Monday, July 1, 2013

Wow, alibi wasn't enough?

By Steve Mills, Chicago Tribune reporter
June 29, 2013

The evidence on which Daniel Taylor pinned his hopes for someday being released from prison never really changed — police records showing that he was in a Chicago police lockup when a brutal double murder occurred in November 1992.

But over the more than two decades since his arrest, Taylor experienced setback after setback. In spite of his powerful evidence, he was taken to trial, convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. He saw his appeals routinely turned back by various courts.

What's more, he was repeatedly rebuffed by Cook County prosecutors who put more stock in his lengthy confession than they did in the police records — and even the testimony of police officers.
It seemed, Taylor said, that nothing would win him back his freedom.

But then during a brief court hearing Friday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, a Cook County prosecutor announced that the office was finally dismissing Taylor's conviction. Hours later, he was freed from Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois.

The Tribune first brought the controversial case to light in 2001 as part of an investigation into false confessions. In the dozen years since then, Taylor's plight has remained an example to some of the difficulty in persuading prosecutors to reverse course when DNA evidence isn't at issue.

In his only interview Friday after his release from Menard, Taylor told the Tribune he was lifting weights when he was called in from the yard by guards. Told to see a counselor, Taylor, who didn't even know of the last-minute court hearing in Chicago, feared he was about to be given bad news

Learning of his newfound freedom set in motion a whirlwind for several hours for Taylor. He was allowed to say goodbye to his friends, including a co-defendant who, he said, began to weep.

Taylor left most of his belongings behind, but he made sure to give away his books — to inmates he believed would read them and not just use them for show in their cells.

He walked out of the maximum-security prison into a hot and sunny late afternoon with $41 in his pocket — into the embrace of his brother, his brother's fiancee as well as a mother whom he had not seen since his trial in 1995.

After exchanging hugs and kisses, a prison official told Taylor and his family that they had to leave the parking lot.

"Like I wanted to stay on the property," he said, laughing.

Taylor swapped shoes with his brother, David, donning the Nikes even though they were too small. The brothers joked about the gray in Taylor's neatly trimmed beard.

While prison was frustrating and he sometimes tired of having to show an angry face to other inmates, Taylor said he knew his fight for freedom would be lengthy and never considered giving up.

"I knew they wouldn't do the right thing immediately," he said as he later sat down to eat a chicken sandwich for dinner. "It would be an understatement to say I'm angry about it. But it's an anger that's in check and understood."

With Taylor's seemingly strong alibi, the question remained why it took so long for the Cook County state's attorney's office to dismiss the conviction.

In a statement, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said her decision followed a detailed review by her conviction integrity unit and her judgment that Taylor's release was in "the interest of justice."

But several factors could have played a role in the drawn-out process for a case that spanned the tenure of three elected state's attorneys: Jack O'Malley, whose office tried the case, and successors Dick Devine and Alvarez, both of whom — until Friday — aggressively fought to preserve the conviction.

As David Erickson, a former Illinois Appellate Court judge and onetime high-ranking prosecutor, noted Friday, the criminal justice system just "moves slow."

Taylor's case also lacked DNA evidence, often the impetus for courts to reverse convictions or for prosecutors to abandon them. It also featured confessions by Taylor and all seven of his co-defendants. Each implicated one another.


Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC

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