Speaker 1: On March twenty ninth, nineteen ninety four, ten year old
Speaker 1: Rodney Collins was fatally struck by a stray bullet on
Speaker 1: the South side of Chicago. The investigation began with two
Speaker 1: alleged gang members, whose witness statements led to three more
Speaker 1: young men, Marcus Wiggins, as well as brothers Reggie Henderson
Speaker 1: and Sean Tyler. Wiggetts had previously been wanted for murder
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one, but Sean Tyler had come forward
Speaker 1: to clear him in that case, thwarting the prosecution once again.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, Marcus had an airtight alibi, which
Speaker 1: left just Sean and Reggie, who were arrested and eventually
Speaker 1: signed statements admitting to their alleged roles in the shootout.
Speaker 1: The Juries heard those statements in court, but they also
Speaker 1: heard allegations that the statements were the product of police torture,
Speaker 1: not only from Sean, Reggie and their co defendants, but
Speaker 1: also from the alleged gang members who had signed witness statements. Still,
Speaker 1: the jury chose to believe the police, after all, they
Speaker 1: weren't the ones in some street game with escort to settle.
Speaker 1: But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: And I say that in a melancholy tone because the
Speaker 1: story you're about to hear, well, it might make you
Speaker 1: want to quit the human race. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: it also was a story of hope. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't help thinking before I even introduce our distinguished guest
Speaker 1: today that Mick Jagger just celebrated his eightieth birthday. And
Speaker 1: it was him who said, when all the cops are
Speaker 1: criminals and all the sinners saints, and there's some real
Speaker 1: heroism in this story, but it ain't coming from the
Speaker 1: guys in blue. It's coming from the guys who are
Speaker 1: about to hear from on this show, Sean Tyler and
Speaker 1: Reginald Henderson, who were wrongfully convicted. There were two of
Speaker 1: just hundreds of black men who were wrongfully convicted in
Speaker 1: this era in Chicago, when police torture was the norm.
Speaker 1: So thank you for being here today. I wrong for conviction,
Speaker 1: Thank you forever.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having us Jackson.
Speaker 1: And with them to tell this incredible true story. Was
Speaker 1: an attorney at the Exoneration Project in Illinois, Carl Leonard.
Speaker 3: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: So this happened to you when Sean was just seventeen
Speaker 1: and Reggie you were eighteen. And although you have different
Speaker 1: last names, you guys are full brothers, right.
Speaker 4: Absolutely blood brother the same mother, same father. My father's
Speaker 4: name is Reginald Lamar Henderson Senior. I'm junior my brother Ian.
Speaker 4: That was my mother's maiden name, which is Tyler.
Speaker 1: Okay, that explains it. Let's start with you, Rechald growing
Speaker 1: up in Chicago. What was your childhood like before this
Speaker 1: terrible series of events.
Speaker 4: I was born to last sixteenth, the summer of nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy five. I'd say childhood was like you know, any
Speaker 4: other childhood. Growing up in the poverish communities of Chicago.
Speaker 4: Things we've subjected to was normal, you know, coming up,
Speaker 4: our family was a beautiful family. I love to use
Speaker 4: the term we was raised by villains because our neighbors
Speaker 4: was like aunts and uncles, and you know, everybody knew everybody.
Speaker 2: We've always had good people around us. You know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't perfect, you know, as good as it was. Our
Speaker 2: parents did happened to get nabbed by the crack era.
Speaker 2: But the love around us, you know, we've never fell
Speaker 2: short on that. My granny and my aunts you know,
Speaker 2: everybody had us, even when my mom and dad couldn't
Speaker 2: have us.
Speaker 4: That village.
Speaker 2: He speak of aunts and uncles. They filed in the hole.
Speaker 2: So you never felt like you was lost. So as
Speaker 2: bad as it was, I couldn't even tell you it
Speaker 2: was bad.
Speaker 1: So it was difficult, but you were surrounded by love,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately is the most important thing for a
Speaker 1: child growing up. Absolutely, Carl, I would have turned to
Speaker 1: you paint the picture of the crisis in law enforcement
Speaker 1: in the city of Chicago at this time. Of course,
Speaker 1: we've done an episode on the Midnight Crew on the
Speaker 1: Wrong for Conviction, False Confession Show, and we've interviewed Marcus Wiggins,
Speaker 1: whose name is going to be coming up prominently throughout
Speaker 1: this story.
