Rob Warden
Rob L. Warden (* 1940 in Carthage , Missouri ) is an American journalist , publicist and publisher who has received several awards and is committed to the abolition of the death penalty .
life and work
Warden studied at the University of Missouri and Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. He then worked for newspapers in Chicago , mostly for the Kalamazoo Gazette . In 1965, he was from the Chicago Daily News obliged where he first worked in the department of science, then in leading positions of the sheet, primarily as an investigative , finally in the mid-1970s as Europe - and the Middle East - Correspondent . “I had to flee a hotel in Beirut in a rather dramatic way at the height of internal disputes in Lebanon. I think they didn't call it civil war back then. But from my point of view, it was a civil war. ”After the daily paper was discontinued in 1978, Warten wrote briefly for the Washington Post , after which he founded the journal Chicago Lawyer , which he edited himself until 1989. In 1989 he sold the magazine to the Law Bulletin Publishing Company , which continues to produce it.
His campaign against the death penalty began in the 1980s . Warden uncovered - often in years and decades of research - drastic misjudgments and published them in his magazine and in books, including the famous case of the Ford Heights Four , which put the moral legitimacy of the death penalty into question.
During the 1990s, he worked as a political advisor with the Cook County Attorney's Office and for several law firms and the litigation department of General Electric Medical Systems .
In 1999, Warden co-founded the Center on Wrongful Convictions with Lawrence C. Marshall , which is located at the Law School of Northwestern University . The primary aim of this institution is to investigate questionable convictions, to have the judicial process resumed and to fight for the release of innocent convicts. He motivated his students to investigate the cases in minute detail and to question the judgments. It was also important to him that the involvement and know-how of innocent convicts who were integrated into his projects as employees after their release was always important. Mara Tapp describes the journalist's life's work in the Chicago Tribune as follows:
“Rob Warden and David Protess are pretty much the last people a prosecutor would want to see waiting outside the courtroom. And that's exactly what both of them like, because they've spent almost all of their professional lives warning as loudly as possible that the uncontrolled power of government can destroy and destroy the lives of innocent people through unwarranted law enforcement. "
Together with the Medill Innocence Project of David Protess scored the Center on Wrongful Convictions a turnaround in public opinion. In 2003, then-Governor George Ryan pardoned all 167 death row inmates in the state of Illinois and commuted their death sentences to life imprisonment . He justified his decision by stating that the American legal system was "arbitrary and unpredictable and therefore immoral". In 2011 the state of Illinois abolished the death penalty.
Awards (selection)
Warden has received more than fifty awards including:
- John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism
- James McGuire Award from the American Civil Liberties Union (two awards)
- Peter Lisagor Award of the Society of Professional Journalists (five awards)
- Norval Morris Award from the Illinois Academy of Criminology
- 2003 [or 2004] inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame
Book publications
- 1987, with James Tuohy: Greylord - Justice, Chicago Style
- 1993, together with David Protess: Gone in the Night . Delacorte. ISBN 978-0-385-30619-5 . About the Jaclyn Dowaliby case.
- 1998, together with David Protess: A Promise of Justice . Hyperion. ISBN 978-0-7868-6294-8 . About Kenneth Adams . Online: Center on Wrongful Convictions
- 2005: Wilkie Collins : The dead alive. The novel, the case, and wrongful convictions . Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-2294-9 .
- 2009: True Stories of False Confessions . Northwestern University Press.
Web links
- Center on Wrongful Convictions
- Publication List , Northwestern University, accessed April 9, 2014
- Interview with Rob Warden , Wolverton Mountain, accessed April 9, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chicago Lawyer
- ^ Matthias Greuling: innocent guilty . In: Wiener Zeitung , April 1, 2014
- ^ Courtroom Crusaders: When They First Met, Warden and Protess Were on Opposite Sides of an Issue Reprinted by Truth in Justice
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Warden, Rob |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Warden, Rob L. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American journalist, university professor and fighter against the death penalty |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1940 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Carthage , Missouri |