And so, again, Randy was spared to tell his story.

The next event organized by law professor Larry Marshall was in November 1998. I was invited to speak about Randy’s case at The National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty, an event that became the prelude to the creation of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. There were 74 death row exonerees in the U.S. at that time. That event brought together from all over the country investigators and attorneys, the people who worked to free the exonerated. The highlight of the conference was when the exonerees, Rolando Cruz among them, entered the stage one-by-one, stopped at the microphone to voice the refrain, “If the state had its way I’d be dead today.”

Since that event, the number of death row exonerees has nearly doubled. Now added to that list of the exonerated is the name of Randy Steidl.

An interesting twist of fate occurred right before that historic conference. Illinois Times reporter Linda Rockey wrote an updated story on Randy’s case that caught the attention of Medill School of Journalism professor Dave Protess at Northwestern University.

At the start of the fall 1998 semester, Protess planned to assign a team of his students to investigate the case of Randy Steidl.

By this time law Professor Larry Marshall had joined the legal team to assist Mike Metnick and Kathy Saltmarsh in filing a federal habeas petition for Randy’s release from prison. Protess was told to find another case to work on. Protess asked Marshall about the case of Anthony Porter.

Marshall informed Protess that there was nothing in the record to suggest that Porter was innocent. He was 48 hours away from execution in September 1998 when the Illinois Supreme Court granted one last reprieve to explore the issue of his alleged mental retardation. In a few short months, in February 1999, private investigator Paul Ciolino obtained a videotaped confession of the true perpetrator of that crime. It was the final straw that broke the back of the death penalty in Illinois.

A few months later, the moratorium halted executions in Illinois. Had Protess taken the more appealing case of Steidl instead, the history of the death penalty might have been different.

Protess was able to add a major contribution to Randy’s case, nevertheless. He invited CBS’s 48 Hours to feature Randy’s case on national television. The whole country would be watching. It forced the Illinois State Police to seriously consider a written request I made to the director to re-investigate the case. E-mails that surfaced later reveal that the upper command at ISP decided to assign Lt. Michale Callahan to investigate “Clutter’s letter” just in case a “Mike Wallace type” starts snooping.