Two Chicago men serving life terms for a double murder were given a new trial Friday after a judge ruled a key witness against them lied at trial.
The ruling came in the case of James Bannister after a hearing before Judge James Schreier, who had presided over the original trial and twice had questioned the jury’s conviction during hearings that stretched over a year.
Schreier also granted a new trial to co-defendant Eric Smith, but turned down requests from five other co-defendants seeking new trials.
All seven had been convicted in 1991 for roles in the November 1989 shooting that killed two people, including a security guard, near the Illinois Institute of Technology, in what the police believed was revenge for a sexual attack on a woman the men knew.
Schreier said in his ruling that a key prosecution witness, a gang member named Deanda Wilson who was 12 at the time of the crime, “was not accurate and truthful” at trial and “the outcome [of the trial] would have been different if not for Wilson’s perjured testimony.”
Wilson, now 25 and in prison in Minnesota for murder, admitted at a hearing as part of Bannister’s appeal that he had lied at trial when he said he saw Bannister running near the crime scene because he wanted to implicate rival gang members.
“Man, I hated them dudes,” Wilson told the judge, adding that he was telling the truth now because of his guilt over sending two innocent men to prison.
Schreier noted that a Chicago police detective who testified at the trial said he went to where Wilson supposedly witnessed the crime and said he could not see the area Wilson claimed to have seen. He said no other evidence corroborates the case against Bannister or Smith.
The two men killed in the shooting were Dan Williams, 25, and Thomas Kaufman, 58. Police and prosecutors said the shooting took place after the seven men saw Williams–who may have been a victim of mistaken identity–and began to chase him.
In his ruling, Schreier emphasized he did not find that prosecutors at trial knowingly used perjured testimony when putting Wilson on the witness stand.
Schreier set bail for both men at $10,000. Both were expected to be released from the Cook County Jail late Friday.
Bannister’s lawyer, Assistant Cook County Public Defender Erica Reddick, had argued the recantation by a key witness should be enough for Schreier to grant a new trial.
She noted that Bannister had always maintained his innocence and was on a “journey for justice.”
A spokesman for the state’s attorney’s office said prosecutors would appeal.
