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Eight men were convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the death of police officer Matthew J. Deegan.  On May 1, 1886 there were general strikes throughout the United States in support of an 8-hour workday.  On May 3 there was a rally of striking workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant in Chicago.  This rally ended with police firing on the workers.  Two workers died although some newspaper accounts reported six fatalities.

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Earnest Wallace was sentenced to death for the shooting murders of two men that occurred during the robbery of a saloon on the southwest corner of Twenty-Seventh and Federal streets in Chicago.  The victims were the proprietor, William Levin, and a customer, William Monroe.  Wallace was convicted of the murders due to the eyewitness testimony of John Porter, Henry Flynn, and Martha Clark.

Porter was the only identifying witness who testified he was in the saloon at the time of the shooting.  He first identified Wallace on the street while he [Porter] was in the custody of the police.  Although the other saloon patrons lived in the neighborhood, Porter did not and claimed he was a first time visitor.  The other patrons said the assailant was masked, but Porter testified the assailant was unmasked.  At trial Porter was unable to recognize any of the other patrons as being present in the saloon at the time of the shooting.  Porter also could not give an intelligible account of his actions or whereabouts after leaving the saloon.

The other two identifying witnesses gave testimony that was unlikely, and even if true, only identified Wallace as being in or near the saloon around the time of the shooting.  Wallace testified that he was playing craps at a pool room on State Street at the time of the shooting and he had three other players corroborate his account of how he spent the evening of the shootings.  Two years after Wallace's conviction, the Illinois Supreme Court vacated it on the grounds that the evidence against him was insufficient to convict.  (People v. Wallace)  [12/08]

Joseph Majczek and Theodore Marcinkiewicz were convicted in 1933 of murdering Chicago police officer William D. Lundy.  The case came to the attention of a Chicago Times reporter in 1944 after Majczek's mother placed a classified ad offering a $5,000 reward for information on Lundy's killers.  The Times did a front-page human-interest story on how the mother scrubbed floors on her hands and knees six nights a week for over a decade to raise the money.

A Times researcher got a statement from Joseph Majczek that said his trial judge met privately with him and promised him a new trial.  Normally the researcher would dismiss as preposterous a claim that a judge would host a private conversation with a convicted cop-killer, but the story reporter wondered aloud to him why Majczek was not sent to the electric chair, the usual sentence for a cop-killer.  Further research produced a compelling case for innocence.  The judge had not carried through on his promise because prosecutors had threatened him that granting new trials would end his career in politics.

The Times crusaded for Majczek's exoneration and he was pardoned in 1945.  Marcinkiewicz was seemingly forgotten, but in 1950, he was legally exonerated through a state habeas corpus proceeding.  The legislature later awarded $24,000 to Majczek and $35,000 to Marcinkiewicz.  Chapter 1 of Not Guilty covers the case in more detail including why the two were convicted.  The case was the subject of the movie Call Northside 777 (1948) starring Jimmy Stewart.  (CWC)  [12/05]

Kenneth Hansen was charged in 1994 with the famous unsolved murders of three 11 to 13 year old boys that occurred in 1955.  The victims were John and Tony Schuessler and their friend Robert Peterson.  They had traveled downtown to attend a matinee at a Loop theater and were found dead two days later in Robinson's Woods, outside of Chicago.

Hansen was on his honeymoon in Texas at the time of the murders, but he found his 40-year-old alibi impossible to confirm.  Four witnesses claimed he confessed to them separately and alone in 1955, 1964, 1968, and 1976.  There was no other evidence.  Three witnesses were paid informants.  Hansen was convicted and sentenced to 200 to 300 years of imprisonment.

