Marcus Beach started his law enforcement career in 1996 at a police department in central Illinois. Upon his retirement in 2023, he began working with the Illinois Innocence Project as the director of their Wrongful Conviction Awareness and Avoidance training program. This project has brought training on wrongful convictions, and the common contributing factors that lead to wrongful convictions, to over 4,000 recruit police officers in the state’s many police academies. This training was made mandatory by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board in 2023.