Alstory Simon, 64, was released from prison on October 30 after spending 15 years behind bars.
Simon was wrongfully convicted of a double murder that occurred in 1982 after the Medill Innocence Project allegedly targeted him as a suspect.
The advocacy group was working to free Anthony Porter, a man on death row for the murders of teenagers Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green in Illinois. During the Medill Innocence Project's investigation, they came to believe that Simon was responsible for the deaths.
The group, led by former Northwestern University Journalism Professor David Protess, was established in 1999, and confronted Simon about the murders that same year.
"The Innocence Project had bum-rushed my house and accused me of murder," he told Fox News.
Simon was a crack abuser at the time, and the Medill Innocence Project allegedly used threats, intimidation, and other coercive tactics to convince him that there were witnesses who saw him commit the crime. According to Simon, the group also told him that they were developing a book about the murders, and that Simon would profit from its royalties.
He claimed two men impersonating Chicago police officers visited his home, and urged him to confess to avoid the death penalty. He relented, and gave a videotaped confession to the crimes.
"They did everything that's forbidden by the law enforcement community," Simon lamented. "These people went to great lengths to do what they did to me, and I never did anything to anyone."
Simon's conviction led to the release of Porter, and contributed to Illinois lawmakers abolishing the death penalty in 2011. He faced 37 years in prison, and served nearly two decades in the Jacksonville Correction Center.
"It was very hard to get along with knowing that fact: that I was locked up in prison for something I knew I didn't do," he explained. "It can make you kind of mean, but as time went by I overcame it.
"I was praying every day, asking God to shine down upon me."
Last month, the State's Attorney for Cook Country, Anita Alvarez, determined that Simon's original confession was false and vacated the charges.
"At the end of the day and in the best interests of justice, we could reach no other conclusion but that the investigation of this case has been so deeply corroded and corrupted that we can no longer maintain the legitimacy of this conviction," Alvarez said.
Simon described how it felt to walk out of prison three weeks ago as a free man.
"It was like something that stepped completely out of me," he recounted. "It's like when you have a big weight on your back and all of a sudden my body just got light.
"I started jumping for joy."
The Medill Innocence Project, now called the Medill Justice Project, has not commented on Simon's case.
