Gurnee man released from prison after judge vacates life sentence in 1993 murder of his ex-wife
A 58-year-old Gurnee man who spent nearly 29 years behind bars over the 1993 murder of his ex-wife left a downstate prison Tuesday afternoon after a Lake County judge vacated his conviction earlier in the day.
The exoneration of Herman Williams followed a series of revelations first uncovered by his attorneys, affiliated with the Illinois Innocence Project, and then confirmed and acknowledged by the Lake County state's attorney's office, which agreed that Williams' sentence should be vacated.
Williams, a Navy veteran, is the 240th person to be exonerated or released through the work of the Innocence Project and the 22nd through the Illinois chapter.
Defense attorneys Lauren Kaeseberg, co-director of the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield, and Vanessa Potkin, Innocence Project director of special litigation, argued Williams' 1994 conviction was based on scientifically unsupported testimony regarding his ex-wife's time of death.
Defense attorneys also said the prosecution hid evidence that favored Williams during the trial and that the detective who claimed Williams had confessed to the crime is now known to have engaged in a pattern of misconduct. And the attorneys said new, advanced DNA testing did not find Williams' DNA on key biological evidence.
Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart said his office was compelled to support Williams' release.
“Every conviction must have integrity; it must be grounded in science and in fact, and it must be the product of a fair police investigation and trial,” Rinehart said. “We know that the victim's family is suffering to understand how so many mistakes could have been made nearly 30 years ago.”
William's ex-wife, Penny Williams, was found floating in a pool near Midlane Country Club in Wadsworth on Sept. 26, 1993, not long after she had moved back to the area with two children born during her marriage to Williams. They stayed in his home in Gurnee, where he was staying while stationed at the nearby Great Lakes Naval Base and while he was separated from his current wife at the time.
After she went missing, local police and the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force focused on Williams as the only possible suspect, ignoring other leads in the case, according to the Innocence Project.
The prosecution argued that he killed his ex-wife so he could move to California, where he was being restationed, with his children.
The case against Williams was built on evidence that included his leaving with his ex-wife on the evening before she died in a clean pickup truck and returning the next morning with mud caked nearly up to the windshield, drops of blood found inside the truck that were consistent with Penny Williams' blood type, and the discovery of Penny William's purse in a trash bin near where William's new wife had been living.
The new testing completed in 2021 on biological material collected from under Penny Williams' fingernails showed male DNA not belonging to Herman Williams, and it showed the blood found in the truck did not belong to Penny Williams, the Innocence Project said.
Defense attorneys also showed that a forensic pathologist provided a narrow range for time of death not supported by scientific evidence, and that before trial she had given an opinion for a broader time of death that would have eliminated Herman Williams as a suspect — and that opinion was not shared with his defense at the time.
Kaeseberg said the misconduct and faulty forensics that plagued this case meant Herman and Penny Williams' two children were robbed not only of their mother but their father as well.
“Mr. Williams lost nearly three decades of his life, and his children had to grow up thinking their own father killed their mother,” Kaeseberg said. “We have to push for more accountability and transparency among law enforcement and prosecutors to prevent more families being torn apart by wrongful conviction.”
Rinehart said his office's conviction integrity unit, which received federal funding earlier this year, is investigating several other cases. He pledged to start the unit when he was elected to analyze the county's troubled past of wrongful convictions.
“We will continue to support the family and investigate the DNA evidence that has been recovered,” Rinehart said. “We will coordinate with law enforcement and state forensic labs to determine what leads we can follow from the new evidence. Our job is to fight for the victim no matter how long it takes.”