Speaker 3: This time there was, as you mentioned, the Midnight Crew.
Speaker 3: These are officers who were trained by or supervised by Jumberge,
Speaker 3: notorious Chicago police detective who employed straight up torture to
Speaker 3: try to get people to confess to crimes, whether they
Speaker 3: committed them or not just close cases. This is torture
Speaker 3: that would involve chaining people to radiators to burn them.
Speaker 3: They would electro shock people their hands or their genitals.
Speaker 3: They would take the plastic dust cover that they used
Speaker 3: to cover the typewriters and strangle people with that.
Speaker 1: They called it bagging, and they were carrying out mock executions.
Speaker 1: I mean stuff that people were outraged when they saw
Speaker 1: in Abu Grab. I think would be shocked to learn
Speaker 1: that this was happening right under everybody's noses in the
Speaker 1: city of Chicago not that long.
Speaker 3: Ago, to children, to teenagers, and the officers that were
Speaker 3: involved in shot and Reggie's case were no strangers to
Speaker 3: those tactics. There's a recent opinion from one of the
Speaker 3: Illinois Pellet courts about one of the officers involved in
Speaker 3: this case, said that he was engaged in what they
Speaker 3: called a criminal street gang under the direction of John Burge.
Speaker 1: During his tenure as a Cook County detective from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, through his promotion to detective commander in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, and finally to his termination in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: John Burge developed his notorious Midnight Crew, torturing almost exclusively
Speaker 1: young black men and boys, suspects and witnesses alike into
Speaker 1: signing false statements to close an untold number of cases,
Speaker 1: and the terror at the hands of the police continued
Speaker 1: well after he was gone. The many statements they squeezed
Speaker 1: out of people were remarkably similar, so much so that
Speaker 1: judges and prosecutors must have seen a pattern. Eventually, this
Speaker 1: criminal behavior was brought to light, but not before Sean
Speaker 1: and Reggie had their lives turned upside down. And to
Speaker 1: give their story context, we've got to talk about another
Speaker 1: boy from their neighborhood, Marcus Wiggins, whose first run in
Speaker 1: with the Midnight Crew. He began on September twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, when a sixteen year old kid named
Speaker 1: Alfredo Hernandez was gunned down in the street.
Speaker 3: And later that night, officers from Area three, one of
Speaker 3: the police areas, supervised by John Birch, they arrest several people,
Speaker 3: including Marcus Wiggins, who's thirteen at the time. Wiggins himself
Speaker 3: was arrested by Detective O'Brien, who you'll hear more about.
Speaker 3: They bring Wiggins in and they use the torture techniques
Speaker 3: that we've been describing.
Speaker 1: Detectives James O'Brien and Kenneth Boujeau punched thirteen year old
Speaker 1: Marcus repeatedly in the chest, hit him with their flashlights,
Speaker 1: and electrocuted him until he eventually said whatever they wanted
Speaker 1: him to say. But in spite of his coerced false confession,
Speaker 1: Sean was able to save Marcus.
Speaker 3: Sean actually witnessed the shooting of mister Hernandez. Knew that
Speaker 3: the confession was false, and he spoke to wiggins defense attorney,
Speaker 3: a public defender named Julie Hall, and explained to her
Speaker 3: what he saw.
Speaker 2: You know, basically saying that I didn't see Marcus, you
Speaker 2: know the guys that they grabbed, that I didn't see
Speaker 2: them that night.
Speaker 1: And little did you know that coming forward with the
Speaker 1: truth would put you right in the crosshairs of the
Speaker 1: notorious midnight crill.
Speaker 2: That was my introduction to it. Let's just say that
Speaker 2: I'm a kid. You know, it was scary when they
Speaker 2: threatened to do something to me. I was coming out
Speaker 2: the house and I didn't know who they were. They
Speaker 2: pulled up and you know, they asked me, you know,
Speaker 2: my name, and I told him my name and behind
Speaker 2: that was a threat. You know, My mom had to
Speaker 2: send me out of town after that threat.
Speaker 1: For Sean's safety, Evie Tyler sent him to Wisconsin until
Speaker 1: the pretrial hearing.
