Police Resisting Records Request

Police are throwing roadblocks in front of the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, which is seeking records to further investigations of cases in which project organizers suspect people may have been wrongfully convicted.

Illinois State Police have refused for two years to give the Innocence Project records on an unidentified fingerprint found on a bridge guardrail in Macon County, just inches away from the blood of Karyn Slover. 

Slover’s husband and his parents were convicted of murdering her in 1996 and dumping her body into Lake Shelbyville.

Average Joel Wins Fight for Public Records

Joel Chandler doesn't exactly fit the gadfly profile.

A married man of 23 years, Chandler has four children, sells copy machines and has attended one County Commission meeting in his life.

But what sets him apart is an overriding desire to hold governmental agencies accountable after being served with a public records request.

"Some people like baseball and football," Chandler said. "This has been a lot of fun. It's like dealing with a bully."

Chandler, 44, has become an unlikely enemy of the Polk County School District after winning a lawsuit against the district that allows him access to the names, phone numbers, addresses and dependents' names of any of the estimated 13,000 employees who receive health care.