Willie Rainge
Posted By The Editors | June 30th, 2010 | Category: Exoneree of the Week | Comments Off
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Willie Rainge, along with three other men and one woman, was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a young couple abducted from a Chicago-area gas station 1978. Among the causes of Rainge’s wrongful conviction was bad lawyering: his attorney failed to point out inconsistencies in the state’s evidence and version of events at trial.
After investigators from the Northwestern School of Journalism took the case in 1996, they discovered lost evidence pointing to the true killers buried in a police file. Subsequent DNA testing excluded all five defendants, and they were officially exonerated 14 years ago this week.
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