Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake. I want to let you know
Speaker 1: we are working right now on season three for you,
Speaker 1: and it's a totally different kind of story than you've
Speaker 1: heard before on this podcast. I've actually been flying all
Speaker 1: over the country reporting it and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: share it with you. But first, Deep Cover is back
Speaker 1: with two special episodes which are kind of a spin
Speaker 1: off of season two. So let's jump right in. About
Speaker 1: a year ago, there was this pretty unusual hearing in Chicago.
Speaker 1: It involved a guy named Ronnie Keraskio who was in
Speaker 1: prison for murder. I've been following the facts of his
Speaker 1: case pretty closely. We actually sent someone to record the
Speaker 1: proceedings that day.
Speaker 2: Proceed you right.
Speaker 3: If you stay your full name, Ronny Cutski.
Speaker 1: I was interested in this hearing because it was, in
Speaker 1: a strange way connected to the story of Bob Cooley
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties, when Bob exposed the corruption
Speaker 1: that was going on in Chicago, there were ripple effects.
Speaker 1: In these ripple effects, they played out for decades. Ronnie's
Speaker 1: hearing in Chicago it was one of these ripples. It
Speaker 1: all started back in the nineteen seventies with the trial
Speaker 1: of Harry Elman. A mob hitman, remember him. This was
Speaker 1: the big case from season two.
Speaker 3: Harry had stone cold eyes. He just did. Harry looked
Speaker 3: pure evil.
Speaker 2: If you ever watched the movie Scarface, kind of reminds
Speaker 2: you of the guy walks up behind Scarface with shotgun
Speaker 2: at the end.
Speaker 1: Harry went on trial for murder and the mob called
Speaker 1: in Bob Cooley to fix the case. Bob claimed he
Speaker 1: bribed the judge, a guy named Frank Wilson, and the
Speaker 1: hitman Well, he got off. The not guilty verdict sparked
Speaker 1: controversy and outrage. So what does any of this have
Speaker 1: to do with Ronnie Well? Ronnie's original trial took place
Speaker 1: seven months after Harry Almans. It was another high profile
Speaker 1: murder trial. Because the guy Ronnie was accused of murdering
Speaker 1: he was a cop. The case got assigned to the
Speaker 1: same judge, Frank Wilson. Now forty five years later, Ronnie
Speaker 1: is arguing that he was in effect a victim, that
Speaker 1: the sentence he received was deeply unfair. The judge Wilson
Speaker 1: was just trying to burnish his credentials to show he
Speaker 1: was in fact tough on crime, and that because of
Speaker 1: all of this and other reasons too. Ronnie is arguing
Speaker 1: that he should have another shot at justice. So over
Speaker 1: the next two episodes, I'll be telling you this story
Speaker 1: about someone whose life has been shaped by the corruption
Speaker 1: that hung over Chicago for decades, and how even now
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, it's still playing out dramatically as one
Speaker 1: man's freedom hangs in the balance, because well, Ronnie's been
Speaker 1: in prison for almost half a century, and now his
Speaker 1: lawyer is asking all of us to open up the
Speaker 1: history books, to take a good hard look at what
Speaker 1: really happened in the shadows, and then to let his
Speaker 1: client walk free. I'm Jay Calburn and this is a
Speaker 1: deep cover Mobland.
Speaker 4: My name is Ronnie cars Gio and a C A
Speaker 4: R R A s q U I L O.
Speaker 1: Ronnie talks to me on a payphone from his cell block.
Speaker 4: I'm currently UH six three years old. He's sixty four
Speaker 4: years old. In a couple of weeks, I'm currently residing
Speaker 4: in the Distin Correctional Center UH in Illinois.
Speaker 1: We've been communicating for a few months now. When he calls,
Speaker 1: a timer starts and we have exactly twenty minutes before disconnected,
Speaker 1: which means there's really not a lot of time for
Speaker 1: chit chat, and Ronnie, he is a lot to tell
Speaker 1: me about his life and where and when it all
Speaker 1: started to go wrong.
Speaker 4: I grew up in a gang infist. I grew up
Speaker 4: with a single mother, uneducated, a father's divorced when we
Speaker 4: were young kid.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen seventies, Ronnie was a poor Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican kid from the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. His
Speaker 1: dad was a chef who immigrated from Puerto Rico. Ronnie
Speaker 1: he joined a gang at an early age. He was
Speaker 1: a tough kid. He got a tattoo on his arm
Speaker 1: that read mad Dog ron He was eleven at the time.
