The Chicago Tribune wisely calls for a review commission in its editorial, Four More Terrible Mistakes. In the case under discussion, four men were imprisoned for a murder authorities now know they didn't commit. These were not death penalty cases.

"These were the largely unexplored next layer of the onion, suggesting once again that problems exist throughout the criminal justice system, not just in the way capital punishment is administered." "The case seemed airtight. One man confessed. Two pleaded guilty after they had spent four years in jail awaiting trial. A key witness had provided many details implicating the men."

Only now it turns out the men could not have committed the murder. The confession was junk and the key witness is now charged with making false statements.

"All of these cases cry out for safeguards that must be implemented across the state."

"One is the videotaping of interrogations and confessions taken in police stations. A videotape of the entire questioning process may have provided critical information that would have prevented the wrongful convictions in some of the cases cited above."

"The other is the need for a formal, public review process to examine these accumulating cases of wrongful convictions and other cases where a conviction might be suspect."

"Models already exist. The United Kingdom and Canada appoint retired judges and others to conduct extremely thorough investigations of wrongful convictions. They are accorded subpoena power and stage exhaustive public hearings on various issues that arise from each case."

"County prosecutors in St. Paul, Minn., San Diego and Austin, Texas, have undertaken their own reviews of violent crime cases...."

"Perhaps the best model for Illinois is the National Transportation Safety Board. When planes crash, the independent NTSB swoops in, conducts a thorough investigation by experts and reveals its findings to the public."

This is what Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer called for in their book, Actual Innocence. It's more than high time we do it.