After the trial, the fourth witness admitted his testimony was fabricated.  None of the witnesses mentioned the confessions to anyone before 1993.  In addition, after the trial, a woman came forward and claimed her dead husband, Silas Jayne, confessed to her to performing the murders in 1956.  She left her husband the next day.  Other witnesses and some physical evidence corroborated her story.  Despite there being no evidence that the boys were molested, the trial judge allowed evidence of Hansen's homosexuality and deviate lifestyle to be presented.  The 2002 retrial with new evidence and the widow witness also resulted in conviction.  Hansen died in prison in 2007.  (TruthInJustice)

Lt. Jon Burge and his fellow detectives at the Area 2 & 3 Police Station on the Southside of Chicago tortured at least 60 persons between 1973 and 1993.  The types of tortures used included Russian roulette, cigarette burns, electrical shocks, suffocation, radiators, telephone books, sticks, beatings, cattle prods, and threats.  It took the specific case of Andrew Wilson in 1982 to finally bring the truth to light.  Jon Burge and his detectives had gone overboard by leaving obvious signs of bruises all over Andrew Wilson's body.  An OPS investigation led to the Goldston Report, which stated and confirmed a systematic pattern of torture and abuse by detectives under the supervision of Jon Burge.  In 1993, Burge was allegedly fired and two detectives were suspended.  However, Burge receives his full pension and benefits.

Those tortured include the Death Row 10:  Madison Hobley, Leonard Kidd, Aaron Patterson, Andrew Maxwell, Stanley Howard, Derrick King, Ronald Kitchen, Reginald McHaffey, Leroy Orange, and Jerry McHaffey.  Frank Bounds is an 11th death row inmate tortured but he is now deceased.  Gov. Ryan has pardoned four of the Death Row 10.  (CCADP)  [9/05]

Lloyd Lindsey was convicted of murdering three little girls and their brother.  He was also convicted of raping one of the girls.  A man who boarded with the children's family and a surviving brother told police when interviewed together that Lindsey along with Eugene Ford and Willie Robinson had strangled the children after raping the girls.  The three men then set fire to the home.  Lindsey confessed to this crime, parroting the details of the boarder and surviving brother.  The home, at 1408 W. 61st Street in Chicago, was occupied by Mrs. Catherine Horace, her six children, and Lavelle Watkins, the boarder.

Medical evidence indicated that the children had not been strangled, but had died of smoke inhalation.  Two of the girls, moreover, were virgins and showed no signs of sexual abuse.  Lindsey and his compatriots, who had not confessed, were tried together, but with separate juries.  Lindsey was convicted, but his compatriots were acquitted.  In 1979, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed Lindsey's conviction, and barred a retrial.  It ruled “the inconsistencies in the testimony of [the principal prosecution witnesses] were not only contradictory but diluted [their testimony] to the level of palpable improbability and incredulity.”  (CWC)  [1/06]

Michael Evans and Paul Terry were convicted of the rape and murder of 9-year-old Lisa Cabassa.  No physical evidence was ever found to tie them to the crime.  A neighbor of Cabassa, Judith Januszewski, testified against the two, although by her own admission, she repeatedly lied to police and did not give them a full account of what she said she witnessed until six weeks after the victim's body had been found.  She did not come forward until after reward money was offered.

According to her family, Lisa left home with her 12-year-old brother at 6:30 p.m. to walk to the home of a friend a few blocks away.  On the way, Lisa complained of a headache and turned to walk back home.  She never made it home and apparently was abducted on the way.  Januszewski initially stated that she saw two youths, she later identified as Evans and Terry, struggle with a girl around 6:37 p.m.  By the time of trial, the prosecution had to disclose Januszewski's work timecard, which showed she worked to 8 p.m., so at trial they asserted the abduction occurred after 8 p.m..  Evans and Terry were each sentenced to 400 to 800 years of imprisonment, but because sentencing for different charges ran concurrently, they only had to serve 200 to 400 years.  DNA tests exonerated Evans and Terry in 2003.  They had served 27 years of imprisonment, more time than any previous Americans exonerated by DNA.  (Chicago Tribune) (CWC) (IP1) (IP2)  [12/05]

Sixteen-year-old Cathleen Crowell feared she had become pregnant after having consensual sex with her boyfriend and made a rape allegation as a plausible explanation to tell her parents.  It had not occurred to her that police would pursue her case.  Police made her make a composite sketch, and Crowell says they pressured her to pick Gary Dotson from a mug book, pointing out how much he resembled the sketch.  Dotson was arrested even though he then had a mustache that he could not have grown in the five days since the alleged incident.