Speaker 1: His mom died when he was fifteen, and in the
Speaker 1: years that followed, he found himself in some pretty dicey situations.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the night that changed his
Speaker 1: entire life. It was October of nineteen seventy six. Ronnie
Speaker 1: was eighteen years old. That night, Ronnie says he was
Speaker 1: in rough shape because he'd been stabbed about a month before,
Speaker 1: but he says his friends they convinced him to go out.
Speaker 4: Early in the evening. We went through a party, and
Speaker 4: what happened in this party start at six seve o'clock
Speaker 4: at night. Everybody's drinking all that long them, so everybody's consuming.
Speaker 1: Alcohol, Ronnie says. At some point someone at the party
Speaker 1: stepped out and went to a local tavern to get
Speaker 1: change for the bus, and that's when the trouble started.
Speaker 4: It was with dar skinned Puerto Rican la Fino. The
Speaker 4: Caucasians in the bar felt like, what are you doing
Speaker 4: in here? You don't belong here. He chased them out.
Speaker 4: Now the place where I was seventy five people, maybe
Speaker 4: one hundred people in a party. They all ran down
Speaker 4: the street to go get in the middle of this stuff.
Speaker 1: The situation quickly escalated into a full pitched battle rival gangs,
Speaker 1: one white the other Puerto Rican, like the Jets and
Speaker 1: the Sharks, the whole thing right out of West Side Story,
Speaker 1: only scarier, violent, chaotic. Ronnie says. At first he didn't
Speaker 1: do anything.
Speaker 4: I didn't go. I was staying in the house. I
Speaker 4: was stabbed up. I'm just recovering, so I'm the last
Speaker 4: guy out. When it towards the end. As I'm leaving
Speaker 4: out off the building, there's a kid in the hallway
Speaker 4: and he's got a gun in his hand. He's he's
Speaker 4: telling me the guns jam, so I get the gun
Speaker 4: in my hand. That's where I acquired a pistol from.
Speaker 1: So then Ronnie leaves the building and then looks around
Speaker 1: surveys the scene. Now this is where the story takes
Speaker 1: an unexpected turn. There's someone mixed up in the melee
Speaker 1: here who isn't a member of Ronnie's gang or a
Speaker 1: member of the rival White gang either. His name was
Speaker 1: Terence Loftis. He was a Chicago police officer, though that
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been clear because he was dressed in civilian clothing.
Speaker 1: Officer Loftus was there totally by chance. He just finished
Speaker 1: a late shift. He was off duty driving down the
Speaker 1: street when he saw this gang battle, and courageously he
Speaker 1: tried to break it up. So there's Officer Loftis. He
Speaker 1: grabs hold of one of the guys in Ronnie's gang.
Speaker 1: Reports from the time suggest that Loftus was trying to
Speaker 1: help this kid to rescue him from the rival gang.
Speaker 1: Somewhere around this time, a paddy wagon with uniform police
Speaker 1: officers arrives on the scene, and then there's Ronnie pistol
Speaker 1: in hand. It's late, almost two in the morning. Ronnie's
Speaker 1: about one hundred and fifty feet away from Officer Loftus.
Speaker 4: I've seen everybody running around, so I said, Kalgias fired
Speaker 4: a gun and there'n't a breakoff and a gonna run.
Speaker 1: So Ronnie says he decided to fire the gun at
Speaker 1: an angle above everyone's head to try and scatter the crowd,
Speaker 1: break things up with a few warning shots, you know,
Speaker 1: like a sheriff might do in some old timey Western.
Speaker 1: Only Ronnie he was eighteen and intoxicated. Ronnie said he
Speaker 1: had no idea there was a plain closed cop there.
Speaker 1: He also says he never intended to shoot anyone. After all,
Speaker 1: many of the people in the crowd they were his
Speaker 1: own friends, and shooting into the crowd it would have
Speaker 1: endangered them, and that's why Ronnie claims he aimed up
Speaker 1: above head level. Now, this detail right here of where
Speaker 1: exactly Ronnie aimed his gun, it's hugely important. It's everything, really,
Speaker 1: and there's still disagreement over this to this day. A
Speaker 1: forensic investigation found that three of the bullets struck an
Speaker 1: abandoned building several feet above head level. This would seem
Speaker 1: to corroborate Ronnie's claim that he was aiming the gun up,
Speaker 1: not anyone in particular, but there was at least one
Speaker 1: more bullet, and this one it struck Officer Loftus in
Speaker 1: the head. His body then crumpled to the ground. Officer
Speaker 1: Loftus was taken to Saint Elizabeth's Hospital. He died a
Speaker 1: few days later. Ronnie was charged with murder. The secutors
Speaker 1: said Ronnie had quote intentionally and knowingly shot Officer Loftis,
Speaker 1: meaning he aimed the gun with the intent of killing him.
