CHICAGO (AP) — A Cook County judge has thrown out the convictions of four men in a 17-year-old murder after new DNA evidence linked someone else to the crime.
CHICAGO (AP) — A Cook County judge has thrown out the convictions of four men in a 17-year-old murder after new DNA evidence linked someone else to the crime.
Judge Paul Biebel on Wednesday also ordered a new trial for all four men: Michael Saunders, Harold Richardson, Terrill Swift and Vincent Thames. The four were teenagers when they were convicted in the murder of 30-year-old Nina Glover in Chicago.
Their attorneys say their confessions were coerced.
DNA links another man — now dead — to the crime.
Rob Warden of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University says there have been more than 100 exonerations in Illinois since 1989. Of those, 31 involve new DNA evidence.
Warden says there have been 25 documented false confessions leading to wrongful convictions in Cook County.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
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