Judge Orders New Trials for 4 Chicago Men Convicted In a 1994 Murder

A Cook County, Ill., judge on Wednesday ordered new trials for four black men after overturning their convictions   because DNA evidence linked a1994 rape and murder to a deceased career criminal.

This is the second time in less than two weeks that a Cook County judge has overturned convictions of black men whom police coerced into confessing to crimes, although DNA evidence pointed to the men's innocence.

Judge Paul P. Biedel Jr., presiding criminal court judge, ordered new trials for Michael Saunders, Harold Richardson, Terrill Swift and Vincent Thames. Richardson and Saunders are still in prison for the murder of 30-year-old Nina Glover, a sex worker.  Swift is on parole, and Thames, who served his sentence, must register as a sex offender because of the rape conviction.

Chicago police arrested the four when they were teenagers for Glover's murder, and they confessed to the crime under police coercion. DNA evidence found on Glover's body did not link any of the four men to the crime. A fifth teenager also confessed to the crime, but another judge ruled that police forced his confession, and prosecutors from the Cook County State's Attorney's Office dropped the charges.
 
In yesterday's development, Judge Biedel ruled that DNA evidence at the crime scene linked Johnny Douglas, a career criminal with a history of crimes involving sexual assault and murder, to Glover's murder. Police found her body  in Englewood, a Chicago neighborhood. A gunman shot to death Douglas in 2008.

Anita Alvarez, the Cook County State's Attorney, who argued against a new trial for the men, who are called the Englewood Four, now must decide whether to retry them.

The Innocence Project, which is based at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, has long called for the men's release.  In an email message on Wednesday, the Innocence Project asked supporters to sign an online petition, urging Alvarez to drop the charges against the four men. The men were each sentenced to 30 years in prison.

"The only evidence against the teenagers is the confessions extracted by police--confessions which have now been proven false. Sadly, coerced false confessions play a part in almost a quarter of all wrongful convictions and teenagers are particularly susceptible to falsely incriminating themselves during questioning from police,"  the Innocence Project wrote.  "The men's convictions were vacated on November 16, and they deserve complete justice. It is your responsibility to dismiss the charges in light of the evidence that the men are innocent."

Swift spoke to The NorthStar News & Analysis during a demonstration in September outside Alvarez's office in the Chicago Loop. He said he confessed to the crime because he did not know what he was doing, although he was represented by a lawyer.

"I was intimidated by the police who took advantage of my age,"said Swift, who served 15 years and two months in prison before being released on parole in May. "I was just a kid. I didn't know my rights. The police warned me that if didn't cooperate I would get 100 years in prison."

Swift was 17 when he went to prison; he is now 33. He wants his sentence vacated. Swift said his lawyer knew that DNA evidence excluded his client as a perpetrator, but Swift confessed to a crime he did not commit. The lawyer did not return a call for comment. 

In September, Color of Change, an Oakland, Calif.-based black online political organization, and the Innocence Project, held a news conference outside of Alvarez's office, calling for the release of the Englewood Four and Dixmoor Five.  The Dixmoor Five were sentenced to prison for the 1991 murder and rape of a 14-year-old girl in Dixmoor, a Chicago suburb.

Color of Change delivered nearly 67,000 signatures on petitions to Alvarez's office. The signatures included more than 63,000 gathered by Color of Change and more than 3,000 signatures submitted by the Innocence Project.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Michele Simmons recently vacated the convictions of the Dixmoor Five.