The three false confessions in the Dixmoor case bring to 25 the number of documented false confessions that have led to documented wrongful convictions in Cook County.
Summaries of the others:
Omar Aguirre: After lengthy interrogation by Chicago police, Aguirre falsely confessed to taking part in a 1997 torture murder, implicating not only himself but also co-defendant Edar Duarte Santos. In 1999, Aguirre was convicted by a Cook County jury and sentenced to 55 years in prison. He was exonerated and released in 2002 after the FBI discovered that the man he allegedly killed actually had been a victim of a string of drug-related torture murders committed by street gang members who had mistaken the victim for a drug dealer.
Marcellius Bradford: Under interrogation by Chicago police, Bradford, 17, and co-defendant Larry Ollins, 16, falsely confessed to the 1986 rape and murder of Lori Roscetti, a 23-year-old student at Rush Medical College in Chicago. In exchange for sentences of only 12 years, they pleaded guilty and falsely testified against two other youths — Calvin Ollins, 14, and Omar Saunders, 18. The false confessions were corroborated by false testimony by Chicago police crime laboratory analyst Pamela Fish. The younger Ollins and Saunders were tried as adults before a jury and sentenced to life in prison. In 2001, DNA testing excluded all four defendants as sources of semen recovered from the victim. The following year, a telephone tip led to the arrest of the actual culprits.
Eric Caine: As a result of torture by police, Eric Caine, 24, and co-defendant Aaron Patterson, 25, confessed to the 1986 murders of an elderly couple on the south side of Chicago. Caine signed his confession, but Patterson did not sign his. When given a written statement prepared by police, he was left alone, chained to a hoop on the wall of an interrogation room. With a paperclip, he scratched a message onto a metal bench: “Police threaten me with violence. Slapped and suffocated me with plastic. No lawyer or dad. Sign false statement to murders.” Patterson received a gubernatorial pardon based on innocence in 2003, but Caine remained behind bars until March 16, 2011, when prosecutors dismissed all charges against him.
Miguel Castillo: Three police officers claimed that Castillo confessed to the murder of a neighbor whose dismembered and decomposing body was found in his Chicago apartment in 1988. Castillo testified that the officers fabricated the confession — after failing to extract one by beating him. Castillo was convicted following a bench trial in 1991. In a post-conviction proceeding in 2000, Castillo’s attorneys presented affidavits by a former deputy Cook County medical examiner and a forensic entomologist stating that new testing, with procedures developed in the late 1990s, determined that the victim had been murdered at a time when Castillo could not have committed the crime because he was in police custody. In 2004, the City of Chicago settled a civil rights suit Castillo brought for $1.2 million.
Michael Evans: The convictions of Evans and co-defendant Paul Terry, both 17, rested primarily on the apparently perjured testimony of a purported eyewitness to the abduction of a 9-year-old girl, who was raped and murdered near her home on the south side of Chicago in 1976. During police interrogation, however, Evans confessed, implicating Terry. The confession was suppressed as involuntary, but it no doubt was a factor in the decision to charge Evans and Terry. Both were exonerated by DNA testing, after languishing 27 years behind bars in what the U.S. Court of Appeals labeled “a tragedy of epic proportions.”
Hubert Geralds Jr.: Under interrogation by Chicago police, Geralds, 34, confessed to murdering six women in the Englewood neighborhood in 1994 and 1995. Three years later, Geralds was convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. In 2000, prosecutors moved to vacate one of the convictions after DNA testing linked the crime to a different serial killer. Geralds remained on death row for the other five murders until 2003, when Governor George H. Ryan commuted his sentence, and those of more than 150 other death row prisoners, to life in prison without parole.
Paula Gray: Cook County Sheriff’s Police obtained a false confession from Gray, 17, implicating not only herself but also four innocent men (known as the Ford Heights Four) in the 1978 abduction rape and murder of a young south suburban couple. She was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison. Two of the men she implicated received death sentences. The other two were sentenced to life. In 1996, DNA testing exonerated all five and of the defendants and led to the arrests and convictions of the actual culprits. In 1999 Cook County settled lawsuits filed by the innocent men for $36 million — the largest civil rights payment in U.S. history. A suit brought on Gray’s behalf was settled for an additional $4 million in 2008.
