Adobe Stock Photo
Gov. J.B. Pritzker has pardoned a man 30 years after the first of two wrongful convictions, the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield announced Friday.
Norman Propst had been convicted of a robbery in 1990 based on a “notoriously unreliable eyewitness identification” and then convicted of workplace theft in 1997, though his managers said no crime occurred and one even resigned in support of Propst, the Innocence Project said in a statement.
In the first instance, Propst took a plea deal and served several months in prison because his mother was seriously ill and he otherwise faced a 15-year sentence. In the second case, Propst was accused of stealing a book from the Borders bookstore where he worked and pleaded guilty to avoid further court proceedings.