Events Upcoming
New Members
WHAT: The Illinois Innocence Project (IIP) at the University of Illinois Springfield will celebrate 25 years of fighting to free innocent people with an anniversary gala. The event will feature spoken word, live music, the presentation of the 2026 Defender of the Innocent Award and Lifetime Defender of the Innocent Award and recognition of more than 30 freed and exonerated individuals who will attend. The event is open to the media. Tickets are required for public attendance.
WHEN: Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026. Doors open at 4:30 p.m. and the program begins at 6 p.m. IIP leadership will be available for interviews from 4 to 5:15 p.m.
WHERE: Crowne Plaza Springfield, 3000 S. Dirksen Parkway, Springfield, first-floor ballroom
DETAILS: The gala, hosted by emcees Tiffany Mathis Posey and Illinois exoneree Antione Day, will feature the story of IIP told through the documentary “Until They Are Free,” produced by Storyteller Studios. Guests will experience the fight to free innocent people through a letter written by a current wrongfully incarcerated client and read by his mother, a spoken word poem performed by Darrion Benson of the Mud Theatre Project in Chicago and recognition of the 34 freed and exonerated individuals representing multiple states who will attend.
IIP will present its 2026 Defender of the Innocent Award to exonerees Brian Beals, James Kluppelberg, Johnnie Savory and Jimmy Soto. These four men, who collectively lost 132 years to wrongful imprisonment, contributed extraordinary efforts to bring to light the injustice of wrongful convictions and imprisonment and the real-life struggles exonerated individuals face upon release.
Over the past few years, each devoted days and weeks of their time to the effort to pass the exoneree restitution bill (HB 3663). They made countless trips to the State Capitol in Springfield to meet with individual legislators on both sides of the aisle, testified in House and Senate committee hearings, spoke at press conferences and bore witness to the plight of their freed and exonerated sisters and brothers upon release as they regained their freedom and reentered society.
HB 3663, passed unanimously with full bipartisan support and signed into law in July, increases restitution up to $50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment and removes the cap on recovery, providing exonerees essential financial stability as they seek to rebuild their lives.
IIP will also present a Lifetime Defender of the Innocent Award to Larry Golden, Ph.D., one of the project’s co-founders in 2001 at the University of Illinois Springfield. Golden began teaching UIS’ Conviction of the Innocent class in 2001, just as a series of wrongful convictions were being exposed in Illinois and across the country. Three years later, he retired from full-time teaching to devote himself, pro bono, to the project.
Golden’s leadership within IIP over the past quarter-century has helped create a vibrant, strong and stable organization whose core values are service to and advocacy on behalf of clients, collaboration with the freed and exonerated community and a shared commitment to justice among all who work within and alongside IIP.
The Illinois Innocence Project has helped free and/or exonerate 34 innocent women and men who were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. IIP ADVOCATES for individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, EDUCATES students, the public and law enforcement about wrongful convictions and partners with policymakers and other stakeholders to REFORM the criminal legal system.
