Man Cleared of 1999 Murder of Carpentersville Woman

A 39-year-old man convicted in 2000 of murdering a Carpentersville woman in a motel room in Wadsworth is free from prison after prosecutors dropped charges against him on Thursday, the Daily Herald reports.

Jason Strong became the sixth person to be cleared of a wrongful conviction in Lake County since 2010 after Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Nerheim appeared in court Thursday to take the final steps to ensure Strong’s release, according to the newspaper.

Strong was serving a 46-year prison sentence for the murder of Mary Kate Sunderlin, 34, who he was convicted of killing in the Motor Inn Motel and then dumping her body at the Greenbelt Forest Preserve in North Chicago, according to the Daily Herald.

Prosecutors said new evidence surfaced since Strong’s conviction and several witnesses have since recanted their testimony, according to ABC 7 Chicago.

Pathologists recently found that authorities had been incorrect about the time of Sunderlin’s death, according to the Associated Press. The state originally believed Sunderlin was tortured, killed and her body dumped on the same night but pathologists concluded her injuries were a week or even months old.

Strong has maintained his innocence over the years and told the Associated Press Thursday he was happy to be going home.

“He was ... very grateful that this case is coming to an end, that he’s going to be released very soon, and he expressed his gratitude to the (authorities) and to us,” Thomas Geraghty, one of Strong’s lawyers and director of Northwestern University Law School’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, told the Associated Press.

Strong was a client of the Northwestern Law School’s Bluhm Legal Clinic’s Center for Wrongful Convictions, which was launched in April 1999 and has represented several individuals in legal proceedings that led to their exonerations and/or freedom from prison. A full list of those clients can be found on the Bluhm Legal Clinic’s website.