Dr. Larry Golden, the founding director of IIP, was the youngest faculty member when he came to Sangamon State University when it opened in 1970. He became involved in social justice issues in the 1960s while in graduate school at the University of Minnesota and said he was attracted to SSU because of its focus on public affairs and educational innovation. Most of his work and teaching at SSU focused on the law and issues of racial, economic and gender inequality and bringing experiential learning into the classroom.
Golden said a conference he attended in 1998 at Northwestern University was a seminal experience. Barry Scheck, considered the father of the innocence movement, was present along with 60 exonerees who had previously been on death row. Each said if not for the work of the innocence program they would have been executed.
The advent of DNA research prompted the beginning of a movement in the late 1990s to investigate cases of people convicted and sentenced to death who might be innocent. With the overwhelming number of requests for assistance, there was a clear need for more innocence organizations.
In 2001, Golden partnered with Nancy Ford, director of the SSU Institute for Public Affairs, and Bill Clutter, a skilled local investigator, to form the Downstate Innocence Project. Golden and his colleagues began teaching a class on wrongful convictions for senior students in the legal studies program and having them work with lawyers on downstate cases that might result in a finding of innocence. They also taught classes at Southern Illinois University and other universities.
John Hanlon from the Office of the State Appellate Defender began working with Golden as a pro-bono attorney. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Hanlon was responsible for the exoneration of four individuals on death row.
For Hanlon, being assigned the Rolando Cruz case as a young lawyer in 1985 was a career-defining experience, leading him to discover there were innocent people on death row. The potential for innocent people being put to death led to Illinois abolishing the death penalty in 2011.
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Fighting for the innocent
In 2011, IIP obtained a federal DNA grant and for the first time could hire a lawyer. Hanlon was so committed to the cause that he left the appellate defender office to work for this fledgling organization. At the time Hanlon was “the only lawyer and 400 cases screaming for help,” he said. Hanlon served as IIP director and legal director until 2021.
Golden continued teaching a class on wrongful convictions until 2022. He is still a tireless advocate for IIP and exonerees.
“It’s a blessing to be involved in helping people get part of their life back,” Golden said. “I continue to learn from the strength these individuals have.”
Hanlon says innocence work is distinct from being a defense attorney. If evidence does not support the claim of innocence, they drop the case. IIP doesn’t take cases of guilt by accountability and only takes cases of actual innocence where there was no involvement in planning or carrying out a crime or there was no crime.
Hanlon said DNA now provides a high level of confidence of convicting the right people. A revolutionary 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences documented the reliability of DNA analysis in contrast to forensics analyses such as shoeprints, hair analysis and blood spatter, which are subjective and lack a rigorous scientific foundation.
Despite what we’ve learned in the past 30 years, Hanlon said, “It still takes good lawyers and judges and honest prosecutors.”
This article appears in August 27-September 2, 2026.