At trial in July 1979, Crowell identified Dotson as her assailant.  The state's forensic analyst, Timothy Dixon, also testified that tests on the semen sample recovered from Crowell showed the alleged assailant had a “B” blood type which was shared by only 11% of the population including Dotson.  This testimony was false and misleading because Dixon did not volunteer that Crowell also had a “B” blood type and her fluids mixed in with the sample.  Thus the sample would have tested positive for the “B” blood type regardless of the blood type of the semen donor.  Dotson had four of his friends give alibi testimony, but the prosecutor branded them as “liars.”  Dotson was convicted.

Crowell subsequently married and moved to New Hampshire where she became a born-again Christian.  In early 1985, she told her pastor that she was riddled with guilt because she had sent an innocent man to prison.  On her behalf, the pastor contacted a Wisconsin lawyer who tried to resolve the matter, but prosecutors were unresponsive.  However, news about the recantation soon appeared in the Chicago Sun Times, taking up most of the front page.  Illinois Governor Thompson said he did not believe Crowell's recantation and an appeals court would not overturn the conviction.

The public supported Dotson and Thompson tried to assume a middle ground by paroling Dotson.  However, Dotson's parole was revoked two years later when his wife accused him of assault.  On Christmas Eve, 1987, Thompson granted Dotson another “last chance” parole, but it was revoked two days later when Dotson was arrested in a barroom fight.  In 1988, Dotson had DNA tests performed, which exonerated him.  He got his conviction overturned on Aug. 14, 1989 and the prosecution declined to retry him.  Many later reports on DNA testing listed Dotson as the first convicted person in the U.S. and the world to be exonerated by DNA evidence.  However, priority to judicial exoneration goes to David Vasquez of Virginia who was exonerated and released on Jan. 4, 1989.  Unlike Dotson's, Vasquez's case was little reported.  (CWC) (IP) (CBJ) (American Justice) (TWM) [12/05]

Perry Cobb and Darby Tillis (aka Darby Williams) were sentenced to death for the murders of Melvin Kanter and Charles Gucciona.  The murders occurred during a robbery of the victims' hot dog stand.  The prosecution's key witness was a woman named Phyllis Santini, who claimed that she had driven the getaway car for the two men.  The defense argued that Santini and her boyfriend, Johnny Brown, had committed the crimes, and that she was framing Cobb and Tillis.  The first trial ended in a hung jury, as did a second trial.

At the third trial, a witness who had earlier testified that he could not identify the defendants as the men he saw, suddenly changed his story and now claimed that he saw Cobb and Tillis enter the store.  This third trial in 1979 ended in convictions and death sentences.  Judge Thomas J. Maloney presided over the three trials and has since been convicted of taking bribes to fix murder cases.  He was accused of being tough on defendants like Cobb and Tillis who did not offer bribes.  Maloney refused to allow two defense witnesses to testify.  The two claimed Santini had admitted committing the murders with Brown.  The two also said she expected a reward for her testimony against Cobb and Tillis.  (She was in fact paid $1200.)  The Illinois Supreme Court reversed the convictions based on limitations that were put on the defense's ability to argue that Santini and her boyfriend were the true culprits.

