Illinois

Statewide: A Basketball Team And A Deadly Plane Crash; Amanda Knox On The Criminal Justice Process

NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS | By Sean Crawford

Published December 10, 2020 at 5:52 PM CST

It was a foggy, rainy night December 13, 1977. The University of Evansville's men's basketball team boarded a planed, heading for an away game. But soon after takeoff, the plane crashed killing all 29 people aboard. We'll hear from those on the scene and a documentary about that tragic event.

We'll also listen to a nurse, who explains the difficulty of doing her job in a pandemic.

And Amanda Knox, who was exonerated after her wrongful conviction in a high profile murder case, talks with us about her experience and concerns about prosecutors, the court system and the media.

Those stories and more on this week's Statewide.

The lineup:

* Sean Crawford talks with reporter Rachel Hinton of the Chicago Sun-Times about some of the politicians eyeing a bid for Secretary of State in 2022.

*Peter Medlin of WNIJ reports on how schools have had difficulty finding substitute teachers this year.

* Lee Gaines of Illinois Newsroom recaps the University of Illinois' COVID testing program and what the numbers from the Urbana campus showed.

* Christine Herman finds out about research showing more people died in 2020 -- and not just from COVID-19.

* Hannah Meisel interviews Amanda Knox, who was exonerated after being convicted and imprisoned for the death of her roommate while studying abroad in Italy. Knox is now a journalist and she is appearing this week at a virtual benefit for the Illinois Innocence Project.

* We hear from Mary Dial, a nurse at Memorial Medical Center in Springfield, about what it has been like to work through the pandemic and the stress it has placed on healthcare employees.

* Alex Ashlock with NPR's Here and Now reports on the plane crash that took the lives of the University of Evansville's men's basketball team and others in 1977.

Listen to Statewide for the week of December 11, 2020

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