Speaker 1: The following interview was recorded in person at the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four Innocent Network Conference in New Orleans. On March sixth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, in McHenry, Illinois, two masked men,
Speaker 1: one armed with a twenty two, attempted to rob a
Speaker 1: Mexican takeout joint, but the owner grabbed a butcher knife
Speaker 1: and his employee followed. As they chased the men out,
Speaker 1: they caught one of the assailants and removed his mask.
Speaker 1: The other assailant turned around, ripped off his mask and
Speaker 1: opened fire, fatally shooting the owner and the surviving employee
Speaker 1: ran back inside to call the police. The police canvass
Speaker 1: the area and discovered four young people in a house
Speaker 1: up the street, including a young woman named Jennifer McMullen. Eventually,
Speaker 1: she and two of her friends confessed to a role
Speaker 1: in the robbery homicide. But this is wrongful conviction. Wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
Speaker 1: and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
Speaker 1: at eight three, three, two oh seven four six sixty
Speaker 1: six and tell us how these stories make you feel
Speaker 1: and what you've done to help the cause, even if
Speaker 1: it's something as simple as telling a friend or sharing
Speaker 1: on social media, and you might just hear yourself in
Speaker 1: a future episode. Call us eight three three, two oh
Speaker 1: seven four six sixty six. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: Today's story is it's like something out of a Quentin
Speaker 1: Tarantino movie, and the investigation, if you can call it, that,
Speaker 1: is like something out of The Three Stooges or Keystone
Speaker 1: Cops or something much more sinister. First of all, we
Speaker 1: have I don't know why this is first time, but
Speaker 1: for the first time, we have the co director of
Speaker 1: the Illinois Innocence Project, Stephanie Cammell. She's been hiding out
Speaker 1: from us while some of her colleagues have been on
Speaker 1: the show multiple times. But it's overdue. But I'm really
Speaker 1: honored to have you here.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having us and for profiling
Speaker 2: Jennifer's case. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You go, don't embarrass you, but you're kind of a
Speaker 1: legend in this space, so you know, it's really great
Speaker 1: to have you here, and I'm very lucky and honored
Speaker 1: to have the person here who lived through this ordeal,
Speaker 1: Jennifer McMullin. Thanks for being here. Welcome to Ronful conviction.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: And I always say I'm so happy you're here, but
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you're here because you should have never been
Speaker 1: on this show in the first place. This is this
Speaker 1: case came with instructions. You were only nineteen when this
Speaker 1: happened and the top of what your life was like
Speaker 1: because you were a law abiding, sort of normal person.
Speaker 1: You were born where.
Speaker 3: Oh, Libertyville, Illinois.
Speaker 1: Libertyville ALLNOI it sounds very all American, it is. Is
Speaker 1: it like one traffic light like that kind of place.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's a busy small town, but yeah,
Speaker 4: it's an amazing place. I was born there and grew
Speaker 4: up around Lake Beach with my stepfather and mother, only child,
Speaker 4: three older siblings. The eldest is my brother, and then
Speaker 4: the other two are sisters. There's ten years difference between
Speaker 4: me and the next daughter. So they were all out
Speaker 4: and getting married and having families, and I was the oops.
Speaker 3: I came ten years later.
Speaker 4: So growing up in my teens, I was the only
Speaker 4: one in the house. But yeah, it was a great childhood.
Speaker 4: Never in trouble, was always in sports, softball, soccer, competitive cheer,
Speaker 4: and dance. Sports was definitely a passion for me.
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay, so it sounds like a nice childhood.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, I had an amazing childhood, amazing parents, siblings, family.
Speaker 1: It was great and quite an athletic resume you have there,
Speaker 1: as well as someone who didn't make the sports teams
Speaker 1: in high school. I'm a little jealous, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to let that slide. That's why I played
Speaker 1: the guitar and smoked pot instead. But that's a different podcast.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk about that now. But anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: so then let's go to this crime. Okay. This was
Speaker 1: on March six of two thousand and one. Two masked
Speaker 1: men attempted to rob a small restaurant in McHenry, Illinois,
Speaker 1: right a Burrito express. The owner, welding a butcher knife,
Speaker 1: and his employee chased the two men out of the restaurant,
Speaker 1: and an ensuing chase, the owner was shot and killed. Jennifer,
Speaker 1: you stumbled onto this scene right, so to speak. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were talk about wrong place, wrong time. Absolutely tell
Speaker 1: us how you came upon this chaotic and terrifying scene
Speaker 1: and then how you eventually got implicated.
Speaker 3: Definitely.
Speaker 4: So that day, I remember I had got a call
Speaker 4: from one of my friends who needed to find somebody
Speaker 4: to borrow a laptop, so I called another friend who
Speaker 4: I knew had one. So I went and grabbed my
Speaker 4: three code defendants. We headed out to Twin Lakes, Wisconsin.
