The dream murder — and the wrongful conviction of Steven Linscott
Steven Linscott (Photo: Jennifer Linzer)
Steven Linscott was wrongfully convicted in 1982 of the murder of a young neighbor woman in Oak Park, Illinois, as a result of prosecutorial and police misconduct and misleading forensic testimony.
After the body of the victim, Karen Ann Phillips, was found, Linscott approached Oak Park police at the urging of friends and told them about a dream he had about a similar murder. Although there were relatively few and not-at-all-amazing similarities between the dream and the actual crime, authorities called Linscott's statement a confession and charged him with murder and rape.
At trial, Assistant Cook County State's Attorneys John E. Morrissey and Jay C. Magnuson told the jury that biological material recovered from the scene had to have come from an O secretor, a relatively small population group that included Linscott. In fact, the forensic evidence established that the material in question could have come not only from an O secretor but also a non-secretor of any blood type — a group that included a sizeable majority of the population.
A state forensic witness, Mohammad Tahir, also had testified that several hairs found on the victim's body, bed, and carpet were consistent with hair samples provided by Linscott. In recent years, microscopic hair comparisons have been shown to be useless.
After the Illinois Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction based on prosecutorial misconduct — saying that Morrissey and Magnuson had “invented” the inculpatory blood evidence — the Cook County State's Attorney's Office agreed to DNA testing, which led to Linscott's exoneration in 1992.
In December 2002, Linscott received a pardon based on innocence from Illinois Governor George H. Ryan.
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