Area : SNETNEWS

Date : Thu Jun 20, 10:02                                                       
From : Donna J. Logan                                        1:330/201.1
To   : All                                 
Subj : Class Project Leads to Pris Releases (fwd)                            
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Reply-to: snetnews@alterzone.com
From: "Donna J. Logan" 
Originally to: snetnews@alterzone.com,
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Original Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 09:11:18 -0400 (EDT)


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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 22:08:47 -0700 (PDT)
To: Recipients of pol-abuse 
Subject: Class Project Leads to Pris Releases

From: Bob Witanek 
Subject: Class Project Leads to Pris Releases

Posted owner-prisonact-list@igc.org  Tue Jun 18 15:43:28 1996
Subject: Freed from death row - student project

||| News forwarded by the Prison Issues Desk |||

Thanks to mnovickttt@igc.org

3 Inmates Freed After Students Probe Sentences

Saturday, June 15, 1996 L.A. TIMES

It started as a class project for three college journalism
students:  Take another look at a real-life crime and see whether
the right people were punished.
     
The assignment took the students and their professor on a
six-month odyssey from the campus of Northwestern University to
crack houses and prisons across Illinois.
     
It ended Friday--Graduation Day--when three men who had
spent 18 years in prison for murder were released based on DNA
evidence and the dogged efforts of the class group.
  
"That four people are going to be walking out of--I want to call it a
hellhole--where they've been sitting for 18 years, and to know you had some
direct impact on that is a good feeling," said Stacey Delo, one
of the students.
     
The inmates, Kenneth Adams, Willie Rainge and Dennis Williams, had 
maintained their innocence in the 1978 murders of a gas station worker 
and his fiancee.  Twice, juries decided otherwise.
     
Six months ago, professor David Protess, who specializes in
investigating possible wrongful convictions, wrote details of
four cases on the chalkboard in his investigative reporting
class.
     
One case was included at the urging of a man executed last
year.  Hours before his death, the man made Protess promise to do
his best to save the life of a fellow death row inmate:  Williams.
His was the case Delo and fellow seniors Laura Sullivan and
Stephanie Goldstein chose for their class project.
     
Williams, Adams and Rainge were convicted of killing Larry
Lionberg and Carol Schmal, who had been abducted from the
suburban Homewood gas station where Lionberg worked.  Schmal was
raped, then both were shot in the head.  Rainge was sentenced to
life,  Adams to 75 years.  Williams and a fourth man, Verneal
Jimerson, were sent to death row; Jimerson recently won an appeal
and is free on bail.
     
Legwork and determination led the women across the city to
Ford Heights, known as East Chicago Heights when Adams, Rainge
and Williams lived there.
     
They spoke to Paula Gray, whose testimony helped convict the
three men and Jimerson.  Gray had told police that she and the men
killed Lionberg and Schmal, but she changed that story so often
she eventually went to prison for perjury and murder.  Gray told
the students she was pressured into testifying against the
others.
     
The students also found Marvin Simpson, who said he knew the
real killers and told authorities so just six days after the
crime.  But the police records of his interview appeared
"sanitized," Protess said.      

Finally, in an interview in a southern Illinois prison, convicted 
murderer Ira Johnson told the Northwestern team that he, his now-dead 
brother and two other men killed Schmal and Lionberg.  Another man named 
by Simpson and others, Arthur "Red" Robinson, also signed a statement 
that said he was an accomplice.  The fourth man named by Johnson has not
been found.
     
The discoveries persuaded prosecutors to agree to DNA tests
on semen found in Schmal.  Prosecutors said the results showed
that none of the men committed the rape.
     
As the students and their teacher watched in court Friday,
Judge Thomas Fitzgerald ordered the men released with electronic
monitoring while officials consider dropping the charges.  The
judge turned down the convicts' request to attend the women's
graduation, saying security could not be arranged.

    Copyright Los Angeles Times

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