Calling the circumstances surrounding the defendant’s confession “extremely egregious,” the Illinois Appellate Court ordered a new murder trial Friday for a Chicago man.
The court ruled that authorities did not have probable cause to detain Daniel Wead for 54 hours before he made a self-incriminating statement.
Wead was convicted in 2002 in the murder of Bruno Kopec, 79, who was stabbed to death on Chicago’s South Side in January 1999.
In ruling Wead’s confession involuntary, Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. wrote that Wead spent two nights on a bench in the interrogation room “without the benefit of bathing, changing his clothes, or brushing his teeth.”
Neville called the 54-hour detention “a fishing expedition for evidence.”
Justices Michael J. Gallagher and Calvin C. Campbell concurred in the decision to grant Wead, 59, a new trial in which his confession will not be allowed.