Speaker 4: I never knew why my mother took him and sent away.
Speaker 4: She never disclosed that to me or my other younger siblings,
Speaker 4: but I just knew he had left. To be honest,
Speaker 4: I was kind of peed off because he it is
Speaker 4: I got to go to school and he's somewhere having
Speaker 4: the summer vacation. And it wasn't an til years later
Speaker 4: that I found out it's about some guys follow him
Speaker 4: in chasing him and all. I never knew none of that.
Speaker 3: And in response to that, the public defender in the
Speaker 3: Wiggins case, Miss Hall got Judge Straehorn, the Kirk County
Speaker 3: judge overseeing the Wiggins case, to enter a protective order
Speaker 3: which said that these specific officers involved in the Wiggins
Speaker 3: case were not allowed to interact with, speak to interrogate
Speaker 3: question Sean Tyler at all period, and that nobody from
Speaker 3: the Chicago Police Department should talk to Seawan either without
Speaker 3: permission from the court.
Speaker 1: It is our understanding that as a result of seeking
Speaker 1: the protective order, that Miss Hall was also the victim
Speaker 1: of threats from these same officers that she continues to
Speaker 1: fear them to this day now. When Shawn returned from
Speaker 1: Wisconsin to testify at Marcus's pre trial hearing, it became
Speaker 1: clear that Marcus had been coerced into a false confession,
Speaker 1: which was then barred from trial evidence. Without it, the
Speaker 1: case was dismissed.
Speaker 3: Shawn helped prove that the confession that they tortured out
Speaker 3: of this child was false. It was really the first
Speaker 3: time that the public was exposed to these tactics that
Speaker 3: we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: Then, in nineteen ninety three, Marcus's mother, Carolyn Wiggans, sued
Speaker 1: the City of Chicago, arguing that the torture caused post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress disorder, as evidenced by Marcus's stutter that continues
Speaker 1: to this very day. Other kids and even some of
Speaker 1: these dirtbag cops began taunting him, calling him stutters.
Speaker 4: To see him in interviews trying to express itself. It's
Speaker 4: hard to watch because it takes me back to everything
Speaker 4: we went through.
Speaker 1: This lawsuit also came on the heels of another one
Speaker 1: naming John Burge, which led to his termination from Cook
Speaker 1: County PD in nineteen ninety three. Unfortunately, the Wigan suit
Speaker 1: settled for only ninety five thousand dollars, while Burges's cohorts
Speaker 1: remained on the force to carry on his legacy. Of torture.
Speaker 3: Marcus Wiggins's case was a huge embarrassment to the Chicago
Speaker 3: Police Department, and while Marcus Wiggins suing the police department,
Speaker 3: while there's still a protective order in place to protect
Speaker 3: Sean from these officers, they found an opportunity to get
Speaker 3: revenged by framing him and Marcus originally for this crime.
Speaker 1: And the crime in question happened around five pm on
Speaker 1: March twenty ninth, nineteen ninety four, when a ten year
Speaker 1: old boy named Rodney Collins was fatally shot while riding
Speaker 1: his bike near the intersection of fifty first Street and
Speaker 1: Winchester Avenue on the South side of Chicago. The same
Speaker 1: detectives that had tortured Marcus Wiggins, O'Brien and Boudreau began
Speaker 1: assembling a narrative about crossfire between two rival gangs, the
Speaker 1: Blackstones and the Gangster Disciples.
Speaker 3: If you believe the police version of events, it started
Speaker 3: with a couple of anonymous tips, and who knows that
Speaker 3: these tips ever even happened, but they say maybe the
Speaker 3: Gangster Disciples, maybe they were involved. And then there's another
Speaker 3: anonymous tip that says it was Twan and Yogi. So
Speaker 3: the police arrested. Antoine Ward, who was known as Twan Antwine,
Speaker 3: tells the police that he doesn't know anything about this crime,
Speaker 3: doesn't know what happened. He's beaten by the police, he's threatened.
Speaker 3: He's left in an interrogation room for twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: He wasn't taken to the bathroom. He had to urinate
Speaker 3: on the floor at one point. And after a couple
Speaker 3: days of this, he finally gives a statement that he
Speaker 3: provided a gun to somebody named Carl Brannigan, and.
