SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - The Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield will mark International Wrongful Conviction Day on Wednesday, Oct. 2.
There will be a visual display created by UIS students interning and volunteering with IIP. The display will feature flags representing the 3,588 wrongfully convicted and imprisoned innocent individuals who have been exonerated since 1989.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, they lost more than 32,750 years of their lives to wrongful incarceration.
The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 2 in the UIS quad next to the colonnade.
As part of the flag display, the “UIS blue” flags represent the 555 people exonerated in Illinois. Those men and women lost 4,657 years of their lives to wrongful incarceration, the University of Illinois Springfield said.
International Wrongful Conviction Day, founded by the Innocence Network, raises awareness of the causes and remedies of wrongful conviction.
IIP has helped exonerate/release 24 innocent men and women in Illinois who were wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit and wrongfully imprisoned for a collective 546 years at a cost of $35 million for incarceration alone.
Copyright 2024 WAND TV. All rights reserved.
