Life After Serving a Life Sentence

Serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center for a crime he didn’t commit, Patrick Pursley wrote to numerous wrongful conviction organizations and attorneys maintaining his innocence in the 1993 shooting death of Andrew Archer. In the letters, he argued how the State built its case on faulty ballistic testimonies without eyewitnesses, confessions, or DNA forensics linking him to the crime.

Working with outside attorneys, he played a role in helping pass a new amendment to the Illinois post-conviction forensic testing statute–which allowed the defendants to reexamine ballistic evidence using digital imaging and other technologies not available at the time of his trial.

In 2017, after serving 23 years at Stateville, Pursely was granted a retrial under the new amendment, and a few years later, Judge McGraw would acquit him. “It's not every day that a man in prison can write an article that becomes a law, a state law, and be released under it ten years later,” Pursley said in an interview.