Illinois leads nation in overturned wrongful convictions

In December, 57-year-old Brian Beals spent Christmas with his sister Pattilyn for the first time 35 years. Beals was exonerated and freed from Robinson Correctional Center in southeastern Illinois on Dec. 13 after a Cook County circuit court judge vacated his conviction and dismissed charges against him.

“In that moment, I was just trying to process how this all happened,” Beals told Capitol News Illinois. “Prison erases your ability to have hope.”

Read more about Beals, a Romanucci & Blandin client, and other wrongful convictions in Dilpreet Raju's reporting in the Chigaco Daily Law Bulletin.