In the News

October 19, 2012
The Chicago Tribune

Chicago mother's conviction in son's death overturned

By: Duaa Eldeib

A federal appeals court has overturned the guilty verdict of a Chicago woman who has been in prison for seven years for the strangulation of her 4-year-old son.

Nicole Harris was 23 when she was found guilty by a Cook County jury of murdering her son Jaquari Dancy by wrapping a fitted bedsheet cord around his neck in their Northwest Side apartment in 2005. Prosecutors had argued that Harris became angry because her son would not stop crying.

Despite confessing to the murder shortly after Jaquari's death, Harris has since maintained her innocence and said her son died accidentally. The sole witness — her older son, Diante, then 5 — had told authorities that he had seen Jaquari wrap the cord around his own neck while playing Spider-Man.

The trial judge, however, deemed Diante incompetent to testify because he believed Santa Claus, Spider-Man and the tooth fairy were real.

Had Diante been allowed to testify, the jury would likely have returned a different verdict, the three 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judges wrote in their unanimous opinion.

Diante's testimony also would have served to call into question the reliability of Harris' confession, which was the product of a 27-hour interrogation and displayed some of the telltale signs of a false confession, according to the opinion.

"This isn't just a legal victory," said Alison Flaum, an attorney with Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, which teamed up with the law firm Jenner & Block to defend Harris. "They saw this case for the miscarriage of justice that it was."

The Illinois attorney general's office, which handled the appeal, is reviewing the decision, a spokeswoman said. The state could decide to retry Harris or appeal the ruling.