Dennis Williams was convicted in Illinois in 1978 and sentenced to die. A young woman and her fiance had been abducted, the young woman raped, and both murdered in an abandoned house. Williams and his friends and codefendants - Kenneth Adams and Willie Rainge - were residents of the neighborhood where the couple was found and were seen on the street the night of the crime. Along with Verneal Jimerson, Williams, Adams, and Rainge were dubbed the Ford Heights Four.

Williams, Adams and Rainge were tried together in 1978, and represented by an attorney named Archie Weston. The state's chief witness in the case, Paula Gray, claimed to have been at the scene of the crime with the four men. After her testimony secured indictments of all four men, she recanted and the charges against Jimerson were dropped. During trial, the state presented testimony placing Williams, Adams and Rainge near the scene of the crime at the time of the crime. But there was a major flaw in the timing, and Weston failed to point this out to the jury. A state expert testified falsely that a hair found in Williams' car microscopically "matched" Williams' hair, and Weston failed to challenge this evidence. Microscopic hair comparison can never prove a conclusive match. The three men were convicted; Adams received a seventy-five year sentence, Rainge a life sentence, and Williams was sent to death row.

Williams won a new trial in 1985. Gray, who had been convicted as an accomplice and for perjury after her recantation, reverted to her original story and testified against Williams to gain her own release from prison. The charges against Jimerson were also refiled and both men were convicted and sentenced to death.

Archie Weston would later admit during a hearing in a different case that he was so stressed during the trial of Williams, Adams and Rainge that he couldn't think striaght. He was disbarred for fraud committed in another case. 

A group of journalism students took up the Ford Heights Four case in 1996. They found a witness who had tipped police to the identity of the real killers shortly after the crime. The police never investigated the tip. The investigating team also found two of the three men that were responsible for the crime, who eventually confessed. The third was deceased. DNA testing corroborated the confessions. Williams, cleared through DNA and the investigation of persistent Northwestern students, was released in 1996, having spent a total of eighteen years in prison and death row.