Speaker 4: You know, just young listening to music and join a
Speaker 4: car ride. Get to Twin Lakes. We end up finding
Speaker 4: out that my friend wasn't allowed to loan out her laptop.
Speaker 4: I think we say they are about fifty minutes, you know,
Speaker 4: just chit chatting, and then we were on our way,
Speaker 4: the four of us again and headed it out to mckenry, Illinois,
Speaker 4: where one of my co defendants had a very close
Speaker 4: family friend who lived out there.
Speaker 1: Our listeners may remember mckenry, Illinois from the story of
Speaker 1: Mario Kasharo, whose lead detective was a former failed hardware
Speaker 1: store stock boy. Yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but
Speaker 1: it's true. And it's the same prosecutorial team Combs and
Speaker 1: Kanneely who prosecuted Mario three separate times while having more
Speaker 1: evidence supporting an alternative narrative. And we're going to have
Speaker 1: that incredible episode linked in the episode description because Jennifer's
Speaker 1: case bears such a strong resemblance.
Speaker 4: As we're going into mckenry, we heard like a lot
Speaker 4: of commotion, ambulance squad cars. We ended up going to
Speaker 4: a smoke shop dispensary type place. Only one code defendant
Speaker 4: went in and the rest of us stayed in the car.
Speaker 4: From there we went to another co defendant's friend's house,
Speaker 4: which ended up being right in the vicinity of the
Speaker 4: Brito Express.
Speaker 1: Jennifer's friends and later co defendants Kenneth Smith, Justin Hoftling,
Speaker 1: and David Collette. Their sole connection to the situation was
Speaker 1: that they arrived at their friend's house near the Burrito
Speaker 1: Express in the aftermath of this robbery turned homicide that
Speaker 1: occurred around seven to twenty pm the same evening.
Speaker 2: Two masked men came into the Brito Express. No one
Speaker 2: was in there except the owner of all Presento and
Speaker 2: his employee, at Wardo Pardo, and they were in the
Speaker 2: back and the first mask man had a twenty two
Speaker 2: caliber gun and they were attempting to rob the Brito Express.
Speaker 2: Mister Briseno took the butcher knife and started chasing them,
Speaker 2: with mister Pardo following right behind him. They chased them out.
Speaker 2: Now this is March in northern Illinois. There's ice, it's cold,
Speaker 2: and one of the perpetrators slips on the ice and falls,
Speaker 2: and so mister Pardo grabs him, takes off his mask
Speaker 2: so he gets a good look at him and starts
Speaker 2: dragging him back to the restaurant. Mister Briseno, the owner,
Speaker 2: has yelled at a passing car to call the police,
Speaker 2: and the perpetrator starts yelling to his friend because he's
Speaker 2: now been caught. The friend turns around and removes his
Speaker 2: mask and starts shooting. He's trying to get him to
Speaker 2: let his friend go, and mister Preseno and Pardo are
Speaker 2: dragging him back to the Brito Express. At one point,
Speaker 2: mister Presento gets hit, and so mister Pardo drops the
Speaker 2: perpetrator and runs in and calls the police. By the
Speaker 2: time he comes back out, the two men are gone
Speaker 2: and mister Burzeno is on the ground and has been shot.
Speaker 2: He died a little bit later. Within ten minutes of
Speaker 2: everything starting. The police were there, and mister Pardo spent
Speaker 2: a couple of hours that night with law enforcement, and
Speaker 2: they got composite sketches of each of the suspects that night.
Speaker 1: Pardo also said that the assailant heat caught was wearing
Speaker 1: green leather jacket and police began to canvass the area
Speaker 1: looking for suspects. Meanwhile, Jennifer and her friends were just
Speaker 1: up the hill from the Burrito Express.
Speaker 4: Throughout the evening, we were watching out the back window
Speaker 4: of that house. We saw detectives putting you know, the
Speaker 4: yellow markers on the ground for the different things that
Speaker 4: they were finding. I ended up not driving home that
Speaker 4: night because I was scared. I called my mother and
Speaker 4: told her, you know, something was going on in this area.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna go ahead and stay here for the night.
Speaker 4: It was the four of us. The mother came home
Speaker 4: from work, she worked at a gas station nearby the house.
Speaker 4: There was a couple of younger kids there, you know,
Speaker 4: and we were just in the house actually watching the
Speaker 4: news of the scene of the crime in what was
Speaker 4: going on. Of course you're interested, and it's you know,
Speaker 4: happening right behind you. And then we all eventually went
Speaker 4: to sleep. While we were sleeping, mc henry police were
Speaker 4: doing canvassing of the neighborhood and when they had came
Speaker 4: to the house, they asked for the people's IDs who
Speaker 4: were in the house. I was sleeping and they were
Speaker 4: given to my id out of my purse.
