Gwen and Henry Jimerson (sister-in-law and brother of Verneal Jimerson)

Verneal Jimerson, one of four defendants in the "Ford Heights Four Case", was sentenced to death after being convicted in the highly publicized 1978 trial. Five years later, Rob Warden of the Center on Wrongful Conviction at Northwestern Law School, exposed serious problems with the case. However, it took 14 more years before Mr. Jimerson was finally exonerated. In those years, Rob Warden, Mark Ter Molen, Lawrence Marshall and a team of investigators worked tirelessly on the case and successfully uncovered evidence of police coercion of witnesses, perjury, false forensic testimony and police and prosecutorial misconduct. The story of the case is told in, A Promise of Justice, a book by Rob Warden and David Protess. In 1999 Cook County settled a lawsuit with the Ford Heights Four defendants for $36 million. It was the largest civil rights payment in U.S. history.