Speaker 1: In the spring of nineteen ninety six, Antoine Qby, a
Speaker 1: rising basketball start from the sumburbs of Chicago, had a
Speaker 1: bright future with offers to play college ball as well
Speaker 1: as professional basketball abroad.
Speaker 2: One night, his friend Jeremy.
Speaker 1: Bruder asked him to accompany him to a part of
Speaker 1: town that Antoine knew well for a hookup on some
Speaker 1: new tires and rims. Antoine's friend's younger brother, Kevin Jackson,
Speaker 1: asked if he could tag along and get a ride
Speaker 1: to the liquor store. While waiting for Jeremy's contact at
Speaker 1: the tire shop, Antoine received.
Speaker 2: A phone call from a girlfriend.
Speaker 1: While they spoke about their plans to meet up later,
Speaker 1: Kevin Jackson and Jeremy Bruder went out of Antoine's sight
Speaker 1: and gunshots rang out. Antoine didn't know who had fired
Speaker 1: the shots, but Kevin came racing back to the car,
Speaker 1: telling him to drive. When Antoine began to drive to safety,
Speaker 1: he noticed Jeremy struggling to survive. He stopped the car,
Speaker 1: demanding answers from Kevin and began to walk back over
Speaker 1: to the tire shop when police arrived. I think that
Speaker 1: the field report logging the inventory of Antoine's patdown would
Speaker 1: match the inventory of items locked when he arrived at
Speaker 1: oak Park PD, that the officer unseen could not have
Speaker 1: possibly missed a large wat of bills alleged.
Speaker 2: To belong to Jeremy Bruder.
Speaker 1: One would think you might also believe that a teenager
Speaker 1: might not need medical attention after a night spent in
Speaker 1: the interrogation room. We'd certainly hope so. But this is
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today, we have
Speaker 1: a story from oak Park, Illinois. Now this is a
Speaker 1: nice suburb just outside of Chicago, but still within the
Speaker 1: limits of Cook County, and unfortunately for our guests today,
Speaker 1: this story features a lot of the hallmarks of Chicago
Speaker 1: style Mode for Conviction. At QB had and still has
Speaker 1: so much athletic and intellectual talent, but the time and
Speaker 1: opportunity for him to excel at life was robbed from him.
Speaker 1: He joins us from Stateville Penitentiary. Antoine, Welcome to ron
Speaker 1: for Conviction.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1: And we appreciate you being here, even though I hate
Speaker 1: the reason why you're here in the first place. And
Speaker 1: with him today is his attorney from Riley's Safer Homes
Speaker 1: at Kencilla. You might recall that firm, of course, from
Speaker 1: a previous guest, Ron Safer. Well, this is Joe Harrah's
Speaker 1: first appearance, and we hope it's not the last.
Speaker 2: So Joe, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Jason, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: All right, so let's start out in the usual place
Speaker 2: by getting to know Antoine.
Speaker 3: A bit well. Originally from the South Side, the far
Speaker 3: south side of Chicago and Argue of Guards Project. That's
Speaker 3: originally where my mother, Darlene Qby's from and her side
Speaker 3: of the family. My father, he's from the West Side
Speaker 3: of Chicago. They separated not so long after my birth.
Speaker 3: My mother was able to get us out of the projects,
Speaker 3: and eventually, you know, she also made sacrifices to get
Speaker 3: us to the suburbs, which was oh Park, until we
Speaker 3: eventually ended up moving to the further west suburbs, which
Speaker 3: was Westmont. Went to school, stay active in sports, had
Speaker 3: a lot of friends, never really got in any trouble.
Speaker 3: You know. I fell in love with the game of basketball.
Speaker 3: I think that's what mostly kept me out of trouble
Speaker 3: all those years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the elephant in the room is that you were
Speaker 1: an amazing basketball player, like you had that thing right.
Speaker 1: High schools were checking you out in junior high colleges
Speaker 1: were scouting you out as early as your freshman year,
Speaker 1: like you had that kind of special talent.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was a starter on the varsity all four years.
Speaker 3: I was All Conference, All Area, All State, All American,
Speaker 3: got nominated to the All American McDonald's Game scholarships to
Speaker 3: go to college, I didn't. I couldn't complain. I couldn't
Speaker 3: complain during those times. You know. Unfortunately, you know that
Speaker 3: opportunity had taken from me. But during that time, it
Speaker 3: was very promising. You know.
Speaker 4: Antoine had a great mom and a solid upbringing, and
Speaker 4: he was a good kid, and he didn't have any
Speaker 4: behavioral problems at all or no criminal record. He finished
Speaker 4: his high school career in nineteen ninety six at a
Speaker 4: school called Donners Grove South, and he had his sights
Speaker 4: set on a variety of options, but the one that
Speaker 4: he was really kind of most focused on was going
Speaker 4: to the University of Illinois. He wanted to play basketball
Speaker 4: and study business and political science. So in June of
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety six, Antoine Koobi had pretty much everything to
Speaker 4: look forward.
Speaker 1: To it sounds like it, and it's ironic because your
Speaker 1: mom got you out of Chicago, away from not only
Speaker 1: violent crime, but also away from the Chicago PD and
Speaker 1: their predatory practices.
Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety six, of course.
Speaker 1: Was just three years after Marcus Wiggins's mother won a
Speaker 1: civil suit against the city when John Burges's Midnight crew
Speaker 1: had beaten an electrocuted him. It was a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old child at the time, but they tortured him into
Speaker 1: making a false statement incriminating himself. Nineteen ninety six is
Speaker 1: also two years before that same department made its third
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, their first successful attempt at framing Marcus. If
Speaker 1: you haven't heard his story, we're gonna have it linked
Speaker 1: in the episode bio, and I hope you'll listen to it.
Speaker 1: But what we'll see here is that oak Park PD
Speaker 1: was still very, very capable of similar tactics, even though
Speaker 1: the relationship with oak Park PD was a bit more
Speaker 1: cozy with this around the community. In fact, on that note, Anteline,
Speaker 1: you knew one of these cops before all this happened,
Speaker 1: because oak Park PD used to sometimes provide security for
Speaker 1: sporting events, including your basketball games.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't want to necessarily a security for the game,
Speaker 3: but they would be there, their presence was there. This
Speaker 3: one particular officer Eddie Harris, he's been knowing me since
Speaker 3: I would say, grammar school, you know, my name was
Speaker 3: ranking since then, and he used to do security at
Speaker 3: the games. I remember him speaking to me from time
Speaker 3: to time. You know, he was a black officer in
Speaker 3: that town, and you know, he kind of stood out
Speaker 3: amongst the rest of them.
Speaker 1: Which puts a fine point on a dynamic at play
Speaker 1: in this story that you and Officer Harris are just
Speaker 1: two of the very few black people in this very
Speaker 1: homogeneous suburb.
Speaker 4: Well, Oak Park, It's a predominantly white suburb of Chicago.
Speaker 4: It is very close to the city limits. It's known
Speaker 4: as a very progressive area. I mean, the entire Chicago
Speaker 4: area is certainly not without its racial tensions. It's obviously
Speaker 4: also true in the suburbs of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Right and as we see all over this country, especially
Speaker 1: when you have a white victim and perceived black assailants,
Speaker 1: the ham fisted police violence available in Chicago is ready
Speaker 1: to be deployed here as well. Even with Officer Harris's
Speaker 1: participation in your eventual prosecution. Now typically on this show,
Speaker 1: if we're bringing up a previous relationship with the officer,
Speaker 1: it's usually because our guests had been arrest said before,
Speaker 1: maybe by that same officer, but you had no criminal
Speaker 1: record whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So here we're.
