Prosecutors agree to drop murder cases
But judges aren’t on board with decision in double-killing
This fall, Cook County prosecutors reversed course on two men accused in a decades-old double murder.
The cases against Wayne Antusas and Nicholas Morfin were on shaky ground, they said. The judges should throw out their convictions, and in turn prosecutors would drop the charges and the men would be freed.
It is a common enough story for a state’s attorney’s office that boasts a progressive record reversing wrongful convictions. It usually ends with the inmate’s joyful release from custody, and later, a lucrative lawsuit.
But instead, the judges presiding over Antusas’ and Morfin’s cases made an almost unheard- of move. They disagreed with the reversal plan.
It is ultimately judges’ responsibility — not prosecutors’ — to decide if convictions should stand, they said.
“I do not think it is good practice for a judge to rubber-stamp an agreement the parties have entered into on something the court, not the parties, have province over,” Judge Timothy Joyce said in court.
Joyce indicated he had significant doubts about Antusas’ claims of innocence, and threw out his petition for a new trial.
Judge Arthur Hill declined to toss out Morfin’s conviction, and ordered an evidentiary hearing where Morfin will have to prove that hewas wrongfully convicted.
If more judges at the Leighton Criminal Court Building follow suit and decline to throwout convictions after prosecutors have agreed to drop the cases, that could mark a sea change in the way alleged wrongful convictions are handled in Cook County, once known as the wrongful conviction capital of the country.
Two girls slain
Morfin and Antusas were convicted of murder in the 1995 killing of two 13-yearold girls, Carrie Hovel and Helena Martin.
The teenage gunman, Eric Anderson, the son of a Chicago cop, opened fire trying to hit a gang rival. Instead, he shot Carrie and Helena, who were sitting in a van near an elementary school.
Prosecutors at the time said Anderson acted as part of a plot with fellow gang members, and they cast a wide net, charging several other Almighty Popes.
Among them were Matthew Sopron, the gang’s leader, who allegedly gave the order; Antusas, his second- in- command; and Morfin, who allegedly helped plan the attack. If they worked in concert, they all could be guilty of murder, even though Anderson was the only one who fired shots.
Also charged was William Bigeck, who flipped on the others in exchange for a plea deal. He was a crucial witness— and when he and others recanted, the case got significantly messier.
Sopron launched a bid for a new trial. And midway through a 2018 hearing on his innocence claims, prosecutors told Joyce they had reconsidered and asked him to toss out Sopron’s conviction.
An uncertain judge
Prosecutors do not have the power to throw out a guilty verdict. If they decide they cannot stand by a case, they must ask a judge to vacate the conviction, or at least say they do not object to doing so. After that, prosecutors can dismiss the charges, indicating they do not intend to bring the defendant up on a new trial.
In the face of an unopposed request to toss out a case, judges generally do so. That’s what happened in Sopron’s case: Joyce vacated the conviction, after which prosecutors dropped charges. Sopron and his family rejoiced.
But ever since, Joyce has doubted whether he made the right call, he said in court this month after prosecutors asked him to throw out Antusas’ conviction too.
He didn’t think he had a choice but to throw out Sopron’s case. But in the nearly two years since, he had researched the law and come to a different conclusion. Antusas’ conviction would stand.
“I believe it would be yet another error … to grant the petition simply because the parties agreed that it ought to be granted,” he said Nov. 18.
Antusas’ argument for exoneration largely tracked Sopron’s. Eric Anderson, the shooter, along with Morfin both testified at Sopron’s 2018 hearing that there was no plan to shoot at the van. And Antusas’ attorneys said Bigeck was pressured into lying by an unscrupulous prosecutor, who gave him special privileges in exchange for flippingonhis co-defendants— like letting him visit the state’s attorney’s office to watch pornography and order takeout.
Prosecutors did not concede that the state’s attorney acted unethically. But they did say they could no longer consider Bigeck a credible witness.
“Because Bigeck has changed his story so often, the People cannot ascertain the truth at this point,” prosecutors wrote in a filing. “A conviction based on
perjury cannot stand.”
Joyce didn’t buy it. Case law warns that recantations should be considered with skepticism, and while Bigeck has certainly perjured himself, “that doesn’t end the game,” he said. Witnesses frequently take the stand and deny having made statements to police or a grand jury, and that doesn’t mean entire convictions are thrown out, he said.
Joyce did not find Anderson credible, either — indicating that he likely tried to clear his co- defendants’ names out of guilt.
“It’s from (his) criminal act that so many lives are ruined, beginning with Carrie Hovel and Helena Martin,” the judge said. “And these defendants, gangbanger wannabe knuckleheads … most go down for natural life sentences. Their lives are ruined, their families’ lives are ruined. All because of Eric Anderson. What a weight that must be on his soul.”
And while Joyce was not tasked with determining Antusas’ guilt, the judge indicated strongly that the defendant had not made a good argument for innocence.
So rather than throw out the conviction — which both prosecutors and defense attorneys wanted— or move the case to an evidentiary hearing, he denied Antusas’ petition altogether.
Antusas’ attorneys said in court they intend to appeal.
A few days later, Judge Hill took a different tactic in Morfin’s case, staying away from the facts of the matter and the underlying allegations. He ruled only that there needs to be a hearing on Morfin’s claims.
Cook County prosecutors now must decide how to participate in a hearing about a case they have already said they don’t support. Theoffice declined to comment because the matter is pending.
‘I wish itwould just get over with’
When prosecutors called Tom Hovel — Carrie’s father — to say they intended to drop the Antusas and Morfin cases, Hovel was “livid,” he told the Tribune.
“So emotional, I couldn’t even focus on anything,” he said. “I hadn’t felt like that in years … it went right to the heart.”
Nicole Loye, Antusas’ sister, greeted the news with joy. She heard about prosecutors’ decision just anhour after she buried her uncle, who died of COVID-19, she told the Tribune in an email.
“Finally some good news,” she said. “Even his prison was getting the paperwork ready. I didn’t know the judge had to sign the order, I just knew the state conceded and didn’t want to prosecute any further.”
For Joyce to have denied her brother’s petition without a full hearing is a “miscarriage of justice,” she wrote. Coronavirus is raging behind bars, and Loye said her parents are in poor health.
“The judge was supposed to look at the new evidence when we had our hearing and he didn’t care to,” she said. “He made all inferences/assumptions.”
Hovel was surprised and happy to hear the judges had not thrown out Antusas and Morfin’s convictions, as had been expected.
Both Morfin and Antusas are close to the end of their sentences as it is. Even if they lose their bids for exoneration, Morfin is slated for release in July and Antusas is scheduled to be paroled in 2024.
So after a quarter-century of trials, appeals, resentencings, post-conviction petitions and general uncertainty, Hovel knows that one way or another, closure is at hand.
“Iwas very happy with it, but I wish it would just get over with already,” he said. “It’s been going on since 1995. It’s 2020 now. I mean … no one family or one victim — they shouldn’t have to go through this.”