Speaker 1: At trial, one of Ronnie's buddy's fellow gang member testified.
Speaker 1: He said that Ronnie aimed the gun with both hands
Speaker 1: and held at level like he was aiming for Loftis.
Speaker 1: Now I should note that this buddy he may have
Speaker 1: been under real pressure to testify for the prosecution. See
Speaker 1: the gun belonged to him, so he could have been
Speaker 1: an accessory to murder. He was never prosecuted, by the way,
Speaker 1: so there were conflicting accounts of where the gun was pointed.
Speaker 1: But Ronnie maintains that he wasn't aiming at anyone.
Speaker 4: So I just fired four shots and I left. I
Speaker 4: walked out, didn't run. I didn't know I shot anybody.
Speaker 4: I went walked up back in the house, I walked
Speaker 4: out the back door and I left.
Speaker 1: All right, Before we get any deeper, something I should
Speaker 1: mention about this trial. Ronnie he opted for a bench trial,
Speaker 1: no jury, just a judge deciding the outcome of his case.
Speaker 1: His trial attorney anticipated that there'd be a ton of
Speaker 1: cops in the courtroom to show their support for the
Speaker 1: slain officer. The attorney worried that a jury might be
Speaker 1: swayed by this, so it went to a judge. The
Speaker 1: case was assigned to Judge Frank Wilson, yep, the same
Speaker 1: judge who acquitted the hitman, Harry Alamann. Ronnie's lawyer at
Speaker 1: the time hoped that Judge Wilson would conclude that technically,
Speaker 1: legally this wasn't murder, that it was manslaughter. The decision
Speaker 1: to forego a trial by jury it was a big one.
Speaker 1: Judge Wilson would now be the sole arbiter of Ronnie's fate.
Speaker 1: If he decided Ronnie was guilty of manslaughter, well, that's
Speaker 1: a lesser crime than murder, which would carry a smaller sentence.
Speaker 1: But if Judge Wilson found that Ronnie had intended to
Speaker 1: kill Officer Loftus to murder him. Under the rules at
Speaker 1: the time, the judge could throw the book at him.
Speaker 1: The prosecution depicted Ronnie as a cold blooded murderer who
Speaker 1: deliberately aimed and shot the victim. Prosecutors brought innother witnesses,
Speaker 1: friends of Ronnie's, who were there that night. One of
Speaker 1: them testified that Ronnie said something like, I think I
Speaker 1: shot a pig. In closing arguments, one of the prosecutors
Speaker 1: said Ronnie quote could not have hit that officer by accident.
Speaker 1: He shot because he had hate in his heart. Judge
Speaker 1: Wilson found Ronnie guilty of murder. Ronnie's current lawyer, Michael Deutsch,
Speaker 1: still can't believe what happened next.
Speaker 3: The judge gave him two hundred to six hundred years.
Speaker 1: Wait, did you say six hundred years?
Speaker 3: Two hundred to six hundred years he gave them.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever heard of anything like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, in your fifty years of practicing law, have
Speaker 1: you ever seen a sentencing like this?
Speaker 3: No, never seen a sentence like that.
Speaker 5: And Wilson himself, because we went back and looked at
Speaker 5: all all those sentences Wilson has given in the past,
Speaker 5: and all even for murder, all kinds of murders, all
Speaker 5: kinds of bus He never gave a sentence like that,
Speaker 5: only once where a guy had a huge prior record.
Speaker 1: Michael Deutsch believes that the timing of all of this
Speaker 1: is suspicious. He notes that the judge had just let
Speaker 1: the hitman, Harry Alamann, walk free, and he believes that
Speaker 1: Wilson wanted to make an example out of Ronnie to
Speaker 1: restore his own reputation as a tough judge.
Speaker 5: Wilson took ten thousand dollars to quit Harry Alloman, and
Speaker 5: now he needed what's called compensatory bias.
Speaker 1: There's a concept in the law known as compensatory or
Speaker 1: camouflage bias. The idea is a judge takes a bribe
Speaker 1: in one case and then, to avoid suspicion, punishes the
Speaker 1: hell out of another defendant in a separate case, so
Speaker 1: it looks like that judge can be tough on crime.
Speaker 1: Then years later the bribe is exposed and the guy
Speaker 1: who got hit with the big sentence, he complains says, hey,
Speaker 1: this wasn't fair. I got hit with this huge sentence
Speaker 1: because this corrupt judge was covering his tracks. In fact,
Speaker 1: in the wake of Operation Gambat. A number of other
Speaker 1: defendants have made similar claims against other judges in Chicago
Speaker 1: whose corruption was exposed by the FBI. Those defendants are
Speaker 1: challenging their sentences, and that's what Ronnie and his lawyer
Speaker 1: are doing. They believe that Ronnie's enormous sentence was a
Speaker 1: symptom of Chicago's corruption.