Speaker 1: Talking about an officer who knows about your talents, and
Speaker 1: he knew about your promising future, but he still had
Speaker 1: no qualms about letting this wrongful conviction happen. And it
Speaker 1: appears that his fluid relationship with the truth was what
Speaker 1: ultimately brought his career to an end, thankfully. But before
Speaker 1: we get to that, let's shift away from the full
Speaker 1: grown men who were aware of you to the guys
Speaker 1: you knew in high school. And let's start with the
Speaker 1: Jackson's Jamie and Kevin, who also grew up in Oak Park.
Speaker 3: Jamie is older than Kevin and I, but me and
Speaker 3: Jamie were closer because the things that we hit in comment,
Speaker 3: you know, especially when it came to you know, basketball
Speaker 3: and girls and you know, things of that nature. You know,
Speaker 3: we called each other cousins, you know, because we were
Speaker 3: so close. Kevin never really hung around us, you know,
Speaker 3: he was always off doing his own thing with a
Speaker 3: different crowd of people.
Speaker 1: So Kevin was only in your life by virtue of
Speaker 1: his brother Jamie. But in the town O Park, if
Speaker 1: you limit yourself to only black friends, you might not
Speaker 1: have that many friends at all. What about Jeremy Brewder.
Speaker 3: Me and Jeremy we were lab partners, and you know
Speaker 3: when your lab partners, you know, you get close. You know,
Speaker 3: you talk every day at school and eventually, you know,
Speaker 3: it laid out of school from time to time. You know,
Speaker 3: he would come to my house. You know, we play
Speaker 3: video games and just hang out.
Speaker 2: And this brings us to late spring nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: You were wrapping up your senior year of high school
Speaker 1: and about to start college in the fall, play basketball somewhere.
Speaker 1: Who knows where life was going to take you. At
Speaker 1: this point, you came to own a few cars, and
Speaker 1: Jeremy Brewder had just gotten a Jeep and had taken
Speaker 1: notice of one of your cars.
Speaker 3: Right, I had a couple of cars, and I had
Speaker 3: a Jeep cari key, and I had rams on mine,
Speaker 3: and he wanted some rims because he had just got
Speaker 3: a jeep. So, you know, Jeremy was always telling me
Speaker 3: about a guy that he met at the car wash
Speaker 3: where he was working at It was a guy who
Speaker 3: was going to, you know, hook him up with some
Speaker 3: rams and tires. He didn't tell me when, he didn't
Speaker 3: tell me how or who the guy was. So the
Speaker 3: conversation pretended to the rims and tires really didn't go
Speaker 3: anywhere at that moment.
Speaker 1: Until the faithful night of June first, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: when you were with your newborn son and his mother
Speaker 1: at her place in Villa Park, Illinois, and you've got
Speaker 1: a few.
Speaker 2: Pages for people don't remember pages. That's when we used
Speaker 2: to some people used to carry pages.
Speaker 1: Because it before cell phones again, but you got a
Speaker 1: few pages from an unfamiliar number.
Speaker 3: I called the number back and it was Jeremy. He
Speaker 3: just came up on a hookup on some rims and
Speaker 3: tires for his jeep, and can I take him to
Speaker 3: oh Park? At first I said no, and he begged
Speaker 3: me to take him out there, so I said, okay.
Speaker 1: He just wanted somebody to ride with him. So you
Speaker 1: drove your girlfriend's car to meet up with Jeremy, and
Speaker 1: you drove in separate cars to this tire shop in
Speaker 1: Oak Park.
Speaker 3: It was pitch black in there. The doors was locked,
Speaker 3: so you know, we knocked on a door. We banged
Speaker 3: on the window. No one came, so we walked around
Speaker 3: to the back to the garage door and we banged
Speaker 3: on the door. Waited a couple of minutes. He said
Speaker 3: he was early, so I was like, okay, well, since
Speaker 3: we're a little early, you know, we can go waste
Speaker 3: some time. So I was like, man, we can go
Speaker 3: to my cousin's house, which I was speaking of Jamie
Speaker 3: in which he stayed maybe about ten minutes away in Chicago,
Speaker 3: and you know, every weekend, you know, Jamie will throw
Speaker 3: a get together. You know, people was always at his house.
Speaker 3: Once we got there, Jeremy didn't want to go up,
Speaker 3: so he stayed down. I told him I'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And while you were upstairs, you obviously saw Jamie Jackson
Speaker 1: and Kevin Jackson was living there at the time as well.
Speaker 3: Kevin asked me what I was doing out there, and
Speaker 3: I told him, you know, I came out here to
Speaker 3: bring my friend to buy some rims and tires for
Speaker 3: his jeep. So he asked me, do you think you
Speaker 3: could take me to the liquor store, And I told
Speaker 3: him I can probably take you once we're done, since
Speaker 3: I'm on this side of town, I might as well
Speaker 3: hang out, so yeah, you can ride with me.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: All three of you headed back to the tire shop
Speaker 1: in your girlfriend's car.
Speaker 3: It's the apartment building diagonal to the back of the
Speaker 3: rim shop, so we parked facing the garage door of
Speaker 3: the ram shop. All three of us got out. We
Speaker 3: went back to the front of the ram shop, knocked
Speaker 3: on a door, banged on the window, no response, so
Speaker 3: we banged on the garage door as well. So instead
Speaker 3: of us leaving, we just hung out for about maybe
Speaker 3: ten fifteen minutes or so. As we're sitting there talking
Speaker 3: and waiting, my pager goes off. It was a friend
Speaker 3: of mine named Kia. I went back to the car
Speaker 3: to use the phone and give her a call. I
Speaker 3: get in the driver's seat with the door open, and
Speaker 3: I can see Kevin and Jeremy walking towards Madison Street
Speaker 3: to the front of the ram shop. They eventually got
Speaker 3: out of my sight and as I'm still talking on
Speaker 3: the phone a few seconds a minute later or a
Speaker 3: couple of minutes later, I hear gunshots.
Speaker 1: And I'm reading that David take it from Kia bank
Speaker 1: right now, signed under penalty of perjury. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: she said, and I quote, Antoine and I were arguing
Speaker 1: about whether we would meet up that night, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly I heard multiple gunshots in the background. The gunshots
Speaker 1: did not sound like they were immediately next to the phone,
Speaker 1: and I did not hear anything said by anyone in
Speaker 1: connection with the gunshots.
Speaker 3: End quote.
Speaker 1: So from the only other actual witness to some degree
Speaker 1: to this crime, the gunshots were in the background, away
Speaker 1: from the phone and away from Antoine.
Speaker 2: Now what happened next?
Speaker 3: I see Kevin running towards the car, and I'm waiting
Speaker 3: on Jeremy to follow behind him. But Kevin jumps in
Speaker 3: the passenger seat. He says, I got that bitch lefts go.
