Company President Bill Clutter has over 20 years experience as an investigator. Specializing in death penalty defense, Bill has earned a reputation for being one of the premiere criminal defense investigators in Illinois. He has worked in all parts of the state -- north and south from Chicago to Marion, IL -- east and west from Quincy to Danville.

In 2001, Bill was the principal founder of the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS). His investigation of wrongful conviction cases began with his work in the Nicarico case in 1988. He has worked on two of the 15 death row exoneration cases in Illinois, a deciding factor when Gov. George Ryan issued an executive order in 1999 declaring a moratorium on the death penalty.

Bill Clutter also specializes in complex civil and environmental investigations. His investigation lead to a major precedent setting jury verdict in 1998 in the CIPS case, awarding $3.2 million to children stricken with a rare cancer from exposure to coal tar in Taylorville, IL.

Bill Clutter: Former alderman focuses his time on private investigations

By SARAH ANTONACCI, Journal Register Staff Writer

Published Monday, April 23, 2007
The following is the latest installment of a new series in The State Journal-Register called "Headliners: A look at people who made the news." Each Monday, we'll catch up with a newsmaker from the past.

Bill Clutter was going to school and serving people court papers on the side when he was sent on a delivery that changed his life.

One of his first clients was Mike Metnick, who represented plaintiffs in the voting- rights lawsuit that ultimately changed Springfield city government from the commission form to aldermanic.

“I sat through the (city) council meeting, and after the meeting I served the lawsuit papers on all of them,” Clutter said recently “They had no idea I was there.

“It was a shock to them, and the irony was, with the voting rights lawsuit being successful, I ended up being elected as an alderman,” Clutter said.

He was sworn in in 1987. Then, in 1990, he lost a close race against then-State Sen. John Davidson, a well-known Springfield Republican. Those efforts made it seem like politics was Clutter’s destiny.

It wasn’t.

Clutter’s destiny actually was the job with Metnick. A legal studies major at what was then Sangamon State University, Clutter was a process server who had dabbled in investigative work.

“I suggested in a cover letter to local attorneys that I could do investigations, though I didn’t have a lot of experience,” he said. “One hired me for a barroom shooting case, and I really enjoyed pounding the pavement.”

While with Metnick’s firm, Clutter worked on a Taylorville case in which the former Central Illinois Public Service Co. was sued by several families alleging the company’s cleanup of a coal tar gasification site was the cause of their children’s cancer, a form called neuroblastoma.

Clutter said he believes the state helped cover up some environmental problems on the site.

“That experience heightened my cynicism of government,” he said.

Clutter hasn’t run for office since that early ’90s run for the state senate. He left Metnick’s firm when the state legislature created the Capital Litigation Trust Fund in 2000. The fund allows defendants in death penalty murder cases to pay for a defense.

That change in the law created an opening for Clutter to go into business for himself.

During the time he worked for Metnick, he was involved with a few death penalty cases where he believed, and the courts later ruled, that the people charged with the crimes didn’t actually commit them.

“I had the good fortune to be involved on the ground floor of the Innocence Project in Illinois,” Clutter said. He continues to work on death penalty cases through that project in addition to his private investigations business.

Sarah Antonacci can be reached at 788-1529 or sarah.antonacci@sj-r.com.

PROFESSIONAL VITA

William R. Clutter
1032 South 2nd Street -- Springfield, Illinois 62703
(217) 528-5997 -- (217) 528-6436 FAX
email: billclutter@email.com

EDUCATION

Land Community College, Springfield, IL
Model Illinois Government.
Model United Nations.

University of Illinois in Springfield
B.A. Legal Studies. Deans List.

PROFESSIONAL LICENSURE

Private Detective -- IL Dept. of Professional Regulation Lic. # 115-001630
Detective Agency -- IL Dept. of Professional Regulation Lic. # 117-001206

WORK EXPERIENCE

Aug. 1, 2001 to present -- Private investigator in private practice.

2001 to present -- University of Illinois in Springfield, Director of Investigations, Downstate Innocence Project at the University of Illinois in Springfield.

Jan. 2000 to Aug. 2001 -- Private investigator, John D. Rea Detective Agency. June 1986 to July 2000 -- Investigator, Metnick, Cherry and Frazier attorneys at law, Springfield, IL.

1987-1991 -- Springfield City Council, Ward 1 Alderman.

LECTURES

Fact Development and Investigation, Innocence Network National Conference hosted by Innocence Project New Orleans, March 29, 2003, Astor Crowne Plaza, New Orleans, LA.

Investigations in Criminal Cases, Evaluating your case for investigations and working with an investigator, The Illinois Public Defender Association Fall Seminar, Holiday Inn, Urbana, IL, Oct. 26, 2001.

Using video taped statements in preparing for the guilt-innocence and sentencing phases of a capital case; Defending Illinois Death Penalty Cases: Essential Know-How for Defense Lawyers, sponsored by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education and co-sponsored by the State Appellate Defender Death Penalty Trial Assistance Division and The Center for Capital Justice in Capital Cases, Springfield, IL, Sept. 13, 2001.

Unearthing Wrongful Convictions: The Investigatorís Story: National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty sponsored by Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, IL, Nov. 14, 1998.

Criminal Investigative Techniques: The Illinois Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Hotel Nikko, Chicago, IL, Sept. 22, 1989.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Investigation in the case profiled in Victims of Justice, by Thomas Frisbie and Randy Garrett, Avon Books, New York, copyright 1998.

Investigation in the case of Randy Steidl featured on 48 Hours Murder in Paris, CBS News, New York, May 15, 2000.

PUBLICATIONS

State should reign in bad prosecutors, State Journal Register, June 5, 2003.

Death by Collusion, Illinois Times, Springfield, IL, April 13-19, 2000; Vol. 25, No. 34, p. 16.

Selected by the editors as one of their top ten stories of the year. "As a private investigator for several Taylorville families, Bill Clutter helped unearth information on what may be one of the most heinous local cases of corporate neglectóan outbreak of neuroblastoma, a rare children's cancer, in that small town, due to toxins left there during the first half of the century. 2000 Year in Review: Updates on some of Illinois Times' favorite stories, Illinois Times, Dec. 28-Jan 3, 2001, Vol.26, No. 19, p. 6.

CONTINUING EDUCATION

False Confessions and William Heirens, A symposium sponsored by the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Children and Family Justice Center, Bluhm Legal Clinic at the Northwestern University School of Law.

National Innocence Project Conference, Case Western Law School, San Diego, CA., Jan. 18-20, 2002.

Death Penalty Mitigation Institute, "New Dimensions in Sentencing Advocacy," sponsored by National Association of Sentencing Advocates, Nashville, TN, June 6-9, 2001.

Death Penalty Seminar: How Juries Make Decisions, sponsored by the Office of the State Appellate Defender, Death Penalty Trial Assistance Division and the Center for Justice in Capital Cases, Chicago, IL, Jan. 26, 2001.

Innocence Network Workshop, sponsored by the Center for Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern University Law School, Chicago, IL, Dec. 1-3, 2000.

Death Penalty Defense Investigation Seminar, sponsored by the Office of the State Appellate Defender, Death Penalty Trial Assistance Division and the Center for Justice in Capital Cases, Champaign, IL, Nov. 10, 2000.

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

Board Certified Criminal Defense Investigator, B.C.C.D.I. National Criminal Defense Investigatorís Training Council

Non-lawyer member National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL)

Non-lawyer member Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (IACDL)

National Association of Professional Process Servers (NAPPS)