Speaker 5: I'm the one that brought this case to vacate his
Speaker 5: conviction and sentence based on this theory of compensatory bias.
Speaker 3: The judge he needed to cover up what he did.
Speaker 5: It was a lot of outcry about what he did,
Speaker 5: and he was in a situation where he had to
Speaker 5: rehabilitate his reputation.
Speaker 1: And here is that ripple effect, an unintended consequence of
Speaker 1: Bob Cooley's actions, a consequence that forever changed the fate
Speaker 1: of one man's life. At least that's what Ronnie's lawyer
Speaker 1: is claiming. We'll be right back. It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to imagine how anyone would react to a prison sentence
Speaker 1: that's two hundred to six hundred years long.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to me about what you remember from
Speaker 2: the day that you were sentenced, when that sentence came down,
Speaker 2: Just like what your reaction was, when what went through
Speaker 2: your head.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what it meant. I was that illiterate
Speaker 4: as a kid. I know that whole switch on you.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it meant. Didn't register. And when
Speaker 4: I was in flow, I kept hearing like news media
Speaker 4: will come up to me. What you think about Harry Elliman.
Speaker 4: I was so I thought it was a legal term.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it meant until years later I said, oh,
Speaker 4: Allam is a man's name. To wake up and realize, man,
Speaker 4: I'm and sob.
Speaker 1: Ronnie sat in prison for decades. He exhausted his appeals.
Speaker 1: Then a faint hope emerged in the late nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: when Ronnie met Michael Deutsch. Michael is a criminal defense
Speaker 1: lawyer with the People's Law Office in Chicago. He's been
Speaker 1: doing this work for decades. Michael's represented animal rights activists,
Speaker 1: black panthers, and people with wrongful convictions. You've got a
Speaker 1: social justice issue with long shot odds. Michael, he's your man.
Speaker 1: Michael began taking a closer look at Ronnie's case and
Speaker 1: the judge who presided over it.
Speaker 4: How I got back in court with Michael Deutsch FIU
Speaker 4: A petition that I was void jurisdiction, that Frank Wilson
Speaker 4: had no business sentence in me because he was a
Speaker 4: crook from the beginning and he came ufly l as
Speaker 4: a good judge.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear here, the Harry Alemann case is
Speaker 1: the only case where it was alleged that Judge Wilson
Speaker 1: took a bribe. What's more, neither Ronnie nor his lawyer
Speaker 1: have any definitive proof that Judge Wilson threw his case
Speaker 1: in any way. Ronnie's argument about camouflage bias really hinges
Speaker 1: on a series of speculations. Plausible speculations, but speculations. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: the core of these speculations come down to this was
Speaker 1: the judge using Ronnie's case to salvage his own reputation. Well,
Speaker 1: let's start by reviewing the facts. After the Harry Alman trial,
Speaker 1: there was a big outcry. The state's attorney held a
Speaker 1: press conference to express his outrage over the verdict. One
Speaker 1: state legislator called the judge craven. According to Bob Cooley,
Speaker 1: the judge did get very upset after the trial and
Speaker 1: told Bob, quote, you destroyed me. And years later, when
Speaker 1: the FBI was investigating the Aleman case and the corruption
Speaker 1: in Chicago. Wilson killed himself, But what does any of
Speaker 1: this really tell us? For certain? Does this explain why
Speaker 1: the judge handed Ronnie such a long sentence? Do we
Speaker 1: really know how Judge Wilson would have ruled at a
Speaker 1: different time in his career, or how another judge would
Speaker 1: have ruled at the time. We simply don't. That's what's
Speaker 1: so maddening about Ronnie's case and what's so insidious about
Speaker 1: the legacy of corruption in Chicago. The ripple effects continue
Speaker 1: in ways that are so consequential and yet also sometimes unprovable.
Speaker 1: It's odd to think about Ronnie Kerriscio and Harry Alemann
Speaker 1: were both gangsters at some point in their lives. They
Speaker 1: both got in trouble with the law. They were both
Speaker 1: charged with murder. One could argue that the crucial difference
Speaker 1: in their fates was that Harry's gang simply had more
Speaker 1: powerful connections, and so he walked free. The question is
Speaker 1: what Ronnie actually do about any of this? Well, what
Speaker 1: Michael and Ronnie wanted was a retrial, a new judge,
Speaker 1: maybe even a jury who could reconsider the facts of
Speaker 1: the case and determine whether Ronnie really was guilty of
Speaker 1: murder or some lesser charge like manslaughter.