Speaker 3: So I immediately start the car and I put it
Speaker 3: in drive. As I make a left hand turn facing
Speaker 3: Madison Street, I ride past and I see Jeremy laying
Speaker 3: in the bushes. So once I get to Madison Street,
Speaker 3: I immediately stop on the next block. I don't keep
Speaker 3: going to Harlem to get on the expressway and try
Speaker 3: and get away. I immediately pull over on the next block,
Speaker 3: asked Kevin, like what happened? And before he had a
Speaker 3: chance to respond, I just lost it. I don't remember
Speaker 3: if I hit him, or if I grabbed him, or
Speaker 3: if I I don't remember exactly what I did, but
Speaker 3: I want to say I hit him. I can't remember.
Speaker 3: I told him I'm going back to the scene. I'm
Speaker 3: going back, so we get out the car. I immediately
Speaker 3: tried to cut through someone's backyard to get straight to
Speaker 3: the alley, and the fence was locked. I went to
Speaker 3: the next entrance that I saw, and it was some
Speaker 3: big green garbage cans blocking the walkway, so I just
Speaker 3: start walking. That's when the Forest Park police initially put
Speaker 3: the spotlight on us and told us to take our
Speaker 3: hands out of our pocket and walk towards them, and
Speaker 3: the Oak Park police came.
Speaker 1: At this point, you had no idea why Kevin did
Speaker 1: what he did. Before you even had time to work
Speaker 1: through this scenario in your head, two police departments and
Speaker 1: a bunch of EMTs had already shown up on the scene.
Speaker 4: This was a congested neighborhood. There were lots of people
Speaker 4: living in the vicinity, and the shots were easily heard,
Speaker 4: so there were a number of call ins to the
Speaker 4: police department. The Oak Park police start to preserve the scene,
Speaker 4: interview witnesses and Essentially, they do everything that they need
Speaker 4: to prosecute both Kevin Jackson and Antoine inside the first
Speaker 4: twelve hours.
Speaker 1: And that started with patting you down while EMTs were
Speaker 1: working on Jeremy not too far away at the tire shop. Now, importantly,
Speaker 1: they did not find a gun or a giant wad
Speaker 1: of cash on you. The initial report reflects that, but
Speaker 1: the placement of the giant a wad of cash mysteriously
Speaker 1: changed later in a subsequent report. I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: guess why. But okay, let's get back to the immediate aftermath.
Speaker 1: Did they find the gun?
Speaker 4: An Officer Romero actually does find a gun in a
Speaker 4: garbage can. Unfortunately, he finds it in a garbage can
Speaker 4: where the towel wrap around it and also submerged in water.
Speaker 1: So any fingerprints, DNA, etc. From the gun were no
Speaker 1: longer viable. What happened next.
Speaker 3: They put me in a car and they put him
Speaker 3: in another car. I remember them taking us back to
Speaker 3: the scene of the current where it happened. When I
Speaker 3: got out the car, I remember the first person in
Speaker 3: voice that I heard was Officer Harris. He's like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's Antoine QB. That's the basketball star and they walked
Speaker 3: me towards Jeremy as the pyramidics was working on them.
Speaker 3: I guess they were trying to get him to identify me.
Speaker 4: At this point, however, Jeremy is unconscious and is not
Speaker 4: able to attempt to identify either Kevin or Antoine.
Speaker 1: Now I need to point out that later on there
Speaker 1: was a report from Officer Harris saying that Jeremy named
Speaker 1: Antoine QB. Now, this was touted as a dying declaration,
Speaker 1: but when the amts on the scene, the ones who
Speaker 1: had been on the scene were asked to corroborate this
Speaker 1: alleged dying declaration, they did not.
Speaker 4: Interestingly, this is not from a report that Eddie Harris
Speaker 4: prepares himself. It's from a report prepared by another police officer,
Speaker 4: supposedly taken from an interview that occurred at three point
Speaker 4: thirty am, which was after Kevin Jackson had been interviewed
Speaker 4: by the police and had claimed that he had nothing
Speaker 4: to do with this and that it was Antoine.
Speaker 1: Right after they had figured out what the narrative of
Speaker 1: the crime would be, this alleged dying declaration made its
Speaker 1: first appearance, but Antoine's name had gone out over the dispatch,
Speaker 1: so police had Antoine's name early on, perhaps from Jeremy.
Speaker 2: However, the context.
Speaker 1: Of how Antoine's name came out is foggy, to say
Speaker 1: the least, but no paramedic heard or saw what Officer
Speaker 1: Harris later claimed the trial. That's critical or we're going
Speaker 1: to get back to it an a bit. So back
Speaker 1: to the scene, Jeremy was unconscious, unable to make an id.
Speaker 3: Then what they took us on the next block for
Speaker 3: show up, put the spotlight on us ahead, I guess
Speaker 3: people in the area, and they did this two times.
Speaker 3: Come to find out later on that no one identified
Speaker 3: me in the two shores, but they identify Kevin both times.
Speaker 3: After that last show up, they took us to the
Speaker 3: police station and they automatically did a gunshot residue test
Speaker 3: on me, and I really didn't know what that was
Speaker 3: at the time. I know they was just swapping my hands, right.
Speaker 2: Why would you have known?
Speaker 1: Gunshot residue testing or GSR testing is not something on
Speaker 1: any lay person's radar in nineteen ninety six, even not
Speaker 1: to this day, I would say, but definitely not back
Speaker 1: and now, at the time, it was believed that the
Speaker 1: presence of the elements associated with gunfire could only mean
Speaker 1: one of three things. Either you handled a gun or
Speaker 1: ammo fired a gun, or were in fact a gunshot victim.
Speaker 1: Please check out our coverage of gunshot residue, unrawful conviction
Speaker 1: junk science with our host Josh Duben. We're going to
Speaker 1: have a linked in the bio. But what is now
Speaker 1: known is that the elements associated with gunfire can be
Speaker 1: deposited by a number of other accessible sources, things like
Speaker 1: cigarette ash, dried urine, brake pads. Not to mention, GSR
Speaker 1: can also be found all over police stations and in
Speaker 1: police vehicles, which means you can easily get what they
Speaker 1: call touch transfer just from being in sitting in the
Speaker 1: back of a squad car something like that.
Speaker 2: So the truth is that the only probative.
Speaker 1: And useful result of a GSR test is a negative
Speaker 1: one in which the subject hadn't been given an opportunity
Speaker 1: to wash their hands, which you were not. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, without having been able to wash your hands,
Speaker 1: the absence of any of those elements on your hands
Speaker 1: or clothing would have been should have ruled you out
Speaker 1: completely as a potential shooter.
Speaker 4: And the gun that was used to shoot Jeremy was
Speaker 4: fired eight times. He was only hit six times, but
Speaker 4: it was fired eight times. It was a nine millimeter handgun.
Speaker 4: So they both have the gunshot residue tests administered to them. Now,
Speaker 4: Antoine says that his hands were swabbed right away, even
Speaker 4: though the police reports say that evidence wasn't collected until
Speaker 4: after I think it was three am.
Speaker 1: Interesting that this information was recorded around the same time
Speaker 1: as Officer Harris's alleged statement about the uncorroborated dying declarations.
Speaker 2: So what were the results? Now?