While the parties were preparing for a fourth trial, Michael Falconer, a recent law school graduate, happened to read an account of the case in Chicago Lawyer.  Falconer recognized Santini's name because he had worked with her in a factory before going to law school.  At that time, Santini had confided in him that she and her boyfriend had committed a double homicide and that she was working with prosecutors in return for a deal that would keep her from being charged.  Falconer, who had then become a Lake County prosecutor, testified about this conversation at the fourth trial, which again ended in a hung jury.  Finally, at a fifth trial in 1987, both Cobb and Tillis were acquitted of all charges.  (CWC1) (CWC2) (Profiles of Injustice) (PC)  [12/06]

Kenneth Adams, Dennis Williams, Willie Rainge, and Verneal Jimerson were convicted of gang raping and murdering 23-year-old Carol Schmal and murdering her fiancé, Larry Lionberg.  The crimes occurred in the town of Chicago Heights which was subsequently renamed Ford Heights.  The four, who later became known as the Ford Heights Four, were sentenced to 75 years, death, life without parole, and death respectively.

Years later, Northwestern University journalism students investigated the case.  They uncovered a police file showing that, within a week of the crime, a witness had told the police that they had arrested the wrong men.  The witness said he knew who committed the crime because he heard shots, saw four men run away from the scene, and the next day saw them selling items taken from the robbery of the victims.  One of the men identified by that witness was by then dead, but the other three ultimately confessed.  Then the results of the DNA testing established the innocence of the Ford Heights Four and implicated the three who had confessed.  The four were pardoned and released in 1996.  In 1999, the four were awarded $36 million in damages.  Their case was the subject of a 1998 book entitled A Promise of Justice.

At a retrial in 1987, prosecutor Scott Arthur used blind belief in the police to counter defense arguments.  “Maybe the police made up all this evidence … That's too far-fetched.  If your find the defendants innocent, don't do it because [of a specific defense argument.]  Do it because you believe the police framed these men—because that's what you would have to believe now.”  In 1997, following a federal investigation into Ford Heights police corruption, Chief Jack Davis and five other officers—more than half the town's police department—were convicted of extorting bribes from drug dealers and abetting them in their distribution of heroin and crack.  Some of the real killers of Schmal and Lionberg were drug dealers and the police department protected them by charging and convicting four innocents of the murders.  (CWC1) (CWC2) (CWC3) (CWC4) (IP1) (IP2) (IP3) (IP4)  [1/06]

After Joanne Barkauskas was gunned down on her way to work, an eyewitness, Harvey Webb, identified the murderer as James Galason.  The murder occurred near 42nd and Artesian in Chicago.  Galason confessed and testified that the victim's husband, Edward Barkauskas, had contracted with him to commit the crime for a share of her life insurance proceeds.  In exchange for leniency, however, Galason agreed to implicate the Beringer brothers in the crime.  Galason claimed that Joseph Beringer had been the actual shooter, and that Kenneth Beringer had helped steal a car used in the crime and had been present when the crime was carried out.

There was not much of a case against the Beringers as the eyewitness claimed that Galason alone had committed the murder and the victim's husband, who admitted meeting with Galason, testified that he never met either of the Beringers.  Nevertheless, the Beringers were convicted.  The Illinois Appellate Court overturned Joseph Beringer's conviction in 1987 because of “brazen misconduct” by the prosecutor, Kenneth Wadas, at trial.  Five months later, a court overturned Kenneth Beringer's conviction on the same grounds, and the prosecution dropped all charges against the brothers.  (CWC)  [12/05]

Alton Logan was convicted of murdering Lloyd Wickliffe, a security guard, during the robbery of a McDonald's restaurant at 11421 S. Halsted St. in Chicago.  Another security guard, Alvin Thompson, was wounded. The gunmen got no money, but stole the guards' handguns. Police arrested Logan after a tip and got three eyewitnesses to identify him. Logan, his mother, and brother all would later testify that he was at home asleep when the murder occurred.  While investigating another man, Andrew Wilson, for the unrelated murders of two policeman, police found the shotgun used in the McDonald's robbery.  Police never charged Wilson in the McDonald's robbery as there were only two perpetrators in the robbery and they had already built a case against Logan and a codefendant, Edgar Hope.