Speaker 3: We had a long hearing in front of the judge,
Speaker 3: and the judge denied us relief, saying the law is
Speaker 3: very difficult to show this because you have to show
Speaker 3: a nexus between the case in which the judge was
Speaker 3: bribed and your case.
Speaker 1: The court essentially concluded, we can't know what Judge Wilson
Speaker 1: was thinking at the time, so we can't know for
Speaker 1: certain if Ronnie's case was influenced by the Aleman acquittal.
Speaker 4: The three of the court judges would not give me
Speaker 4: the granting off the judge Wilson being a group, saying
Speaker 4: that I did improve a bettern that we didn't know
Speaker 4: his state of mind, then we could improve his state
Speaker 4: of mind as far as being a group. So Michael
Speaker 4: Leye's contention was when he got pound up, he shot
Speaker 4: himself in it. So Michael Lewis was stuntending, how do
Speaker 4: you say, we don't know if your state of mind.
Speaker 4: He knew exactly what he was going to do if
Speaker 4: he got caught, and he did do it.
Speaker 1: Since that appellate ruling, Ronnie and Michael have soldiered on
Speaker 1: They remain adamant that the facts of the case don't
Speaker 1: offer any solid proof that Ronnie knowingly and deliberately intended
Speaker 1: to kill this plain clothes policeman. But this alone isn't
Speaker 1: grounds for a retrial. Appeals are about challenging how a
Speaker 1: case was decided and whether the law was applied properly.
Speaker 1: They're not about re examining the same set of facts. Again.
Speaker 1: Kind of frustrating, right, This is not the kind of
Speaker 1: drama that you typically see on TV, where the story
Speaker 1: has a clear beginning, middle, and end. No, Ronnie's case
Speaker 1: is dragged on through a lengthy process of motions and
Speaker 1: appeals and petitions, and so far they've gotten well, very
Speaker 1: little in the way of relief, and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: Ronnie remains behind bars.
Speaker 4: I've been incarcerated forty forty five years, like seven months
Speaker 4: maybe like that.
Speaker 1: That's more than five hundred months, more than sixteen thousand days.
Speaker 1: When he was last free, Jimmy Carter was president, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union was still going strong. There are no smartphones,
Speaker 1: just phone booths, and all that time since then, Ronnie
Speaker 1: he's been well, surprisingly busy. He has this unrelenting positivity.
Speaker 4: In a sense. I'm blessed in here.
Speaker 1: He says he's seen what happens when his fellow inmates
Speaker 1: don't stay busy. When they give up.
Speaker 4: I see guys, they lose their faith, and they lose
Speaker 4: their going. They don't sit their pants, They they don't
Speaker 4: go to her Buster's teeth. They just go around and
Speaker 4: then they get sick. So I'm not going to claim
Speaker 4: this over myself. So I keep my spirit up. I run,
Speaker 4: I train ways, I trained sports, you know, and I
Speaker 4: keep going like tent.
Speaker 1: One day last year, Ronnie finally caught a break. The
Speaker 1: court said, in fact, we won't grant you a retrial,
Speaker 1: but we do have some concerns about how you were sentenced.
Speaker 5: They said, we have questions about his sentence because we
Speaker 5: don't we think this sentence might violate the Illinois Constitution,
Speaker 5: which says you have to give a sentence based on
Speaker 5: the serious of the offense, with the idea to returning
Speaker 5: the offender to freedom and citizenship.
Speaker 1: Next time on deep cover, Ronnie has a shot at freedom.
Speaker 1: But there's a catch.
Speaker 4: We don't care almost rehabilitation. Well, you know, the constitution
Speaker 4: says we don't care almost you got up there. We
Speaker 4: don't care about none of that. You kill the police
Speaker 4: officer and they blatantly say, I'm not gonna vote for
Speaker 4: a police killers.
Speaker 1: This episode of deep Cover was produced by Amy Gaines
Speaker 1: and edited by Karen Chakerji. Our managing producers Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Original music and our theme was composed by Luis Gara,
Speaker 1: mastering by Jake Gorsky. Mia Label is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Additional thanks to Jesse de Bartolomeo and Emily Horner, formerly
Speaker 1: of Injustice Watch and now at the Chicago Tribune for
Speaker 1: her reporting on Ronnie's case. I'm Jake Halpern. Deep Cover
Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. For ad free listening
Speaker 1: and early access to upcoming seasons of deep Cover, consider
Speaker 1: becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. You can find Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: on the deep Cover show page on Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot Fm.