Speaker 4: What's very interesting is that the police actually don't bother
Speaker 4: to have these test results analyze right away. They actually
Speaker 4: sit on them for two and a half months. But
Speaker 4: when the results come back for Antoine, they come back
Speaker 4: completely negative. So if he had this gun and he
Speaker 4: shot at eight times, they're not finding any of these particulates.
Speaker 4: And Antoine never washed his hands before he was swabbed
Speaker 4: to do the gunshot residue test, And the form is
Speaker 4: very specific about whether there's been washing of the hands,
Speaker 4: because if the hands are washed, the test is invalid.
Speaker 4: But I mean, we'll talk about this a little later.
Speaker 4: But the lawyer for Antoine, George Howard, doesn't use them
Speaker 4: in Antoine's defense at trial, so that's not part of
Speaker 4: the story. But there is another part of the story,
Speaker 4: as you suggested, because the same test was performed on
Speaker 4: Kevin Jackson. Now, the police report said that those tests
Speaker 4: weren't done until like four hours later than Antoine's, like
Speaker 4: seven in the morning. But Kevin Jackson was permitted to
Speaker 4: wash his hands twice before the test, so before he
Speaker 4: was being fingerprinted, he washed his hands and after so
Speaker 4: it invalidated the test entirely. So Antoine did not wash
Speaker 4: his hands. Kevin washed his hands twice, So.
Speaker 1: Both GSR tests came back negative. However, Antoine's was the
Speaker 1: only ballid test of the two.
Speaker 2: Why in the world was.
Speaker 1: Kevin allowed to wash his hands twice before before the test?
Speaker 1: Perhaps just a mistake, or maybe just maybe it was
Speaker 1: because he agreed to trade testimony against Antoine for leniency.
Speaker 1: I mean, he had everything to gain in exchange for cooperating.
Speaker 1: And don't forget Illinois still had the death pneally at
Speaker 1: the time, so he had everything at stake. And we'll
Speaker 1: get to the interview process in a bit. But first, Antoine,
Speaker 1: what else do you remember from your book?
Speaker 3: They put me in this real skinny room. You know.
Speaker 3: They took my clothes, all my belongings. They gave me
Speaker 3: this real thin paper suit and shoes to put on.
Speaker 3: As I was in their room and it was going
Speaker 3: through the inventory, an officer came in with a brown
Speaker 3: paper bag. It was a big brown paper bag and
Speaker 3: he set it on top of the counter and he said, man,
Speaker 3: this belongs to him as well. So when she opened
Speaker 3: it up and lifted up it was a cow, the
Speaker 3: gun and some money inside of the bag. Said this
Speaker 3: belongs to him too.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone needs to spelled out for them,
Speaker 1: but inventory should be removed from your person and logged.
Speaker 1: You can't just introduce new items from Cognos where there
Speaker 1: was already a field report done logging what had been
Speaker 1: found on his person. And we already mentioned that the
Speaker 1: gun in towel had been found in a trash can
Speaker 1: by Officer Romero. Now it's just given to Antoine and
Speaker 1: the money, Where the hell did that come from? Why
Speaker 1: was that not found on Antoine during the patdown?
Speaker 4: I mean it would be a key fact issue in
Speaker 4: a robbery case, like who has the money after the
Speaker 4: robbery and the key police officer and all, this is
Speaker 4: an Oak Park officer named Tesca. It was Tesca who
Speaker 4: personally took custody of Antoine. The first report out from
Speaker 4: the police radio is that there's been shots fired, so
Speaker 4: he knows there's a gun involved. He knows that he
Speaker 4: has one of the kids that might have been responsible
Speaker 4: for shooting the gun, so he does a full pat
Speaker 4: down in the field. He finds Antoine's wallet with his
Speaker 4: ID in it, but that's all. When they get back
Speaker 4: to the police station, he claims that they had to
Speaker 4: do another pat down, and supposedly now he finds something
Speaker 4: brand new that he didn't find in the field, and
Speaker 4: that is a wad of bills. It's eleven and four dollars.
Speaker 4: It's eighty separate bills in a big wad. How could
Speaker 4: Officer Tesca miss a wad as big as what Antoine
Speaker 4: Kobe allegedly had in his right front pocket.
Speaker 1: Now, the right front pocket is not a place you
Speaker 1: just skim over. It's the main pocket for the majority
Speaker 1: of humans. He's the right to the left front pocket,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't going to miss a wad of eighty bills.
Speaker 2: That's a big wad. That would cause a serious bulge.
Speaker 1: Not only was there no wad of cash found on him,
Speaker 1: but there was also no gun or wet towel. But
Speaker 1: now this bag of evidence is just claimed to be antoine.
Speaker 1: So what else do you remember?
Speaker 3: I remember them putting me in this cell. It was
Speaker 3: I think it was right in front of the entrance door,
Speaker 3: because every officer or detective that came in they stopped.
Speaker 3: They banged on the door. They called me stupid, said
Speaker 3: I blew my life away, and I don't know how
Speaker 3: much time had passed. They came and got me out
Speaker 3: of the room and put me inside of an interrogation
Speaker 3: room and handcuffed me behind my back. As I sat
Speaker 3: in the chair, they kept asking me, you know, so
Speaker 3: what took place? And I kept telling them I just
Speaker 3: want to use the phone. I was a little sarcastic
Speaker 3: with them, you know, I wasn't answering that questions. I
Speaker 3: told them I didn't have anything to say to them.
Speaker 3: And every time they less out of the room, a
Speaker 3: little while later, they'll come back, not knowing that when
Speaker 3: they were going back and forth they were talking to Kevin,
Speaker 3: and then they'll come and talk to me and they'll say, oh, okay, well,
Speaker 3: this is what we know took place, and this is
Speaker 3: what we know happened. And I told them, okay, well,
Speaker 3: if you know, just let me use the phone. I
Speaker 3: don't have nothing else to say to you. They did
Speaker 3: this maybe like two or three times. So the last
Speaker 3: time when they came in, Detective Munching and Jervison kind
Speaker 3: of got frustrated with me, the detectives and they walked
Speaker 3: out and I was still handcuffed in the chair. I
Speaker 3: was facing the door. It was a piece of paper
Speaker 3: over the window of the door, so you couldn't see in.
Speaker 3: I remember the door cracking open. I could just see
Speaker 3: the light from the crack, and I saw a hand
Speaker 3: hit the light inside of the room. A few seconds later,
Speaker 3: the door pushed open. People were like rushed in and
Speaker 3: I couldn't see their faces, but I could see the
Speaker 3: silhouette of them coming in. I don't know if it
Speaker 3: was one or two who was behind me who was
Speaker 3: holding my shoulder and arms as I sat in the chair.
Speaker 3: The other ones came in. They were just hitting me
Speaker 3: all over my body.
Speaker 1: This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company.
Speaker 1: AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making
Speaker 1: a positive difference in the lives of its employees and
Speaker 1: in the communities where we work and live. In light
Speaker 1: of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance and
Speaker 1: in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
Speaker 1: the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and
Speaker 1: other support to underrepresented communities and individuals.
Speaker 3: I sat there with my head down for a while.
Speaker 3: My body it was hurting. They came in with the phone,
Speaker 3: they said it on the desk, plugged it up, and
Speaker 3: a blank piece of paper and I remember this piece
Speaker 3: of paper, same time and signature, and it was like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is a new protocol that we used to prove
Speaker 3: that we allowed you to use the phone. We need
Speaker 3: you to sign here. And he looked at his watch,
Speaker 3: and when I did it, he took the phone and
Speaker 3: he took the piece of paper and he walked out.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if he was coming back or what.
