Wilson ruled innocent in Burge-related case
Judge refers it for possible investigation
A man who served more than three decades behind bars for a 1982 cop killing was officially declared innocent Friday after years of alleging he was tortured and framed for a shooting his brother committed.
Jackie Wilson successfully proved that he was merely an innocent bystander as his brother, Andrew, killed two Chicago police officers, Cook County Judge William Hooks ruled.
But that won’t bring an end to one of the strangest cases in Cook County— one involving an allegedly perjurous prosecutor, an international con man and a legacy of police violence involving notorious exCmdr. Jon Burge.
Hooks referred the overall matter to Presiding Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. for him to consider appointing a special prosecutor who would investigate potential criminal wrongdoing by current or former prosecutors.
And Hooks made no secret of his belief that some should face consequences for what he sawas a horrendously botched prosecution.
“Some ( prosecutors) venture into dirty, unethical (territory) … in a very small number of cases, they become criminals themselves,” the judge said.
Hooks has called Wilson’s ordeal perhaps the most complicated Burgerelated case that has surfaced.
Undisputed in the case was that Wilson’s brother, Andrew, fired the shots that killed Chicago police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien in 1982. Both brothers alleged they were tortured at the hands of police after their arrest. Wilson’s first conviction was thrown out on appeal; at retrial in 1989 he was
convicted of O’Brien’s murder but acquitted of Fahey’s.
In 2018, after extensive litigation, Hooks threw out Wilson’s conviction on the grounds that he was tortured into confessing by Burge and his crew.
The specially appointed private attorneys named to handle the prosecution put Wilson on trial for a third time this fall. But the case fell apart in spectacular fashion after a Cook County prosecutor, Nick Trutenko, allegedly lied on the stand.
The special prosecutors dropped the charges shortly afterward, and Trutenko was fired that evening.
HooksonFriday said that while there is a “monstrous cloud” of police and prosecutorial misconduct hanging over the Wilson case, the case for Wilson’s innocence instead relied on uncontested eyewitness evidence that he was merely a bystander as his brother fired the shots.
Prosecutors had argued thatWilson only came back
into town to help his brother spring a friend out of custody — and that his arrival in Chicago kicked off a “common scheme,” such that he can be held legally responsible for his brother’s actions.
But there is no evidence that they were actually on their way to do so when Andrew fired the shots, Hooks said.
AndrewWilson shot as “a spontaneous attempt to save himself,” the judge ruled, andif policehaddone their jobs correctly afterward, they would have treated Jackie Wilson as a witness against his brother and not a co-defendant.
Even some of Hooks’ fellow judges have come up to him and referred to Wilson as a “cop killer,” Hooks said fromthe bench.
“This court does not listen to those who have not read the record, studied the record,” he said. “It is our job to take the deep dive.”
The certificate of innocence could potentially be
used as evidence in any future civil claims Wilson files, aswell as entitlehimto a significant cash payout from the state, along with potential help in finding housing and employment.
It could also provide a measure of finality to the proceedings, which ended without a formal finding of guilty or not guilty.
In ahighly unusualmove, Wilson’s attorneys also had askedHooks forwide-ranging sanctions against both Cook County prosecutors and the special prosecutors who handledWilson’s case.
Hooks declined to impose the sanctions, instead referring thematter toMartin for consideration of a special prosecutor.
IfMartin names a special prosecutor, it would be the second time in less than two years that such a prosecutor has been tasked with investigating potential misconduct by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office.
Last year, veteran attorney Dan K. Webb was appointed to look into whether anyone had committed any crimes in the course of prosecuting and then dropping charges against former“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett. Webb said that some in Foxx’s office committed “substantial abuses of discretion and operational failures” but that they did not rise to the level ofwarranting criminal charges.
The stakes appear far higher in Wilson’s case, which was dropped in October after twists and turns usually reserved for TV courtroom dramas.
A central witness in the case, William Coleman, had testified in 1989 thatWilson confessed to the slaying to him when theywere locked up together in Cook County Jail.
Coleman was widely reputed to be a con man and a fraud, with an international rap sheet, and by the time this year’s trial rolled around, neither defense attorneys nor the team of private attorneys appointed to prosecute the case knew if he was alive or dead. Not even Coleman’s ex-wife and son knew whether he was alive.
An investigator hired by the defense said he was warned not to affirmatively declare that Coleman was dead, since “he’d been dead before.”
But on Oct. 1, Trutenko took the stand and said not onlywasColeman still alive, but the two still kept in touch.
The courtroom was shocked.
But the case was not dropped until later, after Trutenko testified that he had not discussed Coleman in his previous conversations with the special prosecutors.
Special prosecutors told Hooks thatTrutenko’s testimony was false. They had, in fact, discussed Coleman with him. Then they dropped the charges against Wilson entirely.