Speaker 2: As she said, they canvassed the neighborhood and had all
Speaker 2: the different identification and so Jennifer I think, was questioned
Speaker 2: a couple of different times and obviously told them they
Speaker 2: knew nothing about this. And what we've learned later is
Speaker 2: they seemed to zero in on her friend, her co defendant,
Speaker 2: Ken Smith, and I've heard that they thought he may
Speaker 2: have gotten away with something else, another crime. He hadn't
Speaker 2: really been in trouble before, and so I think it
Speaker 2: just seemed like all of a sudden, they thought he's
Speaker 2: right here behind the Burrito Express, must have done this.
Speaker 1: It was later discovered that mister Pardo had viewed a
Speaker 1: photo array that contained photos of Jennifer's co defendants, but
Speaker 1: did not identify them. It's believed that he was deported
Speaker 1: and Jennifer and her friends remained the focus of the investigation.
Speaker 1: The police theory was that Jennifer and perhaps David Collette,
Speaker 1: drove Ken Smith and Justin Hoftling to the Burrito Express
Speaker 1: before the crime, and may or may not have known
Speaker 1: what the assailants had planned, and they brought Jennifer in
Speaker 1: on May eleventh, two thousand and one to take a polygraph.
Speaker 3: I went in willingly.
Speaker 4: It was to mckenry County Detectives, a round the beach
Speaker 4: police officer who was actually a friend of the family
Speaker 4: and family yes, and was accompanying me in the situation,
Speaker 4: assuring my mother they just want to talk to her.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't need a lawyer. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: Her mother specifically asked if she needed to get her
Speaker 2: a lawyer. Yes, you're told that if you have nothing
Speaker 2: to hide, why would you need a lawyer, And that
Speaker 2: is so incorrect. Make sure that you have representation as
Speaker 2: you're trying to be helpful to the police.
Speaker 1: But there was another factor at play here.
Speaker 4: I was diagnosed with bipolar and manic depression, so I
Speaker 4: was on medication. Before I went into the light detective test,
Speaker 4: I was given a dose of one of my medications,
Speaker 4: which was clanipin, So clanopin is a sleep aid.
Speaker 2: After that or she had the light detector test, there
Speaker 2: were only four questions asked. After that, they come out
Speaker 2: and say a couple answers were highly suspicious, and so
Speaker 2: then they start trying to what really happened? What really happened?
Speaker 2: They didn't believe her. They didn't believe her.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and one, polygraphs were no longer admissible
Speaker 1: in court. And when law enforcement tells the subject that
Speaker 1: they failed or their answers were suspicious, this serves to
Speaker 1: arm interrogators with a pseudo scientific reason why their subjects
Speaker 1: denials just cannot be believed.
Speaker 4: We get back to mckenry County Police Department. They take
Speaker 4: me into almost like a boardroom with long tables, big
Speaker 4: screen TV. They pop in a VHS and it was
Speaker 4: footage of the smoke shop, which was called Cloud nine.
Speaker 3: And the footage did show.
Speaker 4: One of my co defendants in their shopping around, which
Speaker 4: did happen that night We did go to the smoke shop.
Speaker 4: So they asked me to identify who was on the tape.
Speaker 3: I did so.
Speaker 1: It was David Collette on video at seven thirty eight pm. Importantly,
Speaker 1: they were all still together at Jennifer's ordeal continued.
Speaker 4: Another detective comes in that that I hadn't met that
Speaker 4: day yet, So it becomes three detectives in myself in.
Speaker 2: The room, multiple mail, law enforcement officers, no parent, no attorney, nothing, and.
Speaker 4: He basically just started saying, this is what we want
Speaker 4: you to say, tell us what we want to hear,
Speaker 4: and you can go home. We know you didn't have
Speaker 4: anything to do with it. Just give us this name
Speaker 4: and all this can be done and over with. And
Speaker 4: as I keep saying, we didn't commit this crime, I
Speaker 4: don't know you know what you want me to say.
Speaker 4: I don't know what you're talking about, Like this isn't right,
Speaker 4: you know. Sorry.
Speaker 2: At any time, you know, an attorney could have said
Speaker 2: this is not going to go on anymore. She kept
Speaker 2: asking to go home and thought she was going to
Speaker 2: go home, and they kept saying, oh, we will take
Speaker 2: you home, you know, until it gets longer and longer again.
Speaker 2: Social science study shows people's defenses start to break down
Speaker 2: after about an hour and a half.
Speaker 4: This went on for over fourteen hours, as they kept drilling,
Speaker 4: starting and stopping recording. Just tell us what we want
Speaker 4: to hear and you can go. I just remember being
Speaker 4: in a daze from the medication, not understanding, just wanting
Speaker 4: it to be over with.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes people they'll say anything just to get out of
Speaker 2: the situation, thinking well, we'll get out of the situation,
Speaker 2: and then they'll find out the evidence and it'll show
Speaker 2: that I didn't do it. You know, they'll go get
Speaker 2: the actual perpetrators, right.