Hope later told Wilson's attorneys, Dale Coventry and Jamie Kunz, that Logan had nothing to do with the McDonald's shooting and that Wilson was the shooter.  When the attorneys asked their client if he was responsible for the McDonald's shooting, Wilson said, “Yep, that was me.”  Wilson's attorneys thought about speaking up to prevent Logan's conviction, but attorney-client confidentiality prohibited them.  Instead they signed an affidavit regarding Wilson's confession and sealed it.  Kunz said they prepared the document “so that if we were ever able to speak up, no one could say we were just making this up now.”  They later obtained Wilson's permission to reveal his confession following his death.

After Wilson died in Nov. 2007, the attorneys came forward with Wilson's confession to the crime.  In April 2008, Logan's conviction was vacated and charges against him were later dropped.  Logan has served 26 years in prison.  (Chicago Tribune) (CWC)  [5/08]

Stanley Howard was sentenced to death for the murder of Oliver Ridgell.  Ridgell was shot and killed as he and Tecora Mullen sat in Ridgell's car. The car was parked in front of an apartment building at 1343 W. 92nd St., around the corner from Mullen's home.  Ridgell and Mullen both were married, but they had been having an affair for some time.  Mullen told police she would be able to identify the killer, but after she looked at police books with photographs of suspects she was unable to say any of them resembled Ridgell's killer. She was also unable to help a police sketch artist draw a composite of the perpetrator.

Six months later, Howard, who had no known acquaintance with either Ridgell or Mullen, confessed to the murder after he said it was beaten out of him by Chicago Area Two detectives.  Howard had been taken to hospitals before and after his confession.  Medical records showed that he had new injuries including bruises on his left leg that matched his description of police mistreatment.  Nevertheless the judge refused to bar his confession at trial.

According to Howard's confession, he fired three shots at Ridgell.  Most tenants in the apartment buildings near the scene of the murder were still asleep when it occurred.  Those that heard anything, heard only one shot.  One tenant heard a man say,  “I told you, I would get you.”  Another heard a woman say, “Don't hurt him. Just take me home.”  The tenants' statements were withheld at trial.  In a lineup, Mullen tentatively identified Howard, saying he “looked like” Ridgell's killer.  However, at trial Mullen was positive Howard was the killer.  She also said that her lineup identification had been positive.  In a later interview, when asked about her identification, Mullen said she was in an alcoholic haze in the years before and after the murder.  “I drank a fifth of liquor every day for 10 years. I couldn't hardly remember anything.”

In 1991, the Illinois Supreme Court found that a trial error had occurred, but ruled it harmless because “the evidence of the defendant's guilt was overwhelming.”  In 2003, Gov. Ryan disagreed and granted Howard a pardon based on innocence.  (CWC) (Chicago Tribune) [8/08]

Steven Smith was sentenced to death for the murder of Virdeen Willis Jr., who was shot outside a tavern.  Willis was an assistant warden at the Pontiac Correctional Center.  Smith was convicted due to the testimony of Debrah Caraway, which was dubious for several reasons.  First, Caraway had been smoking crack cocaine.  Second, she claimed Willis was alone when the killer stepped out of shadows and fired the fatal shot, but two other witnesses said they were standing beside Willis when he was murdered.  Third, Caraway's boyfriend, Pervis (Pepper) Bell, was an alternative suspect in the murder.  Finally, Caraway, according to her account, was across the street when the crime occurred and, while she positively identified Smith, the two persons who were standing beside Willis were within only two or three feet of the killer and could not identify Smith.

In 1999, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the conviction due to insufficient evidence and it barred a retrial.  It ruled that Caraway's testimony was less reliable than the contradictory testimony of the other witnesses.  Leonard Cavise, a DePaul University law professor, said he believes the state's evidence in the case was so weak that the prosecution should not have even brought charges against Smith, much less pursued the death penalty.  (CWC)  [1/06]

Marcellius Bradford, 17, Calvin Ollins, 14, Larry Ollins, 16, and Omar Saunders, 18, were accused and convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of 23-year-old Rush University medical student Lori Roscetti.  Bradford testified against the others in exchange for a 12-year sentence.  A friend of Bradford provided additional testimony including a confession by Saunders.  Bradford later recanted his statements, saying police coerced him into falsely confessing and that he did so to avoid a life sentence.

