact], and I don’t mean that to sound self-aggrandizing,” Sullivan said. “But when people see that a group of students working with a professor and lawyers can dismantle a case in six months … then nobody can think that the system is working.”
Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, believes the NU students are collectively creating a “constituency for the wrongly convicted.” Armbrust, who spent 1 1/2 years working with Warden after she graduated from NU, is one of that constituency.
“The fact that I got [my death penalty education] when I was 21 rather than when I was 40 definitely changed what I’m doing with my life,” said Armbrust, now 25. “I never said I wanted to go to law school before and definitely never wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer.”
Armbrust was in a coffee shop Saturday writing a law review article about compensating the wrongfully convicted when she realized Ryan’s speech was about to start. So she used her cell phone to call her mother, who put her phone by the TV so Armbrust could hear the speech.
Prosecutors across the state railed against the decision. But DuPage County State’s Atty. Joe Birkett did give the students credit for exposing incompetent defense lawyers.
“What the NU students did heightened the debate on the ineffectiveness of [defense] lawyers,” Birkett said before Ryan’s announcement. “Something had to be done about the poor performance of lawyers in capital cases.”
When Ryan commuted the sentences of Death Row inmates he changed the lives of hundreds of people, including the victims’ families who are outraged that the ultimate penalty won’t be meted out.
Sullivan, the reporter, says her life won’t change much after what Ryan did Saturday, because it already changed long ago.
“I used to want to go abroad and cover fluffy features,” Sullivan said. “But now I want to go abroad and cover a war.”
TIMELINE: GOV. RYAN AND THE DEATH PENALTY
Jan. 31, 2000: Gov. George Ryan declares a moratorium on executions after 13 men are freed from Illinois’ Death Row because new evidence exonerated them or there were flaws in the way they were convicted.
March 9, 2000: Ryan launches a new commission on capital punishment to study
Illinois’ death penalty system and recommend reforms.
April 15, 2002: The panel commissioned by Ryan says capital punishment should be abolished if the specific reforms can’t be enacted.
Oct. 15, 2002: The state begins a marathon series of clemency hearings for nearly every prisoner on Death Row.
Dec. 19, 2002: Ryan pardons three men wrongfully convicted of murder.
Jan. 10, 2003: Ryan pardons four others, saying Chicago police tortured the men into confessing to murders they didn’t commit.