Speaker 3: So eventually.
Speaker 4: One of them sat with like a yellow legal pad
Speaker 4: and he would write down descriptions of things that happened
Speaker 4: in the crime. Even drew a picture of like the
Speaker 4: gun that was used and kind of like a description
Speaker 4: of it. And he said, if there's anything at you
Speaker 4: mess up on, you can glance over here at this
Speaker 4: legal tablet. And every time I didn't get something great,
Speaker 4: you would shut off the camera recording and just start screaming.
Speaker 3: And then I just couldn't take any more and told
Speaker 3: them what they wanted to hear, just that we can
Speaker 3: be over with. I just wanted to go home.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this
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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. In a videotape statement that ended around
Speaker 1: ten ten pm, Jennifer said that she saw police activity
Speaker 1: in the area, then lent her card to her three friends.
Speaker 1: Then they returned and admitted to the shooting. But why
Speaker 1: would there be police activity before the alleged assailants even
Speaker 1: left to commit the crime that makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker 2: There are two different videotape interrogations. In the first one,
Speaker 2: she starts breaking down and giving them information, but again
Speaker 2: highly unreliable. They take a break and while they said
Speaker 2: they did not give her medication until after the second interrogation,
Speaker 2: the video stops recording, but on the audio you hear
Speaker 2: a man say, do you want coffee with your medication?
Speaker 2: And then the false confession from that first videotape wasn't
Speaker 2: really accurate, So then they do another videotape and they
Speaker 2: get the confession that ends up being used at her trial,
Speaker 2: which is more accurate. But again none of the withheld
Speaker 2: facts from the crime. Did she know, did her code
Speaker 2: defendants know? Had no idea.
Speaker 1: Often police will withhold information from the public in order
Speaker 1: to better assess the credibility of witnesses. In this case,
Speaker 1: there were two details well, that mister Persseno had a
Speaker 1: head injury that was consistent with being histol whipped, and
Speaker 1: two that mister Persseno had yelled to a passing car
Speaker 1: to call nine one one. Jennifer mentioned neither. Instead, she
Speaker 1: placed herself in the car, alleging that all three of
Speaker 1: her co defendants had participated, and that only one wore
Speaker 1: a mask, directly contradicting the known facts of the crime.
Speaker 4: I remember falling asleep in the corner of the interrogation room.
Speaker 4: I remember a blanket being thrown on me. The next morning,
Speaker 4: I woke up in a holding cell. I woke up
Speaker 4: to a detective throwing a bag of McDonald's breakfast at
Speaker 4: me and saying, you need to get up.
Speaker 3: We're charging you with first degree murder.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: They shackled me, put me in a squad car, and
Speaker 4: took me to mckenry County Jail.
Speaker 1: The following day, they arrested fifteen year old Justin Hoftling,
Speaker 1: who informed the police that he was on hallucinogenic drugs,
Speaker 1: but they interrogated him anyway. The buck I'm sorry. He
Speaker 1: maintained his innocence, but changed his story when he was
Speaker 1: told a lie that all three of his friends, not
Speaker 1: just Jennifer, had made incriminating statements and that if he
Speaker 1: did too, he could make a deal. He said that
Speaker 1: Jennifer drove him and Smith to the Burrito Express and
Speaker 1: they committed the robbery homicide.
Speaker 2: Her co defendant, who was fifteen, gave a very unreliable
Speaker 2: confession didn't have any of the facts correct. When they
Speaker 2: gave him choices of the gun, he chose an automatic,
Speaker 2: not a twenty deal.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was under the influence of drugs too during
Speaker 2: his false confession.
Speaker 1: Justin Hoftling was facing potentially sixty seven years in prison,
Speaker 1: and so he accepted a twenty year sentence. David Colette
Speaker 1: accepted five years to testify that Jennifer drove all three
Speaker 1: of them to the Burrito Express where he split from
Speaker 1: Ken and Justin and did not participate. But before anyone
Speaker 1: appeared in court, the mother of an alternate suspect came
Speaker 1: forward and pointed the finger at her own daughter.
Speaker 2: Was never disclosed to Jennifer's trial council was there was
Speaker 2: an alternate suspect group that had repeatedly confessed to family
Speaker 2: and friends of committing this crime. In November of two
Speaker 2: thousand and one, the mom called in to the police
Speaker 2: and she says, my daughter told me you have the
Speaker 2: wrong people. That her daughter was driving in the car
Speaker 2: and saw her friends run into the Brito Express and
Speaker 2: then saw them run out, and the owner yelled at
Speaker 2: her to call the police.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: She also said that her daughter saw the person that
Speaker 2: was doing the shooting come back and hit mister Bresento
Speaker 2: in the head with the butt of the gun to
Speaker 2: knock him over to let go of his friend. That's
Speaker 2: two pieces of information about the crime that they withheld
Speaker 2: from the public to corroborate confessions.
