SANTOS SET FREE BY APPEALS COURT
Former city Treasurer Miriam Santos was freed from a Downstate prison camp Wednesday, hours after a federal appeals court in Chicago threw out her conviction on fraud and extortion charges...
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EX-JUSTICE FAVORS IDENTIFYING WAYWARD PROSECUTORS
Retired Illinois Supreme Court Justice John Nickels, a Republican who served on the state's highest court as a representative of one of the state's most conservative judicial districts, emerged as...
Part 5: Convicted by a hair
In her opening words to the newly seated jury, Jefferson County State's Atty. Kathleen Alling described how one of the most brutal and confounding murders in local history finally gave...
Part 4: A tortured path to Death Row
Forty-three hours after Stanley Howard was arrested, Chicago police detectives got the evidence that would help them send Howard to Death Row: a confession. In seven double-spaced pages of questions...
A tortured path to Death Row
Forty-three hours after Stanley Howard was arrested, Chicago police detectives got the evidence that would help them send Howard to Death Row: a confession. In seven double-spaced pages of questions...
Part 3: The jailhouse informant
His criminal record dates to 1978 and includes more than a dozen convictions. He has been in the penitentiary four times and is wanted in four states. His parole officer...
Part 2: Inept defenses cloud verdict
Bernon Howery needed a lawyer to save his life. Charged with setting a fire in Kankakee that killed four children, including three of his own, he turned to Earl Washington....
Part 1: Death Row justice derailed
Capital punishment in Illinois is a system so riddled with faulty evidence, unscrupulous trial tactics and legal incompetence that justice has been forsaken, a Tribune investigation has found. With their...
DEATH ROW CONVICTION THROWN OUT
Saying the prosecution's case hinged on a witness whose credibility was severely undermined, the Illinois Supreme Court vacated Death Row inmate Steven Smith's conviction on Friday and barred Cook County...
Part 5: Break rules, be promoted
As Cook County prosecutors, Carol Pearce McCarthy, Kenneth Wadas and Patrick Quinn drew scathing rebukes from the Illinois Appellate Court for failing to abide by the rules designed to keep...