“From the first day I stepped into my cell, anger took control of me. I was 28 years old. I was going behind bars for the rest of my life. No one in prison gave a damn if I was innocent or not.
I talked back to guards and broke rules, not realizing I was only hurting myself. That meant I spent a lot of time in segregation—called “seg” by prisoners. Alone in a cell, I passed the time smoking, reading, and pacing.
I fought the system for about five years. The message I wanted to send was, “You can’t break me.” I must admit, though, it ain’t easy sitting behind bars alone, especially when you know you’re innocent.
Eventually, I realized that if I didn’t change my attitude, not only would I continue to do time in seg, but if my case went back to court, officials wouldn’t give me any sympathy.
So I worked to turn my prison life around. I got a GED. I earned an associate of applied science certificate and a certificate for building maintenance. I took courses in carpentry, electrical installation, typing, and welding.
I also spent a lot of time just trying to survive. Prison, after all, is a place where fights break out constantly, guards are beaten to within an inch of their lives, and prisoners are killed. I kept a homemade metal shank with me always, even tucking it under my pillow while I slept.
Periodically, of course, my anger would return. Like when prison officials refused to let me attend my grandmother’s funeral.
Or when my mother was dying of breast cancer and the authorities offered me a choice: Visit her—for all of 15 minutes—before she died, or attend her funeral. I was furious. My aunt urged me to see her one last time. She was right, of course.
I was shackled like a dog when guards brought me to the hospital. My hands were cuffed, and the cuffs were attached to a chain around my waist. My legs were bound. That is how I saw my dying mother. She urged me to keep my hopes up, and, after 15 minutes, I returned to prison. She died two weeks later.
Before she died, my mother told me over and over again that one day, truth would prevail. I shared her faith that someone, sooner or later, would come forward and say something to free me.
Finally, in November 2007, I got that break.
Andrew Wilson, who was serving a life sentence for the killing of two police officers, died in prison. Soon after, one of Wilson’s attorneys, Jamie Kunz, met with my lawyer, Harold Winston, to discuss my case. Kuntz told Winston about the signed affidavit containing Wilson’s confession. The document had been hidden away for years in a fireproof strong box at the home of another attorney of Wilson’s, Dale Coventry. At one point, he stored it under his own bed.
When Winston called me with the news, I wasn’t initially all that confident the affidavit would help me. Yes, it sounded good. But I had been through too much.
I was also upset from the jump. If these lawyers had evidence that I was innocent, how could they not have said anything? While I slept on a prison bunk for 26 years, Coventry was sleeping above a box that might have spared me years in hell.
As word of the confession got out, my case started attracting local media interest. Then 60 Minutes aired a segment. The public was outraged. Many people demanded Kunz and Coventry’s disbarment, others recommended they be fined, and some suggested that they be imprisoned for 26 years. Years after my release, Kunz said he never expected such a hostile reaction.
One April morning, I boarded a prison bus to the Cook County Jail, and from there was taken to the courtroom for a hearing on the new evidence in my case. If all went well, by the end of the day, I was going home.
I was elated—and shed many tears—when the judge vacated my convictions and ordered a new trial. I was to be released on bond.
Before entering the free world again, I changed into clothes my family brought me. But the pants, which belonged to my brother Tony, were about three sizes too big, and I didn’t have a belt. As we left court, my aunt held up the pants from the back so they didn’t fall around my ankles.
I got into a car for the first time in 26 years and went to my aunt’s house, where we celebrated with about 50 people. I walked around all night with a bottle of champagne. Life outside was easy to take. But the final decision in my case had yet to be made.
Five months later, I got the resolution I had sought for more than two decades. At a hearing in September 2008, the state dismissed the charges against me. “Your long personal nightmare is over,” said Cook County Circuit Court Judge James Schreier. “Hopefully, you will live a long life as a free man.”
Finally, my wrong had been righted. Of course, I was still pissed, especially when I thought of the things police and prosecutors did to have me convicted. Six days after my arrest, police had matched a shell found at the McDonald’s to a shotgun confiscated while seeking Wilson for the murder of the two cops. But the police hid this from my lawyers. My life would have been very different if the cops and “officers of the court” had done their jobs honestly. Even after we got ballistics tests matching the gun to the shell casing, Cook County Chief Criminal Court Judge James Bailey refused to admit the evidence.
But there was no use reliving the past.
Under state law, I was able to petition the court for a certificate of innocence—an official recognition of my exoneration. Most importantly, I could receive compensation. Because compensation is capped at $199,150, I was eligible for an average of $7,659.61 per year for the time I was imprisoned.
On April 17, 2009, I was formally declared innocent. A few months later, we filed a federal civil rights suit against the city of Chicago and several detectives, including the notorious former police commander Jon Burge, who I argued had conspired to build a false case against me irrespective of my guilt or innocence. (For decades, Burge used torture on dozens of mostly African-American suspects, usually to extract false confessions. Even though he had committed the crime for which he was convicted, Andrew Wilson sued him for torture, eventually winning a settlement from behind bars. Burge was fired and convicted of perjury for lying about torturing suspects.)
I believed the government owed me something, even if it would never make up for the years I lost. Just before the December trial date—about 30 years after I was arrested—we settled out of court for $10.25 million. After paying lawyers’ fees, loans and other family obligations, I was left with about half.
The city paid the money, but no one in power apologized.”
- Alton Logan & Berl Falbaum, “I Served 26 Years for Murder Even Though the Killer Confessed.” The Marshall Project, October 19, 2017.