Marcellius Bradford confessed to a crime he did not commit, resulting in the convictions of himself and three other innocent men
Marcellius Bradford was one of four men wrongfully convicted of the 1986 rape and murder of medical student Lori Roscetti in Chicago. Bradford confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime — and implicated three other innocent men — pursuant to a plea agreement his counsel worked out with the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. At the time of his confession, he was just 17 years old.
Bradford's confession prompted another of his co-defendants, 16-year-old Larry Ollins, also to confess. Bradford received a lenient sentence — 12 years, of which he would serve 6.5 years — in exchange for testifying against Ollins and the other codefendants, Calvin Ollins, 14, and Omar Saunders, 18. All three were sentenced to life in prison.
False testimony by Chicago police crime laboratory analyst Pamela Fish also contributed to the wrongful convictions. After all four men were exonerated by DNA testing in 2001, the defense DNA expert, Edward T. Blake of California-based Forensic Science Associates characterized Fish's trial testimony as "scientific fraud." (False forensic testimony by Fish had been crucial in the previously exposed wrongful convictions of three innocent men — John Willis, Donald Reynolds, and Billy Wardell — who had been convicted in rape cases.)
Six months after Blake's DNA results exonerated the original defendants, they were legally exonerated and released — Saunders and Larry and Calvin Ollins, who are first cousins, in late 2001 and Bradford in early 2002.
After their release, a telephone tip led police to arrest and charge two other men — Duane Roach, 46, and Eddie Harris, 38 — with the crime. Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine said Roach and Harris confessed after DNA testing implicated them in the crime.
In a lawsuit filed on behalf of the innocent men in 2001, attorney Kathleen Zellner blamed the wrongful convictions on misconduct by Chicago Police Detective James Mercurio and Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Patrick O'Brien, in addition to perjury by Pamela Fish.
