POLITICO
Get the Illinois Playbook newsletter
Email
Sign Up
By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Presented by the Paul Simon-Jim Edgar Statesmanship Award
Good Tuesday morning, Illinois. We pulled an all-nighter at the Capitol and followed it up with cold pizza, so I m feeling pretty collegiate.
TOP TALKER
The 704 page Illinois budget passes by Rep. La Shawn Ford in the House Chamber for a vote just before midnight on May 31, 2021. | Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register via AP
MIdwest Innocence Project
Because of confusion over whether innocence is enough for a non-death penalty conviction to be overturned in Missouri, Kevin Strickland remains incarcerated at a prison in DeKalb County.
Despite being declared innocent by the prosecutor s office that convicted him, Kevin Strickland is still doing time for a triple-murder from decades ago that he was not involved in.
It’s been nearly a month since the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office found that evidence used to prosecute and imprison Kevin Strickland for more than 40 years was flawed, and
“My job is to protect the innocent,” the county’s top prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker, said when she presented the findings at a press conference. “It is important to recognize when the system has made wrongs, and what we did in this case was wrong.”
The bill would require every elementary and high school in the state to devote a unit of curriculum to the history of Asian Americans in the United States, including in