Good morning, Chicago.
A conviction for a man serving a 45-year sentence for murder was “tainted by coercive police tactics” that later were not critically examined by Cook County assistant state’s attorneys who reviewed the case, according to a report from special prosecutors who reinvestigated the case at the behest of the state’s attorney’s office.
Kevin Jackson, 43, has maintained his innocence since he was convicted in the 2001 fatal shooting of 54-year-old Ernest Jenkins at a Southwest Side gas station, but his yearslong fight to overturn his conviction was dealt a blow last month when a Cook County judge denied his motion for a new trial, despite the request having no opposition from the state’s attorney’s office.
Judge Angela Petrone on Monday, though, allowed the unredacted release of a report of an investigation by special prosecutors Thomas Geraghty and Robert Owen, who were appointed by the state’s attorney’s office in September 2022. Jackson’s attorneys had for months objected to the state’s attorney’s office providing only a partial version of the report.
Released in its full form while an appeal of Petrone’s decision is pending, the report is sharply critical of the investigatory tactics of the Chicago police detectives who led the case, as well as the handling of the matter by the state’s attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Madeline Buckley.
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Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune
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