Word: rowe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...make history. If they are found guilty, the prosecutors in the group will be the first in the nation ever convicted of crimes for railroading an innocent man. The charges, which the defendants deny, have caused an uproar in Illinois. The state has freed two men from its death row this year after investigations supported their innocence...
While Cruz was on death row, another young girl was killed. The man who confessed to that murder, Brian Dugan, was the man who had admitted killing Nicarico. When Marshall and a team of prominent lawyers stepped in, they collected DNA evidence proving Cruz couldn't have committed the rape. They also hammered away at the vision statement. At Cruz's third trial, Lieutenant James Montesano testified that he was on vacation in Florida on the day his detectives claimed they had called him about Cruz's vision. The judge angrily dismissed the case and set Cruz free...
Under pressure to find out what went wrong, Du Page County appointed a special prosecutor, William Kunkle, who had made his name putting serial killer John Wayne Gacy on death row. Kunkle concluded that the vision statement was fabricated and that Cruz had been framed. He filed charges against three former Du Page prosecutors (two of them later became a sitting judge and an assistant U.S. Attorney) and four sheriff's deputies. The defendants all insist they are innocent, and the Nicarico family has rallied to their defense. The trial, likely to last more than a month, may be tough...
...Page Seven trial comes at a moment of extraordinary soul-searching for the Illinois justice system. Earlier this month Anthony Porter, who has an IQ of 51, was freed from death row after serving 16 years for a double murder he did not commit. At the time of his trial, Porter could not afford an investigator to work on his case, and his lawyer called a grand total of three defense witnesses. Porter was freed when a Northwestern University journalism class investigated his case and obtained a confession from another man. A key prosecution witness, who later recanted, now says...
...million settlement with Cook County. In their suits, the so-called Ford Heights Four charged that the sheriff's office fabricated evidence and ignored or hid leads pointing to the four men who actually committed the crime. In the past dozen years, Illinois has freed 11 men from death row--one less than it has executed since 1977. Nine of the freed men were black or Latino...