In 1997, Thomas Sierra was convicted of a murder he had not committed. His conviction was based on two eyewitnesses who said they had been pressured into identifying Sierra as the perpetrator by a former Chicago police detective. Sierra remained in prison for 22 years before the University of Chicago Law School’s Exoneration Project won a legal battle to overturn the conviction in 2018.

Since its inception in 2007, the Exoneration Project, which operates as a free legal clinic at the Law School, has helped free nearly 200 clients who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes.

The project takes cases in which an incarcerated person has already been convicted of a crime, usually after appeals have failed.

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