Help make Illinois a leader in false confession reform

Help Illinois become the first state in the country to protect innocent people from having unreliable confessions used in court.

Bill Amor was wrongfully convicted of the 1995 death of his mother-in-law, who died in a fire in the Naperville home that they shared. Investigators found the fire suspicious and quickly honed in on Mr. Amor as a suspect. He was jailed for two weeks and then immediately subjected to a 15-hour interrogation, where he was pressured into falsely confessing to intentionally setting the fire by dropping a cigarette onto vodka-soaked newspapers before leaving their home. 

Although Mr. Amor had no motive to have set the fire, a jury was swayed by his false confession as well as testimony from the prosecution’s fire investigators who bolstered the state’s theory of how the fire was set. Mr. Amor was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison for murder and aggravated arson. 

When the Illinois Innocence Project took up Mr. Amor’s case years later, his legal team found that the original arson evidence did not hold up under modern arson science and fire investigation techniques. After multiple experts testified that it was impossible to start a fire with vodka and a lit cigarette, Mr. Amor’s conviction was finally vacated in 2017. The judge specifically noted that “the lynchpin of the (prosecution’s) case at trial was the defendant’s confession, which the State and the defense experts today agree is scientifically impossible.” 

Providing judges with a mechanism to assess the reliability of a defendant’s statement before trial is a critical step in safeguarding against wrongful convictions. While Mr. Amor was eventually exonerated due to now invalidated forensic science, his statement — along with many other Illinosians whose convictions are based on unreliable statements made during police interrogations — should have never been used as evidence in court.

Sign the petition above to support passing first-in-the-nation legislation in Illinois that would prevent unreliable confessions from being used at criminal trials and reduce the risk of future wrongful convictions. 

This campaign is in partnership with the Illinois Innocence Project, And Justice for All, and The Center on Wrongful Convictions.