Harold Hill: Under interrogation by Chicago police, Hill, 16, and Dan Young Jr., a 31-year-old man with a 56 IQ, confessed to the rape and murder of a woman whose body was found in a burning building on the south side of Chicago in 1990. They had been implicated in the crime by a man named Peter Williams, who also confessed but against whom charges were dropped when police discovered that he had been in jail when the crime occurred. Hill and Young were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. They were exonerated in 2004, by DNA.
Madison Hobley: Four white Chicago police officers, three of whom eventually were shown to have engaged in systematic torture of African American suspects, claimed that Hobley confessed to setting a 1987 fire that killed seven residents of a south side apartment building, including Hobley’s wife and infant son. Hobley was sentenced to death. In 2003, after it was discovered that the authorities had withheld exculpatory evidence, which indicated that the fire had been accidental, Governor George H. Ryan granted Hobley a pardon based on innocence. A federal civil rights suit brought on Hobley’s behalf was settled by the City of Chicago for $7.8 million in 2007.
Stanley Howard: Four white Chicago police officers, who eventually were shown to have engaged in the systematic torture of African American suspects, claimed that Howard, 21, confessed to the 1984 murder of a man who was shot to death as he sat in a car on the south side of Chicago in the company of a married woman with whom he was having an affair. Howard was sentenced to death. After reviewing the facts of the case in 2003, Governor George H. Ryan concluded that Howard was innocent and pardoned him. In 2007, a federal civil rights suit brought against the police by Howard was settled for $1.8 million.
Ronald Jones: In 1989, Jones signed a confession to the rape and murder of a 28-year-old woman whose body had been found four years earlier in an abandoned motel on the south side of Chicago. Jones testified that he had been beaten by his police interrogators, but he was convicted on the strength of the confession and sentenced to death. In 1995, the Illinois Supreme Court granted DNA testing, which had been denied previously by the trial court. The testing, however, was not done until 1997, but it definitively eliminated Jones as the source of the semen recovered from the victim. It took another two years for prosecutors to drop the charges. Jones brought a federal civil rights suit against the police. The City of Chicago settled the case for $2.2 million in 2003.
Ronald Kitchen: After 16 hours of alleged abuse and torture at the hands of detectives working under Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, Kitchen confessed to the 1988 murders of two women and three children on the south side of Chicago. The confession implicated a co-defendant, Marvin Reeves. Kitchen was sentenced to death and Reeves to life in prison. After an extensive review of convictions stemming from torture that occurred under Burge. In 2009, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan agreed to vacate both convictions and dismiss the charges against Kitchen and Reeves. The presiding judge of the Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court promptly granted both certificates of innocence.
Eric Kittler: Kittler, 15, was arrested by mistake when Chicago police mistook him for another youth they were seeking for questioning in a 1997 murder and armed robbery on the south side of the city. By the time it should have been apparent to the police that they had picked up the wrong youth, however, Kittler had signed a confession and been charged with the murder. Two years later, after the judge to whom the case was assigned refused to suppress the confession, Kittler was tried as an adult, convicted by a jury, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. By that time, police had obtained apparently accurate confessions from two other youths. In 2001, the Illinois Appellate Court held that police had lacked probable cause to arrest Kittler, vacated his conviction, and remanded his case for a new trial. Upon retrial the following year, Kittler was acquitted. In 2006, the City of Chicago settled a civil rights case brought on Kittler’s behalf for $2 million.
