Found innocent hours before he was to be executed, convicted murderer Anthony Porter escaped death through the intervention of college journalism students. By 1999, the 44-year old African American man had spent sixteen years in Illinois prisons for a double murder. Although he always professed his innocence, it was only after students at Northwestern University studied his case as a class project that evidence came to light in time to save his life. Given that Porter was one of a dozen death row inmates in Illinois wrongly convicted since the 1980s, his case gave ammunition to critics of the state's death penalty.

The murders occurred after 1:00 a.m. in a Chicago park in 1983. After 19-year old Marilyn Green and 18-year old Jerry Hillard were shot to death, only one eye-witness gave testimony. William Taylor, who had been in a public swimming pool, initially said he had not seen who...