Crime lab analyst Pamela Fish testified that semen found on the victim's body could have belonged to the Ollinses, but a recent examination of her notes by a DNA expert showed that none of the four boy's blood types matched the crime scene samples.  In 2001, DNA tests exonerated all four and all were released except Bradford who was initially released after 6 1/2 years but was reincarcerated on an unrelated charge.  The case was profiled on a This American Life episode entitled “Perfect Evidence.”  The defendants were awarded $120,000 from the State of Illinois in 2003.  Calvin Ollins was additionally awarded $1.5 million from the City of Chicago in 2003.  (CWC) (IP1) (IP2) (IP3) (IP4)  [6/05]

A fire broke out in Madison Hobley's apartment building early in the morning, which killed his wife, infant son, and five other people.  Hobley escaped wearing only underwear.  Later in the day, detectives picked him up and tortured him in an attempt to extract a confession that he started the fire.  When torture did not work, four detectives asserted that Hobley made a confession.  No record of this confession existed.  One detective claimed to have made notes but threw them away after something spilled on them.

The prosecution claimed that Hobley had bought $1 worth of gasoline, which he used to start the fire.  They produced a gasoline can allegedly found at the fire scene, but a defense expert pointed out that it showed no exposure to the high heat of the fire, as its plastic cap was undamaged.  After trial, the defense learned that a second gasoline can was found at the fire scene but police destroyed it after the defense issued a subpoena for it.

In addition, post-conviction affidavits of jurors stated that non-jurors intimidated some of them while they were sequestered at a hotel, and that they were prejudiced by the acts of the jury foreperson, a police officer, who believed Hobley was guilty.  The affidavits also stated that jurors brought newspapers with articles about the case into the jury room and that they repeatedly violated the trial court's sequestration.  In 2003, Gov. George Ryan granted Hobley a pardon based on innocence.  (CWC)  [9/05]

David Dowaliby was convicted of murdering his 7-year-old stepdaughter, Jaclyn.  Police initially assumed that the window, through which an intruder had allegedly entered to abduct Jaclyn, had been broken from the inside of their home.  There was more broken glass on the outside than on the inside but forensic analysis established that it had been broken from the outside.  During the investigation, Dowaliby and his wife, Cynthia, had followed police advice not to talk to the press, but such refusal had made them appear guilty.

At trial, for which both Dowaliby and his wife were charged with first-degree murder, the prosecution presented a witness, with a history of mental illness, who stated that he saw someone with a nose structure resembling Dowaliby on the night the victim had disappeared and near where her body was found five days later.  This witness, Everett Mann, made this identification from an unlighted parking lot 75 yards away on a moonless night.  The prosecution also presented 17 gruesome autopsy photos that are disallowed in many jurisdictions because they serve to prejudice a jury.  The trial judge gave Dowaliby's wife a directed verdict of acquittal, but the jury convicted Dowaliby.

Afterwards, in an interview, the jury forewoman said that fist marks on the door of a bedroom were critical to the jury's decision to convict Dowaliby.  These marks appeared in one of the evidence photos, but were never mentioned by either side.  The jury concluded from these marks that Dowaliby had a terrible temper.  In fact, they had no bearing on the case, as they had been present years earlier, before the Dowalibys had moved into their home.  The jury forewoman also said, that if given the chance, the jury would have convicted Dowalibly's wife as well.

An appeals court reversed Dowaliby's conviction in 1991, on the grounds of insufficient evidence.  The case came to a legal end in 1992 when the Illinois Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the prosecution.  The case is the subject of a book, Gone in the Night: The Dowaliby Family's Encounter With Murder and the Law by Protess and Warden (1993).  (CWC) (American Justice)  [12/06]

Daniel Taylor was convicted of the murders of Jeffrey Lassiter and Sharon Haugabook.  The victims were residents of a second-floor apartment at 910 W. Agatite Ave.  Under police interrogation, the then 17-year-old Taylor confessed to the crime.  According to the confession, Taylor and three fellow gang members entered the victims' apartment to rob them while four additional gang members waited outside as lookouts.