Speaker 1: The daughter's name is Suzanne de Chico and her friend's
Speaker 1: names are Russell Levon and Adam Hyland.
Speaker 2: The alternate suspect was at her mom and stepdad's home,
Speaker 2: which was also close to the Brito Express And because
Speaker 2: it was a bloody struggle, the alternate suspect got cut
Speaker 2: up on his shins from the ice, but also his
Speaker 2: hand got a cut from the knife, and they end
Speaker 2: up burning their clothes because there's so much blood. And
Speaker 2: eight weeks to ten weeks later they took her card
Speaker 2: over the board in Wisconsin and torched the car because
Speaker 2: they couldn't get the blood out from the back seat
Speaker 2: of the car. Jennifer's car. In twenty twenty still, when
Speaker 2: we were going in for DNA testing, it was still
Speaker 2: impounded by the police. They had it in their custody,
Speaker 2: you know. Nineteen years later they never found anything in
Speaker 2: the car because it wasn't nothing was in there right.
Speaker 2: So you have this mother calling in. She identifies the
Speaker 2: two friends of her daughter's and her daughter her daughter
Speaker 2: has confessed to other.
Speaker 1: People, and the police didn't just ignore this tip.
Speaker 2: When this mother called in, she also said they stole
Speaker 2: my husband's gun. Then they tested that gun and found
Speaker 2: that the bullet that was taken from mister Zunno's body
Speaker 2: matched five of the six grooves, but they couldn't say
Speaker 2: it definitively matched, but it had a crack in the handle,
Speaker 2: which her daughter talked about him hitting mister Bresento in
Speaker 2: the forehead with the butt of the gun to get
Speaker 2: him to let go of his front.
Speaker 1: When it comes to ballistics testing, guns can only be
Speaker 1: definitively ruled out not matched, to the exclusion of all
Speaker 1: of the guns on the planet. But with the cracked
Speaker 1: handle and matching mother daughter confessions, it appears that this
Speaker 1: crime basically solved itself. Even still, police and prosecutors hid
Speaker 1: this information from the defense and put Justin Hoffling and
Speaker 1: David Collette on the stand of Jennifer's trial in March
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. But theirs and Jennifer's stories were
Speaker 1: inconsistent with each other, as well as inconsistent with reality,
Speaker 1: which naturally raised doubts.
Speaker 4: So it was last day of the trial, the jury
Speaker 4: was arguing they couldn't come to a decision. The judge
Speaker 4: I had Arnold stated to the jury that they had
Speaker 4: to hurry up and come up with the decision, and
Speaker 4: the jury was brought in and I was found guilty.
Speaker 2: You see on the sentencing documents stating that she did
Speaker 2: not participate in the planning or carrying out of this,
Speaker 2: that she wasn't a threat to society, that she'd never
Speaker 2: been in trouble with the law, but because she drove them,
Speaker 2: he sentenced her harshly to twenty seven years in prison.
Speaker 1: And the crazy irony is that the people that she
Speaker 1: drove also had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, although of course law enforcement said her friends
Speaker 2: committed this crime.
Speaker 1: Even if that were true, that would mean that if
Speaker 1: you at home speaking to everybody who's listening for me,
Speaker 1: or you were just sitting in our car and a
Speaker 1: couple of friends come up and go, hey, can I
Speaker 1: get a ride down the block, and you give them
Speaker 1: a ride, not knowing that they may have done anything,
Speaker 1: you can now be convicted a sense to twenty seven
Speaker 1: years in prison.
Speaker 4: Twenty seven years, straight through, no good days, no credit
Speaker 4: for school, no contracts for good time, straight through.
Speaker 1: I hope it's making everybody else's angry as it makes me,
Speaker 1: because it's absurd. It's actually absurd. But the other thing
Speaker 1: about this that I got to go back to is
Speaker 1: the fact that they had to have known because of
Speaker 1: this conscientious mom. There should be so much credibility.
Speaker 5: In that phone call. Yes, and she had the accurate information, Yes,
Speaker 5: but Jennifer didn't right and her code events confession was
Speaker 5: wrong in different ways exactly.
Speaker 1: So the jury comes back and finds you guilty.
Speaker 4: Yes, as he read the verdict, I remember watching the
Speaker 4: judge like everything was in slow motion, and I turned
Speaker 4: around and looked at my mom, and I.
Speaker 3: Just saw fum and disbelief.