Speaker 3: I know. Sometime later, the state's attorney walked in and
Speaker 3: then she wanted to go over my confession with me,
Speaker 3: and I told her. I was like, I never made
Speaker 3: a confession. I didn't do that made I never talked
Speaker 3: to anybody. So she showed me the paper. It was
Speaker 3: tight and hit my signature, and I told her I
Speaker 3: didn't I didn't make this statement, and she walked out.
Speaker 3: That was the last time I saw her.
Speaker 1: So now the money and gun magically were declared to
Speaker 1: be in your possession. They've got this piece of paper
Speaker 1: that was born when you signed it and is now
Speaker 1: being passed off as a signed confession. And of course
Speaker 1: Kevin Jackson's cooperation was also working against you. Now, there
Speaker 1: are so many things wrong with both your alleged confession
Speaker 1: and Jackson's statement. So let's just start with what did
Speaker 1: Kevin Jackson say.
Speaker 4: Well, he says that he's recruited by Antoine to take
Speaker 4: part in this robbery. You know that they go off
Speaker 4: in the car together, and then because he has to
Speaker 4: separate himself from the actual pulling of the trigger, he
Speaker 4: says that when they're proceeding down the alley, he lags
Speaker 4: behind because he has to urinate in some bushes, and
Speaker 4: then he doesn't see what actually happens. But here's an
Speaker 4: exchange between Antoine and Jeremy, and then he hears the
Speaker 4: shots and as opposed to Kevin Jackson running back to
Speaker 4: the car. It's Antoine running back to the car.
Speaker 1: And of course, when given the opportunity to essentially right
Speaker 1: Antoine's statement for him, they aligned some things from Antoine's
Speaker 1: alleged statement with Kevin's to make it seem like the
Speaker 1: two statements were corroborating one another. Liked the detail about
Speaker 1: Kevin allegendly stopping to pee in the bushes. Now, the
Speaker 1: police might take issue with you or Antoine saying that
Speaker 1: this alleged confession was anything.
Speaker 2: But above board.
Speaker 1: But there's both no evidence that it actually is, but
Speaker 1: rather there is evidence to the contrary.
Speaker 4: There's no video, no audio recording, no stenographer, and they're
Speaker 4: not even contemporaneous notes from the police officers. And we
Speaker 4: know that abuse did occur.
Speaker 1: Right Those who came to see him saw that he
Speaker 1: got really badly beat up by the cops. And because
Speaker 1: he was denied a phone call. The first person who
Speaker 1: did see him was not his mother or his lawyer.
Speaker 3: Mister Mack, who was my junior high basketball coach. Somehow
Speaker 3: he knew I was there. They let him visit me.
Speaker 3: He was okay, and I told him no, I'll start crying.
Speaker 3: I was hurting. He immediately said that he's going to
Speaker 3: let my mom know because no one knew where I
Speaker 3: was at. When my mom and my aunt came, when
Speaker 3: they saw the condition I was in, they lost it.
Speaker 3: They went off on the detectives and every other police
Speaker 3: officer they saw that was in the station, and they
Speaker 3: told him they had to leave and that they wanted
Speaker 3: to visit me. They can visit me in the county jail.
Speaker 3: After that, I was getting transported to the county jail.
Speaker 3: It was me Kevin, and there was another guy named
Speaker 3: Anthony Ferguson who got arrested that night for domestic violence.
Speaker 3: We were all in the paddy wagon and I just
Speaker 3: start spitting up blood. Anthony Ferguson say, man, was that
Speaker 3: you who I heard in the other rooms? And I
Speaker 3: was like yeah. He said, man, I heard everything that
Speaker 3: they've done to you. This is my name, this is
Speaker 3: my number. You know, if your lawyers want to talk
Speaker 3: to me, give him my information. And that was the
Speaker 3: last that I heard of him until years later when
Speaker 3: I was able to get an affidator from.
Speaker 1: Him, and that details everything that mister Ferguson could happening
Speaker 1: to Antoine corroborating to some degree what we've all heard here.
Speaker 1: Now at this point, you had no idea Kevin Jackson
Speaker 1: had flipped the situation to his advantage, and this obviously
Speaker 1: took the heat off of Kevin Jackson.
Speaker 4: Kevin Jackson was tried first under a theory that he
Speaker 4: was responsible for the killings in part because he didn't
Speaker 4: stop what was going on, and he actually supposedly drove
Speaker 4: the getaway car, and he was sentenced to forty years
Speaker 4: in prison. He is now released.
Speaker 2: Did you know that Kevin was doing this to you?
Speaker 3: I didn't know this until we went to court in Maybrook, Maywood, Illinois.
Speaker 2: I thought you were tried separately.
Speaker 3: That was just a regular court date.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so you were both at court for your
Speaker 1: own proceedings. Was this his bench trial and just at
Speaker 1: pre trial hearing for you?
Speaker 3: Exactly? That was the pre trial and all the bailiffs
Speaker 3: knew me. So it was one day in court and
Speaker 3: his lawyer comes in to the bullpen and it's like me,
Speaker 3: Kevin and like other guys and his lawyer because lawyer
Speaker 3: is telling him, Okay, when we go in there, this
Speaker 3: is what's going to happen. But he was talking so
Speaker 3: low to where I really couldn't hear him. So Kevin
Speaker 3: and his lawyer went out, and immediately the Bayliffs came
Speaker 3: in to the bullpen. He was like, QB, he's out
Speaker 3: there saying that you did this, like he had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with it. So I was like, no, that's
Speaker 3: not true. So Kevin came back, so I asked him.
Speaker 3: I say, I said, what just happened out there? And
Speaker 3: he says nothing. So now it's starting to make sense.
Speaker 3: Kevin saw how I said, I was getting sold. He
Speaker 3: bangs on the door and he tells the baylorff that
Speaker 3: he has to us to wash room, and the baylorf's
Speaker 3: let him out. I never saw Kevin again until he
Speaker 3: came home in twenty seventeen, at.
Speaker 1: Which point he said he was going to give you
Speaker 1: a sign out the David. That never came to pruation.
Speaker 1: But Kevin never even testified at your trial. He didn't
Speaker 1: have to confession evidence in your case. A complete fabrication
Speaker 1: was all the state really needed.
Speaker 4: This confession turns into the centerpiece of the state's case.
Speaker 4: But there are a number of features of this so
Speaker 4: called confession that just make it obvious that it's not
Speaker 4: a trustworthy description of what actually happened. The statement reads
Speaker 4: nothing like the way Antoine would talk are rite. There
Speaker 4: were facts in the statement that are totally contradicted by
Speaker 4: the unchallenged facts like the statement says there were four
Speaker 4: shots and there were actually eight shots. There are four
Speaker 4: different versions. There were parts that were totally inconsistent version
Speaker 4: to version, like whose money was involved Jeremis, where is
Speaker 4: it Antoine's? Whose gun was involved? Was it Jeremy's gun?
Speaker 4: Did Antoine get the gun? When does Antoine actually supposedly
Speaker 4: take possession of the gun before that night or does
Speaker 4: it get it that night? These versions are very much inconsistent.