Just before Taylor was to be formally charged with the murders, he protested that he could not have committed the crimes because he had been in police custody when they occurred.  When police checked their records, they found that Taylor was arrested at 6:45 p.m. on the night of the murders.  The murders occurred at 8:43 p.m.  A copy of Taylor's bond slip showed he was not released from the Town Hall District lockup until 10 p.m.

Nevertheless, police still charged Taylor with the murders.  To corroborate his confession, they found a witness, Adrian Grimes, a drug dealer and a rival gang member, who, at trial, testified that he saw Taylor at 7:30 p.m. in Clarendon Park.  Two police officers, Michael Berti and Sean Glinski, also testified that they saw Taylor at 9:30 p.m. when they emerged from an apartment half a block from the murder scene.  The jury chose to believe Taylor's confession over police records.  Taylor was sentenced to life in prison.

Following Taylor's conviction, Grimes said he lied at the request of detectives and to receive leniency on a narcotics charge.  The officers who said they saw Taylor at 9:30 p.m. testified they dropped him off at a DCFS shelter at 10 p.m.  However DCFS records show that he did not arrive there until 3 a.m.  In addition, four months before the officers' report, a judge had ordered Officer Berti off the witness stand in an unrelated case and stated, “I don't believe a thing he says. He goes down in my book as a liar.”

Besides Taylor, seven of his fellow gang members were charged with the murders.  No physical evidence connected any of them to the crime.  While in police custody all seven confessed to the crime and each said Taylor was with them.  Four of them were convicted of the crime, one was acquitted, and charges against the other two were dropped after their confessions were thrown out.  (Chicago Tribune)  [7/08]

Dean Cage was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl.  The assault occurred on Nov. 14, 1994, in an alley in the rear basement stairwell of a building in the 7000 block of South Wabash Avenue.  The victim gave a description of her assailant from which a computer-generated composite sketch was made.  After the sketch was publicized, police received an anonymous tip that a man who worked at a certain meat packing plant resembled the sketch.  Cage worked at the plant, but had no criminal record and did not closely resemble the sketch.

In 2004 Cage filed a handwritten petition of habeas corpus in federal court. He asserted he was innocent because the girl had contracted venereal diseases from her assailant, and tests showed Cage did not have any venereal diseases. Cage's petition was rejected.  Nevertheless he was arrested and identified by the victim in a live lineup.  In 2008 DNA tests exonerated Cage of the crime.  (CWC) (FJDB)  [6/08]

Robert Wilson was convicted of the attempted murder of June Siler.  While waiting at a bus station, a man, for no apparent reason, slashed Siler's throat and face with a box cutter.  Siler identified Wilson as her assailant from suggestive police photo lineups, although, at one point, she complained that Wilson was too old to be her assailant.  After 30 hours in custody, Wilson signed a confession.  He soon recanted the confession and said he signed it because he was sick, police had refused his requests for his heart medicine, and he was scared police would beat him.  He said a detective had slapped him.

Wilson's confession did not match the facts of the crime.  The confession stated Wilson assaulted Siler because he was smoking a cigar and he became angry when she had complained of the smoke and said he would get cancer.  Siler said later her assailant was not smoking a cigar, and there was no discussion about smoking or cancer. “I smoke,” she said. “I wouldn't have said anything like that.”

Siler always had anxiety about whether she helped to convict the right person.  Later after Wilson got a new trial, she learned another suspect had been wearing black Velcro shoes that her assailant had been wearing.  Siler is now convinced that Wilson was not her assailant and blames police for the mix-up.  (Chicago Tribune) (CWC)  [3/07]