Speaker 1: Carl Brannigan was allegedly affiliated with the Gangster Disciples. Now,
Speaker 1: what about.
Speaker 3: Yogi is a nickname for someone named Kenneth McGraw. And
Speaker 3: just like Twan, he's beaten, and eventually he agrees to
Speaker 3: give a statement where he gives three nicknames, Droopy, Stutter,
Speaker 3: and Bullwinkle. He identifies a photo of Marcus Wiggins as Stutter,
Speaker 3: and he identifies a photo of Reggie as Bullwinkle. For
Speaker 3: whatever reason, he's never asked to identify any photos or
Speaker 3: anything or otherwise explain who Droopy is.
Speaker 1: Now, Sean, was that your nickname?
Speaker 2: Even at seven years old, I had this exact same face,
Speaker 2: So you know the face has always been big and hanging,
Speaker 2: you know, hints the name droopy, you know, like the dog.
Speaker 1: But with this protective order in place, they went after
Speaker 1: Marcus and Reggie first. Now was Bullwinkle your nickname?
Speaker 4: So here's the thing. Man. As a child, I was
Speaker 4: always called Moose. With Moose came the Bullwinkle and Rocky show.
Speaker 4: Everybody told me I looked like which I didn't find
Speaker 4: funny because as a kid, I had big lips. I
Speaker 4: think they were like, no fucking Bullwinkle. So it was
Speaker 4: something that some people found funny and I didn't find funny.
Speaker 4: So excuse my French, but you've seen Bullwinkle, so I
Speaker 4: don't think I looked like that. But nevertheless, that's where
Speaker 4: it came from.
Speaker 1: So they got what they needed from Yogi aka Kenath McGrath,
Speaker 1: and on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty four, they snatched up
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Reggie.
Speaker 4: They was relentless in the things that they did. Like
Speaker 4: Carl said, the exact same thing that you know happened
Speaker 4: to Twyn in a dog room. Now they able used
Speaker 4: the bathroom. Even to this day, it's traumatizing.
Speaker 1: They left Reggie handcuffed to a wall alone for twenty
Speaker 1: four hours with no access to a toilet. The following day,
Speaker 1: detectives folly and Hollerin demanded details of Shawn and Reggie's involvement.
Speaker 1: After repeated denials, one of them grabbed Reggie by the throat, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: we know you're lying and you're going to get fifty
Speaker 1: fucking years from murder end quote. Then they delivered blows
Speaker 1: to his chest.
Speaker 4: I can't recall specifically who it was, that guy folly Man,
Speaker 4: you know his tactics again, Like, I'm trying my best
Speaker 4: not the gey emotional about it while reliving it, because
Speaker 4: I'm seeing it as I speak about it.
Speaker 1: Later on, Reggie was put into a live lineup and
Speaker 1: was not identified, but was then brought to what was
Speaker 1: called the Mission Room, where he was forced to sign
Speaker 1: a statement in front of Assistant State's Attorney Stephen Kleczynski.
Speaker 1: The statement was never read aloud to Reggie, who importantly
Speaker 1: at the time was functionally illiterate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was something that I didn't right. I think
Speaker 4: anybody would do, you know, what they needed to do
Speaker 4: to get out of situation like that.
Speaker 1: This statement named Marcus Wiggins as well as said Reggie
Speaker 1: had handed a gun to his little brother Sean before
Speaker 1: the shootout. Now, the police were emboldened to ignore Seawn's protective.
Speaker 3: Order and they go to his house. They leave a card.
Speaker 3: His mom told him, do the right thing. Talk to
Speaker 3: the police, tell them what you know.
Speaker 2: So I did call the number on the car and
Speaker 2: they walked me into Area one. They put me in
Speaker 2: this room, handcuffed me to the ball. That was the
Speaker 2: introduction and the ending was me being rushed out of
Speaker 2: the same police station that I walked into out the
Speaker 2: back door to an emergency room for throwing up blood
Speaker 2: after signing the false confession.
Speaker 1: This episode is sponsored by Marsh mccleannan, the world's lead
Speaker 1: professional services firm in the areas of risk, strategy and people.
Speaker 1: It's legal and compliance department provides pro bono legal assistance
Speaker 1: and other support to underrepresentative communities and individuals.
