Chronology of the case of Walter Fowler and Heywood Pugh (a.k.a. Earl Howard Pugh)
Compiled by Rob Warden
Copyright © 2006, Center on Wrongful Convictions
Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law
September 5, 1936 — William J. Haag, a white forty-two-year-old Railway Express Agency driver, is stabbed to death during an apparent robbery on South State Street in Chicago.
September 17, 1936 — Two African American men — Walter Fowler, thirty-seven, and Heywood Pugh (a.k.a. Earl Howard Pugh), nineteen — are arrested in the vicinity of the crime. Both sign written statements confessing to the murder.
January 17, 1937 — Fowler and Pugh testify that their confessions were beaten out of them, but a Cook County Superior Court jury finds both men guilty.
January 27, 1937 — Superior Court Judge John Prystalski sentences Fowler to ninety-nine years and Pugh to life in prison.
1949 — Fowler died in prison.
1950 — A Chicago garden club to which Pugh’s aunt, Willa Mae Tandy, belongs retains Chicago attorney George N. Leighton to bring a petition for post-conviction relief on Pugh’s behalf. (Direct appeal already was time-barred when Leighton entered the case.)
June 1953 — George Miller, the Chicago Police detective who obtained Fowler and Pugh’s confessions, inadvertently allows Leighton to see a manila folder containing statements from two eyewitnesses who had identified the actual killer as a neighborhood thug named Eddie Leison. (Police had obtained these statements several hours before Pugh and Fowler were arrested, but failed to pursue Leison as a suspect.)
June 19, 1953 — Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Covelli grants Pugh a new trial, calling the case the worst miscarriage of justice he had ever seen.
June 23, 1953 — Prosecutors drop charges against Pugh.
