A Quarter-pounder of a Tragedy

gerrymander.

Posted to Legal on Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 09:15:18 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.

After decades of silence, and in a story sure to please no one, two men have come forward with evidence of a murder --the lack of which kept an innocent man behind bars for 25 years.

We've grown accustomed to simple stories, like "prosecutorial misconduct has imprisoned the innocent," "the defense always works to bring justice to the poor," and "torture is never justified." But sometimes we learn a story which isn't so simple.

This story begins in January, 1982, when two McDonald's security guards were shot, one fatally. A month later, Edgar Hope was arrested following a gunfight where a police officer was killed. Hope led the police to Alton Logan, who was charged with the armed robbery of the McDonald's guards and convicted to life in prison.

Shortly after Logan's arrest, another pair of police officers were killed. Two perpetrators, brothers Andrew and Jackie Wilson, were arrested, and police obtained Andrew WIlson's confession for this third set of murders after 15 hours of torture and interrogation. Wilson told the tale of the abuse he received to Dale Coventry and Jamie Kunz, the public defenders assigned to his case. That testimony would later be the keystone in a wide-ranging investigation of abuse by the Chicago Police Department.

But reports of torture were not the only things Wilson told his legal defense team. He also confessed, under the umbrella of attorney-client privilege, to being the gunman in the January McDonald's murder, laughing that someone else was taking the rap. Coventry and Kunz were troubled enough by this to have versions of Wilson's confession signed, witnessed and notarized, then sealed. They remained silent about the confession throughout Wilson's torture lawsuit and eventual $1 million award. Only now, after Wilson's death of natural causes, have they stepped forward with the truth.

So, to recap: We have an innocent man kept in prison with the assistance of public defenders, who chose to respect a murderer's integrity over his. We have a police force indicted, and two officers fired, for only beating a guilty man enough to confess one of his crimes, rather than all of them. And, we have the murderer who lived out his life a wealthy man (if in prison), in no small part for having been soulless enough to allow an innocent serve time for him.