Speaker 1: And wild contradictions and inconsistencies like these are hallmarks of
Speaker 1: false confessions. From this case, they're taking wild stabs at
Speaker 1: a plausible version of event that's consistent with their incentivized
Speaker 1: defendant in order to nabb both young men.
Speaker 2: So Antoine didn't go to trial for almost three years.
Speaker 1: Part of that time he was in the notorious Cook
Speaker 1: County jail and his family hired an attorney, a reputable
Speaker 1: guy at.
Speaker 4: The time, George Howard, at this time had a fairly
Speaker 4: distinguished record. He was an African American criminal defense lawyer
Speaker 4: in Chicago. You know, he had been a speaker at
Speaker 4: a lot of the area law schools, tried a lot
Speaker 4: of cases. But here's the problem. What they don't know
Speaker 4: is that he's already clearly overburdened. He had been suspended
Speaker 4: actually in nineteen ninety five and into nineteen ninety six
Speaker 4: for neglecting his cases. This is a time when there
Speaker 4: was still a death penalty in Illinois. And George Howard
Speaker 4: looked at Antoine's case and he immediately told him, he said,
Speaker 4: look it, they say you killed a white boy in
Speaker 4: Oak Park. He doesn't think there's any way to defend
Speaker 4: Antoine given the evidence that he is aware of, and
Speaker 4: he goes, I'm here to save your life. So George
Speaker 4: Howard decides he's going to insert an insanity defense, and incredibly,
Speaker 4: he coaches Antoine and his family to fake mental illness.
Speaker 3: He told me how to act in front of the judge.
Speaker 3: When I go see the psychiatrists and psychologists. I literally
Speaker 3: had to teach myself like I had to look at
Speaker 3: other people behavior who was mentally ill or who was insane.
Speaker 3: I mimicked them, basically because this is what my lawyer
Speaker 3: told me that I needed to do. In order to
Speaker 3: come home. I think I did it well because they
Speaker 3: end up sending me to Elgin Mental Hospital. So it
Speaker 3: was like three times I was found unfit to stand trial.
Speaker 3: I stayed in the mental institution for a few months,
Speaker 3: at least the county jail. I knew what I was
Speaker 3: dealing with. As far as the violence, I knew. I
Speaker 3: knew the environment, but the mental hospital you don't know
Speaker 3: who you're dealing with. And then the medicines that they
Speaker 3: hid me on at that time were spiratal held dog
Speaker 3: doors Kojiton. Those are the things I had to deal
Speaker 3: with because I was only impression because that's what was
Speaker 3: going to get me home.
Speaker 4: He took his lawyer's advice. He obviously was successful at
Speaker 4: it for a while, but he couldn't sustain it, and
Speaker 4: eventually the state is able to prove that this is
Speaker 4: just a sham and Antoine is forced to go to trial.
Speaker 4: This was a four day trial. The state called seventeen witnesses,
Speaker 4: layfact witnesses, people who saw the car parked, people who
Speaker 4: saw the car pull away, the person who found the body.
Speaker 4: They have medical experts obviously to talk about the cause
Speaker 4: of death, and forensic people who talk about the gun.
Speaker 4: The gun was actually was a stolen gun, and they
Speaker 4: couldn't get prints off the gun. They certainly didn't have
Speaker 4: any fingerprints or DNA of Antoine's. And then they also
Speaker 4: called some police supervisors and one of the detectives in
Speaker 4: the States did the interrogations.
Speaker 1: And we've been over all the most damning evidence already.
Speaker 1: They placed the cash among Antline's possessions. Kevin Jackson placed
Speaker 1: himself at the scene and implicated Antoine, although Kevin did
Speaker 1: not testify at Antoine's trial. There's also this fabricated confession
Speaker 1: and an alleged dying declaration. But George Howard was not
Speaker 1: fighting the state's evidence. He didn't develop anything to combat it.
Speaker 1: No defense but the insanity defense.
Speaker 3: If I'm not mistaken, I think he says something to
Speaker 3: the effect of open arguments. My client didn't do this,
Speaker 3: and there's no evidence to prove that he did it.
Speaker 3: But if he did do it, the end, he was
Speaker 3: insane during the time.
Speaker 1: So I wishy washy insanity play on top of the
Speaker 1: evidence that the state did actually present, fabricated as it was.
Speaker 2: It's so crazy.
Speaker 1: Why because the state is fabricating all their evidence and
Speaker 1: your attorney is fabricating an insanity. You weren't insane, and
Speaker 1: the jury officer was going to see through that. But
Speaker 1: there was a lot he could have done instead of
Speaker 1: pleading insanity, including calling your middle school coach who could
Speaker 1: have corroborated that you'd been beaten. Or he could have
Speaker 1: just pointed out all the glaring inconsistencies and contradictions between statements,
Speaker 1: not to mention the inconsistent reports about Antoine's possessions, namely
Speaker 1: the lot of cash that wasn't found in his right
Speaker 1: front pocket during the initial pat down, and of course
Speaker 1: the EMTs who would have refuted the officer's testimony about
Speaker 1: the dying declaration. In light of all that, Officer Harris's
Speaker 1: testimony a trial was particularly devastating.
Speaker 4: Officer Harris says, what he gets to the scene and
Speaker 4: Jeremy is still conscious that he asks him a question, specifically,
Speaker 4: who shot you? And Harris says that Jeremy allegedly said
Speaker 4: it was Antoine QB. The question is what exactly did
Speaker 4: Harris ask? We do know that Antoine's name went out
Speaker 4: over the police radio. So Antoine's name came from somewhere
Speaker 4: and probably came from Jeremy. But the ES is what
Speaker 4: question was he answering? And here's an important piece of evidence.
Speaker 4: The paramedics were there in two minutes from when they
Speaker 4: were called, So they get there very shortly, if not
Speaker 4: exactly that the time and the police show and there
Speaker 4: are five paramedics on the scene. Not one of them
Speaker 4: corroborates Harris's story. No one other than the police officers
Speaker 4: say that Jeremy identified Antoine as a shooter.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the same police department that developed an
Speaker 1: alternate slate of Antoine's personal effects, that beat the shit
Speaker 1: out of him and gave him a blank piece of
Speaker 1: paper to sign, then filled it out with an alleged confession.
Speaker 1: So pretty close to zero credibility to go around here.
Speaker 1: So when your only sources are ok Park PD or
Speaker 1: the EMTs, I'd go with the EMTs.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They don't have a motivation to lie, and they didn't equivocate.
Speaker 2: They were sure that they hadn't heard Harris ask a question,
Speaker 2: who shot you?
Speaker 4: One thing we do know for sure is that Eddie
Speaker 4: Harris was fired by the old Park Police Department shortly
Speaker 4: after what happened here in nineteen ninety nine, in part
Speaker 4: for lying in the course of his duties. So there's
Speaker 4: incredible doubt that Eddie Harris told the truth about what
Speaker 4: question he asked Jeremy Bruder as he lay dying. But
Speaker 4: that's the story that Eddie Harris told the jury, and
Speaker 4: George Howard didn't call a single paramedic to talk to
Speaker 4: the contrary.
Speaker 2: There's so much that he did not do.
