2 DECADES LATER, 2 MURDER CASES UNRAVEL
One man freed, another expected to have conviction overturned today
A Chicago man was freed from jail Monday following the dismissal of his double murder conviction, and a second man convicted of an unrelated slaying is expected to have his murder conviction overturned Tuesday — cases that are both more than two decades old.
On Monday afternoon, Charles Johnson walked out of Cook County Jail and into the arms of friends and family members. In July, prosecutors vacated his conviction in the 1995 double murder of Southwest Side car dealers. New fingerprint evidence shows another man was the culprit, according to Johnson’s lawyers.
On Tuesday morning, meanwhile, prosecutors plan to ask a judge to vacate the murder conviction of Mark Maxson, a law- enforcement source told the Chicago SunTimes. As part of a reinvestigation of the case, prosecutors had sought additional DNA testing of crime- scene evidence at his lawyers’ request.
Even though Johnson’s double murder conviction was overturned, Cook County prosecutors say they intend to retry him for the same crime. They don’t plan to retry Maxson, though.
After Johnson’s conviction was vacated in July, he was moved from state prison to the Cook County Jail, where he was being held on $ 500,000 bond. His family posted his bail — 10 percent of the bond— on Monday.
“He will be able to smell the free air for the first time in two decades,” said one of his lawyers, Joshua Tepfer of the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School.
Johnson, now 39, was convicted in the fatal shootings of Yousef Ali and Khalid Ibrahim at their used car lot at 75th and Western. He was sentenced to life in prison.
The killers stole two cars. Fingerprints found on the adhesive side of a price sticker on one of the cars identified a convicted felon as the culprit, according to Tepfer and his co- counsel, Justin Barker of the Kirkland & Ellis law firm. Other fingerprint evidence also linked the man to the crime scene, the attorneys say.
Tepfer said his client was a “19- year- old kid who was never interrogated before. He maintained his innocence repeatedly. He was tricked into finally signing a confession that was untrue.”
Tepfer said he was “frustrated” that prosecutors now plan to retry his client, saying they have not presented him with any new evidence. A spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment.
Johnson was among four co- defendants. One has served a robbery sentence. Another is in state prison for murder with a post- conviction petition pending. A fourth man also had his murder conviction vacated in July, but he remains in jail because he can’t post his $ 500,000 bond.
On Tuesday, meanwhile, prosecutors plan to ask a judge to vacate the conviction of Maxson, who is serving a life sentence.
Maxson, now 55, initially drew the attention of police because he told a TV reporter he bought chips for 6- yearold Lindsey Murdock and told the boy to go home a day before he was found dead under debris in an abandoned garage near 107th and State. But police said Maxson’s story kept changing.
He allegedly confessed that he sexually assaulted and killed the boy in the garage after smoking crack and drinking beer.
No physical evidence linked Maxson to the crime. At his trial, a prosecution witness who examined a bloodstain on the boy’s shirt and one on his jeans testified the stains couldn’t have come from Maxson or the boy. Based on his confession, though, the jury convicted Maxson.
Before he was sentenced to life in prison, Maxson insisted he didn’t kill Lindsey.
“All of the evidence belonged to someone else,” Maxson told Judge Daniel Locallo at his sentencing in 1994. “I am charged with a crime I did not commit.” Locallo responded that Maxson possessed a “malignant heart” and needed to be eliminated from society.
Maxson is expected to become the 15th person whose conviction has been vacated by Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez since she formed a Conviction Integrity Unit in 2012. The unit reviewed Maxson’s case after his attorneys, Elliott Zinger and Larry Dreyfus, filed a post- conviction petition on his behalf and persuaded a judge last year to authorize new DNA tests in the case.