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By 2015, tired of writing<\/strong> as many grant applications to fund his salary as he did legal motions to free his clients, Tepfer took a job with the University of Chicago\u2019s Exoneration Project. That\u2019s how he found himself as the new guy, filling in for an established lawyer on a perfunctory court date \u2014 a hearing to schedule yet another hearing.<\/p>\n As he sat in the courtroom waiting for the case to be called, he flipped through the case documents. \u201cBen Baker,\u201d the file read. He\u2019d been convicted in 2006 of possession of drugs with the intent to distribute. The judge in the case handed the 32-year-old Baker an 18-year prison sentence. But Baker had claimed the Chicago police sergeant assigned to the public housing project where he lived with his wife and children had planted the drugs on him. Then planted them on his wife.<\/p>\n But Tepfer knew that very same sergeant, Ronald Watts, had later been charged and convicted of extorting money from a drug dealer who turned out to be an FBI informant. In other words, Watts\u2019s conviction aligned with what Baker had said all along at his trial.<\/p>\n And if Watts did this to Baker, how many more people were sitting behind bars because of a criminal cop?<\/p>\n \u201cThis could be huge,\u201d Tepfer told his wife, Beth Sauers, when he returned home that evening.<\/p>\n Now he just needed to prove it.<\/p>\n He gathered stacks of documents, each detailing another claim by another person that Watts had derailed their life. Not that Tepfer needed any papers to prove that Baker wasn\u2019t Watts\u2019s only target. He only needed to look over his shoulder to the courtroom gallery, where he\u2019d see Baker\u2019s wife and fellow frame-up target, Clarissa Glenn.<\/p>\n She had drawn Watts\u2019s ire \u2014 and then criminal charges \u2014 after she filed formal complaints against him and his crew for his abusive and corrupt practices. The police officers then claimed that they\u2019d found cocaine in the couple\u2019s car. Though it wasn\u2019t true, Glenn didn\u2019t want to risk prison time and the prospect of leaving the couple\u2019s children with both parents behind bars. In exchange for her guilty plea, she received probation. But the collateral costs to Glenn and her family weren\u2019t outlined in the plea agreement.<\/p>\n She had, for the first time in her life, a criminal record. She lost her job as a home health aide she\u2019d held for years. The public housing complex where the family lived barred anyone with a felony conviction from living there, so they were forced to move.<\/p>\n Glenn\u2019s complaints against the officers were among the stacks of paper on Tepfer\u2019s desk. He picked through the piles for weeks. By Dec. 15, 2015, Tepfer had assembled a petition to toss out Baker\u2019s conviction that he considered so compelling that he told Baker\u2019s sister he\u2019d be home by the new year.<\/p>\n But Tepfer didn\u2019t consider his work over in Baker\u2019s case. During one court hearing, Tepfer interrupted with a new request. He asked the judge to file one more request for yet another exoneration: that of Clarissa Glenn.<\/p>\n Glenn, in the gallery, gasped.<\/p>\n Even as she watched her husband work to clear his name, she\u2019d resigned herself to a criminal record \u2014 justified or not.<\/p>\n The judge, Leroy K. Martin, winced as he ruled against her, citing an Illinois law that prevented people who didn\u2019t serve prison time from pursuing formal claims of innocence.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope I\u2019m wrong, Ms. Glenn,\u201d Martin said as he denied her from the bench. He advised Tepfer to file an appeal.<\/p>\n But Tepfer expected the ruling. So he\u2019d already prepared a brief to the appeals court.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was two steps ahead,\u201d Glenn said. \u201cHe went above and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n The appeals court didn\u2019t mince words in its decision. Glenn, and by extension other probationers who were later able to prove their innocence, qualified to have their names cleared and receive state-mandated compensation provided to exonerees.<\/p>\n \u201cHe literally changed the law,\u201d Glenn said.<\/p>\n Tepfer could have filed away the rest of the papers representing people who\u2019d complained about Watts and his crew. He\u2019d freed Baker and cleared Glenn. But just as Tepfer\u2019s work in Terrill Swift\u2019s case had elevated his profile among lawyers, the Baker and Glenn cases made him a household name among their former neighbors in the Ida B. Wells housing project where Watts had patrolled.<\/p>\n His phone rang constantly with calls from inside the prison and relatives outside of it. The same thing happened to me<\/em>, the messages said. Glenn, too, knew of other people targeted by the same officers and connected them with Tepfer. Soon the list he kept morphed into a spreadsheet. New lawyers came on to help him keep up with the streams of cases attached to Watts and company.<\/p>\n Rather than trying to overturn the convictions of each and every new client tied to Watts, Tepfer decided to group 18 of their cases together. He\u2019d emphasize the pattern of the misconduct rather than the innocence of the individual.<\/p>\n \u201cI just made it up,\u201d Tepfer said of his approach.<\/p>\n By September 2017, Tepfer filed his new concoction of a petition. Even if the tactic didn\u2019t work, he figured, he would still advance the cases by placing the reform-minded Foxx under pressure to examine them.<\/p>\n The evening before he would argue that all 18 clients in the Watts petition deserved to be exonerated, he and a colleague worked late into the evening. Then the phone rang. It was Foxx\u2019s lead deputy. All of the convictions would be tossed the next morning.<\/p>\n Headlines about Tepfer leading Chicago\u2019s first mass exonerations appeared in the papers and led the evening news. Closing those cases should have shortened his client list, but instead, it exploded. More and more people who had similar claims about Watts jammed his phone lines. After vetting each case, Tepfer and his colleague started filing petitions, asking for exonerations of more than 100 people in one. Then another 188 in another.<\/p>\n The cases sent Tepfer back in front of Judge Martin, usually on Tuesdays, so frequently that the judge took to calling them \u201cTepfer Tuesdays.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet for all the numbers, Tepfer knew that each case represented a person \u2014 a person grievously wronged by the police, the courts, and probably many other social systems along the way.<\/p>\n He made it a point to know every one of the people whose names he typed in his legal briefs.<\/p>\n One was Eson Claybron, whom Watts targeted twice. At the time of his first unlawful arrest, Claybron was a promising student and football star with bright prospects for college scholarships. But after he refused Watts\u2019s demand for money, he found himself taking a plea deal for drugs he knew weren\u2019t his. His college dreams vanished. A remix of the same situation happened a year later, in 2007, when Claybron left his cousin\u2019s apartment at the wrong time and ran into the wrong officers. With two convictions to his name, Claybron didn\u2019t expect much when Tepfer took his case.<\/p>\n Coming from his neighborhood, Claybron said, \u201cYou always expect the worst. And if something happens that\u2019s good, you got lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n After meeting Tepfer, though, his mindset changed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s like a chance that good stuff could really happen to you,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just opened my eyes to the possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Watts cases, Tepfer and his colleagues freed 183 people, making his name so synonymous with the phrase \u201cmass exoneration\u201d that Tepfer\u2019s picture popped up on Google as a search result. His colleagues at the Exoneration Project wondered if he was up for a new challenge.<\/p>\n It was one thing to clear people of drug charges \u2014 awareness around unfair sentencing laws had shifted the public\u2019s sympathies \u2014 but could he lead a mass exoneration of those wrongfully convicted of murder?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n