Speaker 4: He did not develop the defense that Antoine had no
Speaker 4: motive to shoot Jeremy, that Antoine had no special need
Speaker 4: for that kind of money, had no interactions with Jeremy
Speaker 4: that was anything close to supporting the possibility that he
Speaker 4: shoot him. He was on the phone with his girlfriend
Speaker 4: when this happened, But George Howard doesn't develop that, no
Speaker 4: phone records, He didn't put his girlfriend on the stand.
Speaker 4: You know that Antoine actually stopped the car, got out
Speaker 4: and went back to the scene when he knows that
Speaker 4: people have heard the shots, he knows that the police
Speaker 4: are coming, and he's going right back there. You know,
Speaker 4: when George Howard doesn't do anything with the gunshot residue tests,
Speaker 4: and you know, he doesn't attack the supposed dying declaration,
Speaker 4: the claim that Antoine had the money on him after
Speaker 4: the shooting. He doesn't attack Antoine's alleged confession. He doesn't
Speaker 4: do these things.
Speaker 2: And why do any of that when your strategy was insanity.
Speaker 4: George Howard called one witness, a psychiatrist from Michigan, who
Speaker 4: came and testified that Antoine QB. Didn't have a sufficient
Speaker 4: mental state to understand what he was doing, that he
Speaker 4: essentially was insane. The problem was, or one of the problems,
Speaker 4: was that he was testifying based on Michigan standards for insanity,
Speaker 4: and the fact of the matter is they were in
Speaker 4: the Illinois court and they needed to have the Illinois
Speaker 4: standards supplied. So his testimony was rejected. So that's how
Speaker 4: this case went to the jury.
Speaker 1: So the States case went completely unrebutted, and the only
Speaker 1: defense was rejected.
Speaker 4: The only thing that George Howard did that worked was
Speaker 4: to convince the judge that because Antoine had no prior
Speaker 4: criminal history, it would be cruel to sentence him to death.
Speaker 4: So he was spared the death penalty but told that
Speaker 4: he essentially would die in prison.
Speaker 3: They gave me a natural life without the possibility of
Speaker 3: parole for the murder, and then they gave me thirty
Speaker 3: years for the armed robbery. I remember them saying guilty,
Speaker 3: and everything else went blank, like literally quiet, and I
Speaker 3: heard one person, my mom. I heard my mother cry,
Speaker 3: and I didn't hear anything else. I didn't hear no
Speaker 3: one else talking. I didn't hear anything but my mother,
Speaker 3: you know, leaving the county jail, going to Jiliette, which
Speaker 3: was annex you know, that was the receiving I think
Speaker 3: that was the scariest ride ever. You know, you get in,
Speaker 3: you know, they strip you and make you take the shower,
Speaker 3: and you know, throw the powder on you and put
Speaker 3: you in the IDEALC uniform. I stayed in Juliet for
Speaker 3: a few days and they told me I was going
Speaker 3: to the Pit. You know, that was the nickname for Minard,
Speaker 3: And you know that's right there on the Mississippi River,
Speaker 3: like eight hours away from home. When I got down there,
Speaker 3: it was so racist. You know, it was literally separated,
Speaker 3: you know, blacks against whites. You know, you had a
Speaker 3: lot of race rides down there. You know, people literally
Speaker 3: dying on the regular. I've seen everything from murders to rape.
Speaker 3: I've seen people die right in front of me. I've
Speaker 3: seen people get beat over over packer cookies. It can
Speaker 3: be anything. Anything can triggery. Anything be triggery.
Speaker 1: You know, we hear about the conditions in our prisons
Speaker 1: every week, but no one who hasn't been there can imagine. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: your post conviction proceedings were and are very similar to
Speaker 1: things we hear on this show every week as well.
Speaker 4: His trial was in nineteen ninety nine. By two thousand
Speaker 4: and one, his direct appeal had been denied. Antoine also
Speaker 4: pursued a habeas petition in federal court in two thousand
Speaker 4: and one, but that was also quickly denied.
Speaker 1: And you think that making the case for ineffective assistants
Speaker 1: might not be that hard considering the defense or lack
Speaker 1: of defense that you had, But with the evidence presented
Speaker 1: accepted as truth in this case, and knowing what we
Speaker 1: know about our impellt system, is understandable that he was
Speaker 1: met with denials.
Speaker 2: What about his post conviction petition?
Speaker 4: He did not file a post conviction petition until two
Speaker 4: thousand and six, and then it was amended later in
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine to include actual innocence claims, at
Speaker 4: one point supported by affidavits right.
Speaker 1: Affid Davids in two thousand and eight, one from an
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend of Jamie Jackson, who said that Kevin was
Speaker 1: living with Jamie at the time and when she called
Speaker 1: Jamie the day after the shooting this would be June second,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, that Jamie was upset that some money
Speaker 1: and shoes, along with a nine millimeter pistol were missing.
Speaker 1: When she asked Jamie about Antoine's arrest, he told her
Speaker 1: that quote, Antoine would not be in trouble because Kevin
Speaker 1: Jackson would tell.
Speaker 2: The police what really happened that night end quote.
Speaker 1: Also in two thousand and eight, a man named Robert Walker,
Speaker 1: who did time with Kevin Jackson at Danville Correctional from
Speaker 1: two thousand and three to two thousand and five, also
Speaker 1: swore that Kevin had admitted to the crime multiple times
Speaker 1: over that period, in addition to saying that Antoine was
Speaker 1: not responsible for it, saying, and I quote Kevin Jackson
Speaker 1: say that Antoine QB got the time for the case
Speaker 1: that he should have got end quote. There were also
Speaker 1: affid Davids from Antoine's mother and aunt who swore to
Speaker 1: his injured condition when they visited him at Oak Park,
Speaker 1: and then in twenty ten they caught up with Anthony Ferguson,
Speaker 1: who swore to seeing Antoine before and after his night
Speaker 1: of horror and torture at the oak Ark Police station
Speaker 1: injury free the night before, followed by spitting up blood
Speaker 1: in the Patty Way.
Speaker 4: The state eventually made a motion to dismiss the original
Speaker 4: post conviction petition because it was too late. Unfortunately for Antoine,
Speaker 4: the appellate court decided in twenty thirteen that he was
Speaker 4: too late, and so they threw his case out. So
Speaker 4: in this intermediate period of time between twenty thirteen and
Speaker 4: the present, there have been a number of different efforts,
Speaker 4: primarily by Antoine himself, to try to develop evidence of
Speaker 4: his innocence.
Speaker 1: One of those efforts was having a linguistics expert, Richard Leonard,
Speaker 1: examined the language used in the alleged confession and compared
Speaker 1: to Antoine's known writings and speech.
Speaker 4: And the conclusion of this expert was that there was
Speaker 4: no similarity between the language that was used in the
Speaker 4: signed statement that the police used as confession and the
Speaker 4: way in which Antoine actually speaks it writes.
Speaker 1: In fact, they found that the language more accurately reflected
Speaker 1: the writing of the detective who allegedly took the statement.
Speaker 1: For example, quote I met Jeremy at Cass Avenue on
Speaker 1: sixty third Street in Westmont at an unknown time. That
Speaker 1: is definitely cop talk. Another example was the use of
Speaker 1: the word then, as in I then told Jeremy to
Speaker 1: move his jeep to the end of the alley. We
Speaker 1: both then went into the building after ringing Jamie's bell.
