Rolando Cruz doesn’t like talking much about the 10 years he spent on Illinois’ death row before his wrongful conviction for kidnapping, raping and murdering a young girl was overturned in 1995.
Cruz, Monday night’s guest speaker for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project’s third annual awards reception at the Executive Mansion in Springfield, said he doesn’t see the point in dwelling on negatives.
Eventually, with help from the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University, Cruz and co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez were exonerated.
Students involved with the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois at Springfield also help develop evidence that gets wrongly convicted inmates released.
The awards were featured in a May 25, 2010, article in The State Journal-Register.
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