Rob
Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions
at Northwestern University School of Law, is an award-winning legal affairs
journalist who, as editor and publisher of Chicago Lawyer magazine
during the 1980’s, exposed more than a score of wrongful convictions
in Illinois, including cases in which six innocent men had been sentenced
to death.
Before founding Chicago Lawyer in 1978, Mr. Warden was an investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor at the Chicago Daily News. Since 1989, Mr. Warden has worked as a political issues consultant, executive officer of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and consultant to various law firms and the litigation department of General Electric Medical Systems.
He is the author or co-author of hundreds of articles and six books, including two books about Illinois wrongful convictions written in collaboration with Northwestern University Journalism Professor David Protess – A Promise of Justice and Gone in the Night.
Mr. Warden has won more than 50 journalism awards, including the Medill School of Journalism’s John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, two American Civil Liberties Union James McGuire Awards, five Peter Lisagor Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Norval Morris Award from the Illinois Academy of Criminology. In 2004, he was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame.
