Karen L. Daniel graduated from Harvard Law School in 1981 and devoted her legal career to indigent criminal defense and legal education. She started as a staff attorney for the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender, where she handled hundreds of criminal appeals and became a supervisor.

Karen joined the Center on Wrongful Convictions in 2000 and served on Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s clinical faculty until 2019, when she retired and was named Clinical Professor of Law Emerita. During her time at the CWC Karen helped exonerate more than 20 clients, taught a generation of clinical law students, and spoke widely to outside groups and the media about causes of wrongful convictions.

In 2012 Karen co-founded the CWC’s Women’s Project, the first and only legal project focused on wrongfully convicted women. From 2013 to 2018 she co-directed and then solely directed the CWC. In that capacity she worked closely with the CWC’s Advisory Board and Justice Council to broaden the CWC’s reach and achieve its goals. Karen served for five years on the Executive Board of the Innocence Network, an international affiliation of innocence-focused legal organizations.

Maddy deLone has been a central figure in the Innocence Network since its foundation; she is one of the main reason it is what it is today. When Maddy became Executive Director of the Innocence Project in 2004, the Innocence Network was still organizing through an ad hoc steering committee. When the Network formally constituted itself a year later, she was there as a founding member of the Executive Board. She has been a member of the Board, and a voice of vision and reason on the Board, ever since. Based on her belief that the success of the Network and each of its member organizations was essential to the fulfillment of the Innocence Project’s and the Network’s shared mission, Maddy actively worked to ensure the Network’s viability. While she worked to vastly expand the size and impact of the Innocence Project, she simultaneously worked to build the Network from a wholly volunteer organization to the fully staffed and highly professional organization it is today, ensuring each step of the way that the successes and influence of the Innocence Project redounded to the benefit of the Network as a whole. When continued funding for the Network Support Unit was in doubt, for example, she stepped in and offered a home for the Network staff and agreed to take on responsibility for ensuring stable funding for the Network. To protect the brand name for the benefit of all Network members, she licensed the name “Innocence Project” and made it available to all Innocence Network member organizations upon one condition—that they remain members in good standing of the Network. Day in and day out she advised and encouraged Network members. It is not overstating it to say that, to a large extent, the Innocence Network is her legacy. And it is a legacy that reflects that, in all things, Maddy was guided by the principle of “ever better”—for all of us.