Exoneration Project, Law School alumni earn release for wrongfully convicted man

For the first time in 24 years, James Kluppelberg is a free man.

The 46-year-old walked out of the Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois on May 31 alongside lawyer, Karl Leonard, '09, after a Cook County judge and prosecutors agreed Kluppelberg was wrongfully convicted of murder and arson.

Leonard started working on Kluppelberg's case with the Exoneration Project [1] at the Law School while he was a student. After graduation, he continued to partner with the clinic on the case as an associate at Winston & Strawn LLP.

In 1990, Kluppelberg was sentenced to life in prison for a 1984 fire that killed six people. After years of working with the Exoneration Project to secure his freedom, he received the almost too-good-to-be-true call from Leonard on Wednesday: The prosecution was dismissing the case.

Kluppelberg’s attorneys successfully argued that key witnesses in the prosecution lied, and that early explanations of how the fire was started are scientifically impossible. Students working with the Exoneration Project also uncovered evidence that another person may have been involved in starting the fire, evidence not previously disclosed to Kluppelberg.

The Exoneration Project, one of the Law School’s clinics, noted that 2008 alumnae Ashley Schumacher and Cadence Mertz also deserve credit for their work on Kluppelberg's case.