Speaker 5: Being a big brother, I feel I had to do
Speaker 5: what I had to do to protect my siblings.
Speaker 4: It's no that I couldn't protect me. It was like
Speaker 4: the weak see the world. And here we are man
Speaker 4: thirty years later.
Speaker 3: And remember, at this time, Sean is a kid. He's
Speaker 3: being he's tortured, but he's also told that the police
Speaker 3: broke his big brother. In his mind, if they can
Speaker 3: break my big brother, what chance do I stand. They
Speaker 3: get this false confession from Sean, like Sean says he's
Speaker 3: throwing out blood, He's taken to the emergency room. All
Speaker 3: of this is documented. The police then continue to talk
Speaker 3: to other witnesses, evidently under the impression that these false
Speaker 3: confessions aren't enough, possibly because they're not substantiated by any
Speaker 3: physical evidence.
Speaker 1: Before Shawn was rushed to the hospital, a witness named
Speaker 1: Andrea Murray was called in to view a lineup and
Speaker 1: allegedly identified Sean, as well as another guy named Michael Taylor,
Speaker 1: who also after his own torture session, had signed a
Speaker 1: statement saying that he was the one who had accidentally
Speaker 1: shot Rodney Collins. So now they had the alleged shooter
Speaker 1: and accomplished supported by an alleged eyewitness. But the statements
Speaker 1: from Sean, Michael Reggie, Kenneth McGraw, Antoine Ward were riddled
Speaker 1: with glaring inconsistencies and obvious contradictions.
Speaker 3: So they had to go back and try to revise
Speaker 3: some of these statements, Like Reggie's statement.
Speaker 1: Reggie allegedly handed Sean a gun, but in Shawn's statement
Speaker 1: it was Carl Brannigan. Also, Reggie and McGraw's statements were
Speaker 1: written before detectives knew that Marcus Wiggins was away at
Speaker 1: school in Wisconsin at the time of the shooting. So
Speaker 1: now both McGraw and Reggie had signed statements containing the
Speaker 1: exact same line.
Speaker 3: So they have Reggie changed that to say, actually, Wiggins
Speaker 3: wasn't there. I was with this guy Travis Ashby, who
Speaker 3: come to find out, also couldn't have been involved. So
Speaker 3: they changed the statement again to say that it was
Speaker 3: with Andrew Ganaway.
Speaker 1: Oh, and Ganaway's nickname was also Drew By. Now ultimately
Speaker 1: five young men were charged in the murder of Rodney Collins,
Speaker 1: Sean Reggie, Michael Taylor, Andrew Ganaway, and Antoine Ward. Curiously,
Speaker 1: Carl Brannigan, who represented a contradiction between Shawn and Reggie's statements,
Speaker 1: he was never charged. Andrew Ganaway pleaded guilty for a
Speaker 1: thirty eight year sentence, not exactly a deal, and perhaps
Speaker 1: he was actual droopy. Nevertheless, Sean went to trial alongside
Speaker 1: Michael Taylor in September nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: My attorney at the time was a Frank Medea, and
Speaker 2: I think the prosecutor was Matthew Coughlin.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The judge was Henry R. Simmons, a former assistant States
Speaker 1: Attorney who decades later was named in several civil suits
Speaker 1: as a co conspirator of the Midnight Crew, where during
Speaker 1: his tenure as an assistant State's attorney he actually took
Speaker 1: handwritten notes during the false confessions of torture victims. So
Speaker 1: this guy Simmons was no stranger to the language of
Speaker 1: the false statements being read in his courtroom for Sewn
Speaker 1: and Michael. What else did the state present?
Speaker 3: They presented evidence that there had been this sort of
Speaker 3: gang conflict that sort of led up to these shots
Speaker 3: being fired that hit the ten year old boy. They
Speaker 3: presented a couple of eyewitnesses from the scene, kids who
Speaker 3: were out there with the victim, who described sort of
Speaker 3: what happened. But the really interesting thing is nobody who
Speaker 3: actually witnessed the shooting said that it was Sean for
Speaker 3: that they had Andrea Murray, she identified Sean and also
Speaker 3: Michael Taylor as someone that she saw running through the
Speaker 3: alley behind her house, which was in the general vicinity
Speaker 3: of where the shooting happened. It turns out he had
Speaker 3: received some benefits from the police or the state. They
Speaker 3: paid for her to move, they provided money for a
Speaker 3: security deposit and rent prior to her testimony.
