State’s attorney vacates conviction in 1995 murder
The Thursday jailhouse phone call began not much different than usual.
“How’s your day going?” the inmate’s attorney, Kathleen Zellner, asked.
“Pretty much like any other day in prison,” replied Alprentiss Nash, a 37-year-old Chicago man who’s spent the last 17 years in prison professing his innocence.
“‘Well, you’re going to be a free man tomorrow,’ I told him,” said Zellner. “He just started yelling and shouting and praising God. It was great.”
Nash is expected to walk out of the Menard Correctional Center in Downstate Menard at 11 a.m. Friday — a day after prosecutors with Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s office went to court and asked a judge to vacate murder charges against him.
Convicted in January 1997 of the 1995 armed robbery and murder of Leon Stroud in his West Pullman home, Nash becomes the first person ever to have his murder conviction overturned solely by that office after a re-investigation by its new Conviction Integrity Unit, which Alvarez created in February.
“The decision to vacate this conviction comes as a result of a comprehensive investigation into the facts of this case,” she said at a news conference, announcing that the unit had reviewed DNA evidence, old court and police records, and even re-interviewed witnesses to arrive at the decision.
Nash was arrested shortly after the April 30, 1995 crime in the 11700 block of South Wentworth. He was convicted on eyewitness testimony that had been substantially discredited at trial and sentenced to 80 years.
The killer wore a black ski mask during the crime. One was recovered from a gate post near Stroud’s home. During a post-conviction appeal, Nash had sought DNA testing of the mask. That was opposed by prosecutors and subsequently dismissed by the Cook County Circuit Courts.
The Illinois Appellate Court later reversed that decision, ordering the DNA testing that in 2010 came back with a genetic profile matching a different man.
“The investigation into the murder of Leon Stroud remains open and will continue,” said Alvarez, confirming her office has interviewed the other man.