Speaker 4: And then they took me away. Being in prison and
Speaker 4: being innocent of the crime that you're convicted of. One
Speaker 4: time I told somebody, I've never felt so alone around
Speaker 4: so many people. When you go through something like this,
Speaker 4: it's like you go through stages like, Okay, I know
Speaker 4: I'm wrongfully convicted, but at nineteen, they're sending me to
Speaker 4: an adult max women's facility. I have to prepare myself
Speaker 4: for this. You finally get there and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm here. I don't know what's going on. I know
Speaker 4: that I'm innocent. Now I have to take this next step,
Speaker 4: this next stage, and the stages you went through before that,
Speaker 4: you never heal from any of it because you're just
Speaker 4: facing the next one, facing the next.
Speaker 3: One, trying to get through every day, trying to get
Speaker 3: you know, and.
Speaker 4: It's all on you to figure out what you're going
Speaker 4: to do every day to help yourself get through it. Programs,
Speaker 4: different things that you can do to stay sane.
Speaker 1: While Jennifer was Brave in prison, the evidence about the
Speaker 1: alternate suspect was coming out during Ken Smith's first trial,
Speaker 1: and her appellate council used that evidence, albeit unsuccessfully.
Speaker 2: So Jennifer had been represented up to a point, and
Speaker 2: then her case was basically dormant, but all along, her
Speaker 2: co defendant, Ken Smith, who they alleged was the actual shooter,
Speaker 2: was tried by McHenry County three different times. As we
Speaker 2: go in and litigate cases, defense attorneys and prosecutors are
Speaker 2: making motions to bring stuff in, keep stuff out. His
Speaker 2: convictions kept getting overturned by the appellate court immediately because
Speaker 2: evidence kept being left out.
Speaker 1: Importantly, the ballistics testing for Suzanne to Chico's step father's
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber rifle came to light, as well as
Speaker 1: even more confessions from Suzanne to Chico.
Speaker 2: She was in trouble often with the law. They knew her.
Speaker 2: They were talking to her about something else, and she
Speaker 2: told two different police officers about this and they didn't
Speaker 2: take her seriously. They said she was bragging and trying
Speaker 2: to get street cred.
Speaker 1: And it appears that Justin Hoftling also had a guilty conscience.
Speaker 2: Yes, he wrote Jennifer four months later apologizing for lying
Speaker 2: he wouldn't testify against her co defendant Ken Smith in
Speaker 2: his first trial. That trial got overturned. They go to
Speaker 2: retry him again in the second trial. He gets on
Speaker 2: the stand and gives his false confession. On cross examination,
Speaker 2: he admits that he just lied, that Ken didn't do this.
Speaker 2: They didn't do this, but he had to stick with
Speaker 2: his false confession or they were going to revoke his
Speaker 2: FLEA deal. They then prosecute him for perjury and he
Speaker 2: gets five and a half more years.
Speaker 1: The judge also blocked any evidence implicating the alternate suspects,
Speaker 1: even though Adam Hyland had allegedly confessed to his roommate
Speaker 1: and to others.
Speaker 2: And the roommate said, you need to talk to an
Speaker 2: attorney and took him to see a defense attorney, and
Speaker 2: he told the defense attorney, with his roommate sitting there,
Speaker 2: me and my friend did this. We were trying to
Speaker 2: rob the Brito Express. And the defense attorney told him
Speaker 2: to be quiet, don't say anything. They already have other
Speaker 2: people for this crime.
Speaker 1: How do we know all that?
Speaker 2: Well, in her co defendant's third trial, the roommate got
Speaker 2: on the stand and under oath testified to that.
Speaker 1: However, at Smith's third trial in twenty twelve, once again
Speaker 1: amount of evidence corroborating the alternate suspects was not admitted.
Speaker 1: But even with that, it's still surprising that the jury
Speaker 1: once again convicted and sent Ken away for sixty seven years.
Speaker 1: When law enforcement just too kind to say they botch
Speaker 1: it when they really cover it up for the actual perpetrators.
Speaker 1: That means our tax dollars are paying these people to
Speaker 1: work in service of the actual people who committed these crimes.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, and we know in this case that these
Speaker 2: alternate suspects have gone on to commit multiple crimes. McHenry
Speaker 2: has prosecuted them over and over and in something out
Speaker 2: of a movie that you couldn't script. When we went
Speaker 2: into ru the DNA motion, the alternate suspect, who were
Speaker 2: pretty certain was the shooter, was being arraigned on drug
Speaker 2: induced homicide charges same day in the same court.
Speaker 1: And that homicide happened after that.
Speaker 2: Oh this was twenty twenty. We're in there, but they've
Speaker 2: prosecuted him over and over for multiple crimes. He's been
Speaker 2: in and out of prison, as has the other alternate suspect.
Speaker 1: Right, had they done even a fraction of their jobs,
Speaker 1: these other people who were harmed or killed by these
Speaker 1: two guys would have never met those fates. Right, And
Speaker 1: the PRESENTO family, the part of family, is deprived of
Speaker 1: justice as well.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, they do not know all of the new evidence
Speaker 2: that we have, and so they only know what they're told.
