Gov. Pat Quinn has pardoned a man who spent more than a decade in prison before DNA evidence cleared him in the 1993 murder of his girlfriend.
Quinn's 232 granted clemency petitions announced Friday included one for Alan Beaman. It's Quinn's first innocence-based pardon.
Beaman was convicted in the strangulation death of Illinois State University student Jennifer Lockmiller and spent 13 years in prison. He was serving a 50-year sentence when the Illinois Supreme Court reversed his conviction in 2008, and DNA testing pointed to two previously unknown suspects.
A circuit court judge granted Beaman a certificate of innocence in 2013, which allowed him to seek compensation.
But one of Beaman's attorneys says the innocence pardon issued by Quinn is symbolic and comes from the highest office in Illinois.