Steven Linscott: After Linscott told Oak Park police he had a dream about the 1980 murder of a young neighbor woman, he was charged with the murder, even though there were relatively few similarities and several striking dissimilarities between the dream and the crime. Based on that statement, which prosecutors called a confession, Linscott was convicted in 1982 and sentenced to 40 years in prison. After the conviction was reversed on appeal as a result of the prosecutorial misconduct, prosecutors agreed to DNA testing, which exonerated Linscott in 1992. A decade later, he received a gubernatorial pardon based on innocence.
Leroy Orange: After 13 hours of interrogation by white Chicago police detectives who eventually were implicated in routine torture of African American suspects, Orange confessed to the murders of four persons, including his wife and 10-year-old son. Orange and his half-brother, Leonard Kidd, were indicted. Their cases were severed. At Orange’s trial, in the spring of 1985, the prosecution case rested almost entirely on his confession, which he testified had been extracted by beating, suffocation, and electroshock. Against the advice of counsel, Kidd took the stand and testified that he alone committed the quadruple murder after a night of drinking, snorting cocaine, and smoking marijuana. Orange nonetheless was convicted and sentenced to death. In 2003, after reviewing the case, Governor George H. Ryan granted Orange a full pardon based on innocence, criticizing the prosecutors and judiciary for relying on “procedural technicalities at the exclusion of the quest for truth.” In 2007, the City of Chicago settled a federal civil rights suit brought on Orange’s behalf for $5.5 million.
Aaron Patterson: See Eric Caine summary above.
Lafonso Rollins: After Chicago police detectives told him he could go home if he confessed and submitted to DNA testing, Rollins, 17, who suffered from a learning disability, agreed, saying that he had raped a 79-year-old woman in 1993. He did not get the DNA testing, however, until 2004, after he had spent 11 years behind bars for the crime. The test exonerated him and he was released. In 2006, the City of Chicago settled a civil rights claim brought on his behalf for $9 million.
Michael Tillman: Five detectives working under Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge obtained a confession from Tillman to the 1986 murder and rape of a woman in an apartment building where he was a custodian. Two weeks after he and a co-defendant were charged with the crime, police arrested a man who had in his possession a gun and knife used in the crime and whose fingerprints were found on two soft-drink cans found at the crime scene. Nonetheless the prosecution of Tillman and his co-defendant proceeded. At their joint trial, Tillman was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but his co-defendant was acquitted. In 1991, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel, but Tillman again was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. In 2009, a special prosecutor appointed to handle torture cases agreed to vacate Tillman’s conviction and then dropped the charges. Tillman was freed the following year and granted a certificate of innocence by the presiding judge of the Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court.
Joaquin Varela: When Chicago police set out to arrest a man whom a survivor had linked of a multiple murder in 1981, they mistakenly arrested the wrong man and four of that man’s relatives, the youngest of whom was Varela, 16. During interrogation, police told Varela — falsely — that witnesses had identified him as one of the killers, he responded, “Si ellos dicen que yo estuve alli, entonces ellos tambien estuvieron alli.” (“If they say I was there, then they must have been there too.”) Prosecutors deemed those words a confession. Varela was tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison, as were his three innocent relatives. In 1991, after a reinvestigation of the case, Governor Jim Edgar granted the men full pardons — but only after they agreed not to seek compensation for their wrongful convictions.
Robert Wilson: Wilson, 41, confessed to slashing a nurse with a box cutter near Chicago’s Michael Reese Hospital in 1997. Within four weeks of Wilson’s arrest and confession, four similar attacks occurred in the same areas. After the final attack, police arrested the apparent actual perpetrator of the attacks, including the one to which Wilson had confessed. Nonetheless, the Wilson prosecution proceeded. At his 1999 trial, the victim identified him. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2006, after Wilson’s conviction had been affirmed the state courts, he was granted a federal writ of habeas corpus. A newspaper reporter then contacted the nurse who had identified Wilson at her attacker. She revealed that she had told police Wilson was the wrong man, but they told her he had confessed. Based on that representation, she identified Wilson in court as her attacker. Two weeks after the reporter’s article appeared, prosecutors dropped all charges against Wilson.
Dan Young Jr.: See Harold Hill summary above.