Speaker 2: And the state's attorney and the prosecutors are certain that
Speaker 2: they still got the right people despite her co defendants exoneration,
Speaker 2: and so you know, they think that we're trying to
Speaker 2: just pin it on someone else. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: they which is too bad. You know, the DNA testing
Speaker 2: that we did in twenty twenty one of the crime
Speaker 2: scene evidence, the knife, the clothing. Of course, we all
Speaker 2: know Jennifer's going to be excluded, but all three co
Speaker 2: defendants all excluded, and you know, there was that close
Speaker 2: tussle and they're dragging him the knife. But there's one
Speaker 2: unknown male DNA that is in there that has not
Speaker 2: been compared to the alternate suspect standards. They won't always see.
Speaker 1: That time and again. Yeah, so then how did you
Speaker 1: end up connecting with the Illinois ANISIS project.
Speaker 4: I found a paralegal out of Lincoln, Illinois by the
Speaker 4: name of Fonda Robbins, so I contacted her. I sent
Speaker 4: her paperwork copies of everything I had, which I had
Speaker 4: done multiple times, you know, to different pro bono lawyers,
Speaker 4: different states. I went through years and years of doing that,
Speaker 4: and finally Fonda Robbins contacted me and I got blessed
Speaker 4: with the contact information to mister John Hanlin.
Speaker 2: He was our executive director. He's still working with us
Speaker 2: on cases, but he retired from the executive director role.
Speaker 4: Some months had went by, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: I got a call to go up to the visiting
Speaker 4: room which was a surprise to me. My visits with
Speaker 4: family were always planned because they live so far away.
Speaker 4: So I get up there, go through the whole strip
Speaker 4: search situation, get in there, and this man comes around
Speaker 4: the corner and he says, Jennifer, my name is John Hanlin,
Speaker 4: and I worked with the Illinois Innocence Project. We then
Speaker 4: went into a private room and as I turned the corner,
Speaker 4: I want to say, there was about six or seven
Speaker 4: people there, including students, supporters, and other attorneys there just
Speaker 4: to listen and to help.
Speaker 2: Finally, John started on her case and I joined the
Speaker 2: project about a year and a half later, and he
Speaker 2: brought me on to Jennifer's case and turn it over
Speaker 2: to me. So I started in twenty nineteen on her case.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got busy.
Speaker 2: We did, and you know, interestingly, we filed that DNA
Speaker 2: motion and actually were in court same day with the
Speaker 2: alternate suspect argued it right the day before the courts
Speaker 2: shut down with COVID to get evidence shipped out for
Speaker 2: DNA testing. So we get the DNA results April twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, and that's the point where the state comes
Speaker 2: and offers Jennifer a plea deal.
Speaker 1: What did that look like.
Speaker 2: We expected that she would be exonerated, that they would say, look,
Speaker 2: we got it wrong, she needs to be released, and
Speaker 2: they said, no, we got it right. With Ken three
Speaker 2: juries convicted him. It didn't matter that they kept not
Speaker 2: hearing all the evidence, and so they said, but she's
Speaker 2: already spent way too long in prison. Even if she's
Speaker 2: guilty for what you know she was convicted of, it's
Speaker 2: been way too long. It was a harsh sentence. So
Speaker 2: if she will plead guilty to armed violence, which again
Speaker 2: she never participated in the crime, we'll let her out
Speaker 2: for time served. But if she resumes her post conviction
Speaker 2: litigation to prove her innocence, we will revoke her plea
Speaker 2: deal and she will be returned to prison, even though
Speaker 2: they've said she's already spent way too long in prison,
Speaker 2: and so she had this hard decision. So we told her,
Speaker 2: you can either take this deal and get out immediately,
Speaker 2: but you're going to have this Class X felony of
Speaker 2: armed violence on your record, or we're going to keep
Speaker 2: representing you and will file your successive post conviction petition
Speaker 2: and litigate your innocence. But you're going to be sitting
Speaker 2: in prison for at least another few years.
Speaker 1: It's like a Sophie's choice. Yeah, right.
Speaker 4: So I lost my mom eight years into my incarceration.
Speaker 4: I was actually released on her birthday. A big part
Speaker 4: of me taking the plea was being home to help
Speaker 4: my family. I had already saw my mother in a
Speaker 4: casket shackled from head to toe. About six years ago,
Speaker 4: my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, and I wanted
Speaker 4: to make it home and for him to see me
Speaker 4: home before he didn't know.
Speaker 1: Who it was.
Speaker 3: So it was so thankful for that.
Speaker 4: Going to court that day was it was a hard decision.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: At first, when I gave my.
Speaker 4: False confession, people would say, well, why would you do
Speaker 4: that if you really didn't commit this crime. You don't
Speaker 4: know what it feels like until you're going through it.
