After being branded a monster and spending more than 30 years in prison for murder, Mr. Melock’s name and record are finally cleared. “I can finally hold my head up high,” he says.
WAUKEGAN, Il. – Robert Melock was only 22 in January 1989, when he was arrested and charged with murdering his own 72-year-old grandmother, Augustine Melock. The press called it one of the most horrific crimes Lake County had ever seen, and prosecutors branded Mr. Melock a monster beyond redemption.
On Monday—nearly a year and a half since his conviction was overturned, and more than three decades since he was wrongly convicted—Mr. Melock, now 58, was completely cleared of this horrendous crime. The Circuit Court of the 19th Judicial Circuit issued Mr. Melock a Certificate of Innocence (COI), finding him innocent of the charges and ordering his record expunged.
“Receiving the COI means a lot to me,” Mr. Melock says. “I’m glad that everyone’s going to see what I’ve been telling them for years. I felt a big weight get off my shoulders, and I can finally hold my head up high.”
Mr. Melock was released from prison in December of 2023, after newly discovered evidence demonstrated the extent to which the Waukegan Police Department had lied, manufactured evidence, and brutally coerced false statements from Mr. Melock in order to implicate him. At that time his conviction was vacated, and the State dismissed all charges against him.
But, as his attorneys explain, there is a big difference between choosing not to file new charges and declaring him innocent.
“With this certificate, the court is officially saying that Bob is innocent of this horrible crime,” says attorney Fatima Ladha of the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy, which represents Mr. Melock. “He never should have been charged in the first place, and now the court has righted that wrong, clearing his name and completely expunging his record. It’s an acknowledgement of truth that Bob has waited for and deserved since 1989.”
On Monday, the State did not oppose Mr. Melock’s petition for a COI.
David Brodsky was Mr. Melock’s public defender during his first trial in 1989, and he stayed with the case through the appeal and the second trial, converting his client’s sentence from death to life. Later appointed to the bench for the 19th Judicial Circuit, Judge Brodsky never forgot the injustice done to Mr. Melock, and—after retiring from the bench—took up his case once again, tirelessly working to secure his exoneration.
“Robert Melock can never get back the 35 years that were so callously taken from him,” says Judge Brodsky. “However, the fact that he has now been declared innocent by the same system that once sentenced him to death is a major step forward. For those of us who have always known that Robert is innocent, this has been a long time coming.”
After spending more than three decades wrongfully imprisoned, Mr. Melock has had to adjust to, and reestablish, his normal life. “The hardest part of my time in prison was being away from my family,” he says. “I am now working on building my life and rekindling my family relationships.”
And his long quest for justice is not over. In December 2024, Loevy + Loevy filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Waukegan, nine former officers of the Waukegan P.D., and the consulting firm of John E. Reid and Associates, which helped interrogate and secure a false confession from Mr. Melock.
In the past year alone, Loevy + Loevy has won record-setting jury verdicts over $50 million each for three different wrongfully convicted clients. None of those clients was wrongfully imprisoned as long as Mr. Melock.
Still, for Mr. Melock, getting the Certificate of Innocence is more important than any eventual settlement or award in his civil case.
“A court of law has declared me innocent, and that was what I wanted all along,” he says.
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