It’s been a year since Herman Williams was released from an Illinois prison after his conviction for the murder of his ex-wife was vacated in Lake County, but after three decades behind bars he says it still can feel unreal.

“Sometimes it feels like a dream, and I’m going to wake up and be back in prison,” Williams said Wednesday in Chicago.

The former U.S. Navy chief petty officer returned to Illinois this week from his Arizona home as his attorneys filed a lawsuit in federal court against nine former Lake County police officers and their respective departments, along with two former state’s attorneys and a now-deceased pathologist.

They are accused in the suit of fabricating and manipulating evidence that resulted in Williams’ conviction and life sentence in 1994 in the killing of Penny Williams.

“Herman was tried and convicted based on false evidence and junk science,” said a 52-page complaint, which was filed late Wednesday in the Northeastern Illinois Branch of federal court in Chicago.

“This was not only an unconstitutional conviction, it was an unconscionable conviction,” Chicago Attorney Antonio Romanucci said Wednesday. “Herman Williams is innocent. He’s always been innocent.”

The lead defendant in the lawsuit is former Waukegan police detective Lou Tessman, whose work as an investigator for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force has been called into question in several high-profile wrongful convictions.

According to the suit, “Tessman fabricated a confession” from Williams with the knowledge of Tessman’s task force superior.

The suit also names former Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Mermel, who according to the suit fabricated evidence used to convict Williams.

Attempts to reach Mermel and Tessman Wednesday were not successful.

The bludgeoned body of Williams’ former wife was discovered in a shallow pond near Waukegan’s Midlane Country Club on Sept. 26, 1993.

At the time, Williams was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station and living with his ex-wife and their two children in Gurnee. After the couple divorced, Herman Williams remarried. However, following their divorce, Herman and Penny decided to live together platonically, and Herman’s wife moved to an apartment in Lake County, the suit said

Williams said Wednesday he thinks his unconventional living arrangement made investigators focus on him as a suspect. At a 1994 trial, Williams was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

“I think it took three days for the guilty verdict to sink in,” Williams said.

Williams maintained his innocence and began the post-conviction process in an attempt to have his conviction vacated. But the process stretched over decades.

Eventually, attorneys from the Illinois Innocence Project took his case, and Williams said their success at retesting forensic evidence played a key role in the overturning of his conviction.

Judge Mark Levitt vacated Williams’ conviction on Sept. 6, 2022, at a hearing that included stipulations from the Lake County state’s attorney’s office that newly discovered evidence of police misconduct resulted in Williams’ conviction, and DNA evidence found under the victim’s fingernails did not come from Williams.

Williams said his civil suit is an attempt to hold law enforcement accountable, especially those involved in the pattern of wrongful convictions here in the late 1980s and 1990s.

“They did it to a lot of people in Lake County,” Williams said. “The reality is we’ll never know how many.”

Williams, 59, now resides in southern Arizona and works at a home improvement store. He is working at repairing his relationships with his son and daughter, who were young children when he was arrested and did not see their father for decades, thinking he was responsible for their mother’s death.

“She’s actually come around,” he said of his daughter. “We’re building a really good relationship.” Williams said he and his son are “still working on it.”

As a free man, Williams said he’d like to do some traveling out west to see Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, and to see the Grand Canyon again after 40 years.

“I’m an outdoorsy guy who spent three decades inside,” Williams said.

In the meantime, he is still adjusting to life outside prison.

“I got older, but everything about me stayed the same,” Williams said. “The world kept moving forward and left me behind. I walked out, and the world is a completely different place.”

Originally Published: Aug 23, 2023 at 6:31 pm