Speaker 4: And even now they said, well, why would you plead
Speaker 4: guilty to that charge if you're innocent, if you didn't
Speaker 4: commit this crime. Again, you don't know what it feels like.
Speaker 4: But going to court that day was it was hard
Speaker 4: at having to be guilty to something I didn't do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, as they're reading.
Speaker 4: You know the description of the crime and what went on,
Speaker 4: and my soul called roll. I just stood there and cried,
Speaker 4: you know, standing next to my lawyers.
Speaker 1: You accept this play. It's a bittersweet, obviously, but you're
Speaker 1: calling home.
Speaker 4: When I left from mckenry County, I was nineteen years old,
Speaker 4: going to prison, coming back to mckenry to get released,
Speaker 4: I was almost forty, and as I walked into the
Speaker 4: bullpins and entering, you know, the county jail, I had
Speaker 4: officers who became sergeants and lieutenants throughout the years that
Speaker 4: I was, you know, incarcerated, and they said, finally the
Speaker 4: truth is coming out and you guys are going home.
Speaker 4: Everybody all these years has known the truth, and you know,
Speaker 4: has known that you guys, you didn't commit this crime.
Speaker 1: I mean, we obviously wanted to see the day when
Speaker 1: the full exoneration comes to pass.
Speaker 2: Our only option now is clemency, which we filed and
Speaker 2: presented a clemency petition to the Prisoner Review Board in
Speaker 2: January on her behalf. Because that's not a legal proceeding.
Speaker 2: That is Jennifer's only way to be exonerated.
Speaker 1: A pardon, yes, and you ritually deserve one. So can
Speaker 1: people write somewhere.
Speaker 2: Write to Governor Pritzker, because we have, as I said,
Speaker 2: presented her clemency petition to the Prisoner Review Board and
Speaker 2: they will be making a recommendation, but he's the one
Speaker 2: who ultimately will make that decision.
Speaker 1: So we'll have like a sample letter in the episode description.
Speaker 1: Will make it easy for you. I know it sounds
Speaker 1: like what do I write? What do I write? Too,
Speaker 1: We're going to make it easy. Go to the episode
Speaker 1: description and we'll have everything you need to write a letter.
Speaker 1: And with that, now we turn to my favorite part
Speaker 1: of the show, which is called closing arguments, and it
Speaker 1: works like this. First of all, I thank you both
Speaker 1: once again, and I now have the privilege of just
Speaker 1: listening to anything else you want to say.
Speaker 2: First of all, just I want to thank you so
Speaker 2: much Jason for asking us here and highlighting Jennifer's story.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a privilege for us to get to
Speaker 2: share her story. You know, one thing I'd like to
Speaker 2: say is when these wrongful convictions happen. You know, as
Speaker 2: we take on these cases, we're very cognizant of the
Speaker 2: fact that you have someone who is a victim of
Speaker 2: a crime. Before we take on a case, we do
Speaker 2: so much investigation and testing to make sure because what
Speaker 2: happens when someone's wrongfully convicted, You now have another victim
Speaker 2: of a crime, and the original victim never got true
Speaker 2: justice because the real perpetrators are still out there and
Speaker 2: often committing other crimes. And so it's really important that
Speaker 2: we represent these people that are wrongfully convicted, and I
Speaker 2: want victims of crimes to understand that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2: We are not trying to get perpetrators out of jail.
Speaker 5: She was a.
Speaker 2: Victim herself and we want justice, and real justice is
Speaker 2: getting the true perpetrators in crime and getting innocent people
Speaker 2: out of prison.
Speaker 4: Jennifer, it's an honor to be here. I want to
Speaker 4: thank everybody tremendously for the work that you do, all
Speaker 4: the innocence projects around the world, because if it wasn't.
Speaker 3: For you guys, we wouldn't be here. And all the
Speaker 3: hard work that you do.
Speaker 4: Been a long journey, good days, bad days, but I'm
Speaker 4: here taking it one day at a time, and I
Speaker 4: just appreciate life so much more. And if there was
Speaker 4: one thing that I could tell everybody's it can happen
Speaker 4: to anybody, and it happens more than people know I
Speaker 4: met people every day, you know, where different things went
Speaker 4: on in their case and they just didn't have the
Speaker 4: strength to fight, you know. But I knew that I
Speaker 4: had to keep on fighting. Another big thing is know
Speaker 4: your rights when it comes to interrogations. Lawyers, Miranda wrights, you.
Speaker 3: Know, get the knowledge behind it.
Speaker 4: I know that if I knew and I understood at
Speaker 4: a young age, I don't think that they would.
Speaker 1: Have went that far. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: You can listen to this and all the Lava for
Speaker 1: Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for
Speaker 1: Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
Speaker 1: production team Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
Speaker 1: my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn.
Speaker 1: The music in this production was supplied by three time
Speaker 1: OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
Speaker 1: across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal company number
Speaker 1: one