Speaker 1: Every time the word then was used in the alleged confession,
Speaker 1: it followed the sentences subject. Now, compared to other known
Speaker 1: writings of Antoine, he always put the word then first.
Speaker 1: For example, then I went here, that I did this,
Speaker 1: that I did that right. And what's more alarming still
Speaker 1: is that the use of the word then closely resembles
Speaker 1: the writings of the detective testifying against Antoine at his trial.
Speaker 1: This report was done back in twenty fourteen. Now, in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, as were referred to earlier, Kevin Jackson was released.
Speaker 3: I actually talked to him over the phone. A mutual
Speaker 3: friend of ours, you know, connected us, gave me his number.
Speaker 3: I wanted him to do the right thing. I wanted
Speaker 3: him to tell people that I didn't do it. And
Speaker 3: I called him. You know, he was talking to me
Speaker 3: like like nothing happened, Like he didn't just sit there
Speaker 3: and tell him that I did this. But I asked him,
Speaker 3: I said, I needed you to talk to my lawyers
Speaker 3: and tell him I didn't do this. I need you
Speaker 3: to be honest and tell him the truth. And he
Speaker 3: said he would. When they did try to set up
Speaker 3: meetings and appointments with him, he wouldn't show. So, you know,
Speaker 3: he kept saying that he was going to give me
Speaker 3: an affid David telling the truth, but he never followed through.
Speaker 3: So that's where I'm at now.
Speaker 1: And this happened just before Joe's firm, Riley Safer Holmes
Speaker 1: mckin Silla picked up Antoine's case pro bono in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and they have also gotten the same run around from
Speaker 1: Kevin Jackson. But that's not to say other avenues are
Speaker 1: not being explored to solidify Antoine's claim of actual innocence.
Speaker 4: So those efforts include efforts to explore Kevin Jackson's willingness
Speaker 4: to tell the truth what Kevin Jackson said to other
Speaker 4: people about what happened that night. Certain individuals have been
Speaker 4: identified who say that Kevin Jackson has said explicitly that
Speaker 4: Antoine was not personally involved, So.
Speaker 1: More people who corroborate what Robert Walker said in twenty ten. Now,
Speaker 1: since twenty eighteen, both his junior high basketball coach who
Speaker 1: visited him at the police station, and his ex girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Tia Banks have both come forward signing out the Davids,
Speaker 1: corroborating what Antoine and his GSR test has been saying
Speaker 1: all along, that Kevin Jackson shot Jeremy Bruder, that Antoine
Speaker 1: was completely unaware of Kevin Jackson's plans, as evidenced by
Speaker 1: his behavior in the aftermath. I mean, why the help
Speaker 1: would a guilty person return to the scene to essentially
Speaker 1: turn himself in?
Speaker 4: You know, why would a bright, super talented high school
Speaker 4: basketball star with college offers all over America and no
Speaker 4: history of criminal behavior, no history of violent behavior shoot
Speaker 4: one of his best friends eight times for eleven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure
Speaker 1: this out. So, is there anything that our audience can
Speaker 1: do to help?
Speaker 4: If anybody who's listening to this podcast has any information
Speaker 4: that they think might be valuable to us in terms
Speaker 4: of what it is that we're trying to do for Antoine,
Speaker 4: then I would sincerely ask that they contact our office.
Speaker 4: My name is Joe O'Hara and the firm is Riley
Speaker 4: Safer Homes and Cancilla.
Speaker 1: We'll have action steps linked in the bio, including a
Speaker 1: change dot org petition asking for relief in his case.
Speaker 1: And that brings us to the best part of the show.
Speaker 1: Let's face it, it's my favorite part, and it's called
Speaker 1: closing arguments.
Speaker 2: And this is the part where I think.
Speaker 1: Each of you, both of you for joining us today
Speaker 1: and courageously sharing Antoine and your story. And now I'm
Speaker 1: just going to turn my mic off, leave my headphones on,
Speaker 1: and kick back on my chair to listen to your
Speaker 1: closing thoughts.
Speaker 2: Let's start with Joe and finish up with Antoine.
Speaker 4: You know, the criminal justice system has failed Antoine horribly.
Speaker 4: You always have to come back to that question, which is,
Speaker 4: why would a upbride kid, a super talented athlete like
Speaker 4: Antoine QB, with no history, no history at all of
Speaker 4: criminal behavior, violent behavior, why would he do something like this?
Speaker 4: The state's case against Antoine had big holes from the beginning,
Speaker 4: and they knew it because there was no good motive.
Speaker 4: He wasn't a kid from the streets who had done
Speaker 4: anything like this before, and they didn't have any witness
Speaker 4: except for somebody who was involved and a very biased witness,
Speaker 4: Kevin Jackson. And they didn't have any forensic evidence or
Speaker 4: physical evidence of any kind, you know, they didn't have
Speaker 4: any gun evidence, or blood evidence, or fingerprint evidence or
Speaker 4: DNA evidence or the only test that they did that
Speaker 4: GSR was negative. So the state had to do something,
Speaker 4: and they filled the holes in the case with the
Speaker 4: evidence that was manufactured by the police, and that was
Speaker 4: essentially the supposed dying identification of Antoine by Jeremy, the
Speaker 4: possession of the robbery money that was planted on Antoine,
Speaker 4: and then the alleged confession, and all of this was
Speaker 4: exacerbated by the fact that George Howard decided to rely
Speaker 4: only on an insanity defense to try to save Antoine
Speaker 4: from the death penalty. Where we find ourselves is Antoine
Speaker 4: has endured over you know, over twenty five years at
Speaker 4: this point of incarceration as a result of these failures.
Speaker 2: Of the criminal justice system.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, and particularly in Cook County, situations like Antoine's are
Speaker 4: not unusual, and it is very important for the public
Speaker 4: to support the efforts of those in public service, including
Speaker 4: the people who run this Wrongful Conviction podcast. They need
Speaker 4: your support, They need your encouragement to continue to identify
Speaker 4: and rectify some of the horrible things that have resulted
Speaker 4: because the system doesn't.
Speaker 2: Work the right way.
Speaker 3: I want to first thank you for allowing me this
Speaker 3: opportunity to speak the truth. A lot of people didn't
Speaker 3: know about a lot of these things that took place
Speaker 3: doing my arrest before and after, and I'm glad you
Speaker 3: gave me this platform to do so. I just asked that,
Speaker 3: you know, people not make assumptions, just use the black
Speaker 3: and white evidence in front of you. And I just
Speaker 3: hope that in the near future that I be home
Speaker 3: because I miss being a father, I missed out being
Speaker 3: a grandfather and you know, being a son. All that
Speaker 3: was taken away from me, including my potential future. You know,
Speaker 3: who knows what could have came of it, but I
Speaker 3: am grateful and I'm going to continue to fight, and
Speaker 3: I just want to thank you. So I know my
Speaker 3: time is wrapping up now, so I just want to
Speaker 3: thank everybody for being an advocate for a man, supporting me.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Rabel Conviction. I'd like to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburn, and Kevin Wadis,
Speaker 1: with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can also follow me on both TikTok.
Speaker 2: And Instagram at it's Jason Flam.
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast
Speaker 1: and association with Signal Company Number one