With more than a dozen men on death row in Illinois wrongly convicted and accusations that Chicago police had beaten confessions out of suspects, some state lawmakers were determined to overhaul the criminal justice system. Barack Obama was one.

In 2002, Obama, then a state senator, sponsored a bill that would require police to make audio or videotapes of interrogations of murder suspects.

Peter Baroni was Republican legal counsel to the state Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, working with Obama as he tried to develop a way for police and prosecutors to find common ground with defense lawyers and civil libertarians.

"He was always very professional, very forthcoming," Baroni recalls. "He was not really a guy who would manipulate you or play games. ... He tried to take it (the debate) out of the political partisan bickering arena."

Over four or five months, Obama helped forge a consensus between defense lawyers wary of police tactics and law enforcement groups resistant to recording suspects' statements.

The bill eventually became law.

"He's a very good negotiator," Baroni says. "He's an incredibly at-ease guy. He never got excited about anything. Everything was low-key. Nothing ever got to the point where there was yelling and screaming. ... He was able to keep an open dialogue with both sides. He'd say 'What are your issues? 'What can we come up with for a resolution?' rather than pound the sand and walk away."

"Some politicians have a bloated sense of self-importance," he adds. "He never had that. He really didn't."

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It was July 2004 and Barack Obama had been tapped to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention — an address he knew could be a make-or-break moment in his career.

But the Legislature still was in session because of a budget stalemate, so Obama was trapped in Springfield. And he had a speech to write.

He retreated to a distinctly unglamorous spot — an anteroom next to the men's room behind the Senate gallery where his colleague, state Sen. Kirk Dillard, noticed him working away.

"He'd be puffing on a cigarette, sitting there with his legal pad," recalls Dillard, who would get updates on the speech when he passed by.

On July 27, 2004, Dillard watched Obama's debut on television— a rousing 17-minute address.

"I thought his speech was phenomenal," Dillard recalls. "But it could have been spoken by a Republican or Democrat. He just had the personal story to go with it."

"I instantly knew it would be a hit with the media and the media would make him a national celebrity," he adds. "I was not surprised at all he became an instant player ... with his own skills and being the only African-American there.... But I never thought the presidency might happen as quickly as it did."