Eight years after a conviction for a murder he contends he did not commit, Melvin Bentley walked out of prison Tuesday after striking an unusual deal with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
Bentley chose to not pursue a new trial and what probably would have been a two- to three-year legal battle to try to prove his innocence. Instead, he pleaded guilty to the murder charge in exchange for the minimum 20-year sentence; with time off for good behavior was released Tuesday after serving 10 years.
Bentley was originally sentenced to 30 years in prison, meaning the earliest he could have gotten out was in 2005.
In a telephone interview after leaving the Joliet Correctional Center, Bentley, 37, said, “It was hard because it was something I didn’t do, but I wanted to get it over with. I was just tired of being locked up, and my mom is real sick.”
During the brief hearing Tuesday in the Markham courthouse where the deal was cut, Circuit Judge John Wasilewski also ordered that Bentley not be subjected to the usual three-year parole period after release, a provision the prosecution characterized as “an extraordinary disposition” that is rarely allowed.
For the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, the agreement meant avoiding a potentially embarrassing hearing on whether prosecutors coerced a witness to lie at Bentley’s 1992 trial and hid evidence suggesting that Ford Heights police officers corrupted the original investigation.
Two witnesses against Bentley have since recanted, and the lead detective in the case is now serving a federal prison term for taking bribes to protect drug dealers, leaving the prosecution with little evidence to produce at a new trial.
For Bentley, the decision was a matter of expedience, according to his attorney Brendan Max, an assistant Cook County public defender.
“Melvin could have fought this out,” he said. “His post-conviction motion for a new trial could have wound up in the appeals court and taken two or three years to resolve.”
Assistant State’s Atty. Thomas Gainer, who handled the plea agreement, said later, “Litigation is oftentimes about compromise,” adding that the case was “in a much different posture than it was 10 years ago.”
“This case now has recantation testimony, which is looked upon with disfavor by courts of review,” Gainer said. “We reviewed the allegations made by Mr. Bentley, we spoke to the victim’s mother. We explained the facts and circumstances to her, and she understands this disposition. We determined that what occurred in court today was in the best interest of the case and the best interest of justice.”
Bentley was convicted by a jury of the Aug. 5, 1990, murder of Leonard Jamison, 22, who was slain in the parking lot of Shannon’s, a tavern across the street from the Ford Heights police station.
Leroy Stephenson, Jamison’s cousin, testified at the trial that he saw Bentley fire the fatal shots.
More than a year ago, Max asked for a new trial for Bentley, contending that Stephenson and another witness, Daniel Washington, had admitted they falsely implicated Bentley. Stephenson gave Max a sworn statement that said he falsely identified Bentley because he was angry that his cousin had been killed.
Max also had contended that assistant Cook County state’s attorneys hid evidence that suggested Ford Heights officers had corruptly influenced the investigation that led to Bentley’s arrest.
In a sworn statement, Washington said that a Ford Heights officer had told him to implicate Bentley, and he went along with it at the urging of prosecutors because he was facing criminal charges of his own.
Had Bentley rejected the deal, a hearing on his motion for a new trial would not have been held until this fall at the earliest.
Even if Bentley won a new trial, Max said, it could have been more than two years before the case was heard.
Complicating the matter was the disclosure that the original prosecution records of Bentley’s trial–important records that could shed light on some of the more serious defense allegations that prosecutors hid evidence–apparently have been lost.
Bentley had balked initially at any deal that involved admitting guilt, but he consented Tuesday to trade a murder conviction on his record for his immediate release.
Gainer said the state consented to the plea agreement after “considerable investigation,” including interviews with Stephenson and Washington.
The shooting outside Shannon’s took place at a time when Ford Heights was a virtual open-air drug market, in large part because the Police Department, including its chief, was on the take, according to court records.
Eventually, six Ford Heights officers, including Chief Jack Davis, were convicted of corruption charges that involved taking bribes to overlook drug dealing and fix court cases.
In his affidavit, Stephenson said that shortly after the shooting, he went to the police station.
The affidavit states, “Davis and another cop said they were not going to be able to put Melvin away unless I said that I saw Melvin do the shooting. I said, `In that case, I saw Melvin shoot my cousin.'”
The lead investigator on the case was Ford Heights Detective Vincent Hunter, who is now serving a federal prison term after pleading guilty to taking bribes. Hunter’s police report of the shooting was originally only 11 lines long, but by the time of trial, nearly half of it had been obliterated–for grammatical reasons, he said–and what remained suggested that Bentley was the killer.
After Bentley’s trial, his lawyer then, Irving Federman, filed a motion for a new trial, saying he had evidence that another man may have committed the murder.
His motion quoted a woman as saying that her boyfriend, Gacy Hadden, had admitted being at Shannon’s on the night of the shooting, but he refused to discuss a wound on his hand.
Federman said that part of Hunter’s report said a witness claimed the man who shot Jamison was wounded on the hand during the shooting that followed. But when the woman failed to come to court, the motion was denied.
In an interview last year, the woman, Leticia Lewis, said Hadden told her he was in Shannon’s parking lot when Jamison was shot. When she asked about the wound, Hadden told her to mind her own business, she said.
Hadden, who also goes by the name of Lavelle Deering, was convicted in 1996 of a different murder and is serving 90-years. He denied in an interview that he shot Jamison and contended that Bentley was the murderer.
Late Tuesday, Bentley marveled at a cell phone as he conducted his first conversation on such a device while en route to a south suburban restaurant for the meal of his choice–fish.
“It’s so different out here in just 10 years,” he said. “I’m just going to take it one day at a time, maybe find some carpenter work and help somebody build something. I want to be with my mom.”