Speaker 1: And it will surprise exactly no one that this incentivized
Speaker 1: witness later recanted, which we'll get into in further detail
Speaker 1: later on. Now. The defense called it alibi witness Donald Jones,
Speaker 1: who testified that he and Sean had played video games
Speaker 1: that afternoon before going to the mall. Sean said the same,
Speaker 1: as well as detailed what happened in the interrogation room.
Speaker 1: His cousin Teresa Bonner, and his mother ev Tyler also
Speaker 1: testified to seeing the signs of physical abuse on Sean
Speaker 1: after his interrogation. Then the state added insult to injury
Speaker 1: by calling the doctor who had treated Sean at the hospital.
Speaker 1: Doctor Bruce Tizes, said that Seawan had not mentioned being abused.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that coming, you know, him denying that
Speaker 2: he was told what was going on and everything. You know,
Speaker 2: I explained to him for the reason as to why
Speaker 2: I said I was vomiting blue.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the doctor was an effective rebuttal witness. And then, remarkably,
Speaker 1: Sean's attorney failed to present any evidence about the motives
Speaker 1: of the Midnight Crew.
Speaker 3: The defense did not present any evidence about Marcus Wiggins
Speaker 3: and the protective order, so that really important part of
Speaker 3: the story. The jury never did get to hear Sean.
Speaker 1: Did you hold out any hope that the jury was
Speaker 1: gonna actually finally see the truth and get this right?
Speaker 2: I did. I never looked at it from the side
Speaker 2: of how deep it really was. You know that cops
Speaker 2: had testified, who's intertwine with his crooked state's attorneys, who's
Speaker 2: hooked up with a judge who shouldn't have never set
Speaker 2: on the bench. I'm blind sided by believing that as
Speaker 2: a kid that right gun outdo wrong and to have
Speaker 2: it go the opposite way was breathtaking, you know. And
Speaker 2: to hear them come back and say guilty took the
Speaker 2: breath out of me because I'm hearing them while looking
Speaker 2: at my mother watching her flip out, and my cousins
Speaker 2: and my brother. I'm here in my family scream out.
Speaker 2: I'm hearing the family of the kids. They're cheering, and
Speaker 2: this brings about the altercation between family and family, and
Speaker 2: I'm here and this says I'm being rushed to the
Speaker 2: back by the sheriffs. How was I know the whole
Speaker 2: setup was rigg to take me down? Because as a kid,
Speaker 2: I should have shut my damn mouth as a kid,
Speaker 2: I should have minded my damn business. As a kid,
Speaker 2: I should have ignored television ads and America with you know,
Speaker 2: teach your kid to do the right thing, raise your
Speaker 2: child the right way, and only for you to turn
Speaker 2: around and say, because you did everything we said, take
Speaker 2: this fifty eight years.
Speaker 1: The alleged shooter, Michael Taylor got sixty years, and his
Speaker 1: alleged accomplished Sean got fifty eight, a discrepancy that was
Speaker 1: later corrected to fifty years for Sean cold Comfort considering
Speaker 1: his actual innocence of nineteen ninety six. The family experienced
Speaker 1: their second tragic loss when Reggie went to trial alongside
Speaker 1: Antoine Ward. Reggie's attorney was Leo Fox, and again Matthew
Speaker 1: Coglan prosecuted in front of Henry R. Simmons, and again
Speaker 1: the jury heard the false statements. Then the state called
Speaker 1: Kenneth McGraw, but instead of identifying Reggie from the stand
Speaker 1: as he allegedly had done from a photo, he testified
Speaker 1: about the torture that led to his own false statement
Speaker 1: to rebut the allegations from McGraw, Reggie and Antoine. The
Speaker 1: state called the actual criminals the perpetrators of the torture.
Speaker 4: They had these cricket detectives whose up their land and
Speaker 4: the state's attorneys. They gave their rendition of what they
Speaker 4: felt took place.
Speaker 1: Detective O'Brien denied that Reggie was even in the station
Speaker 1: on the day he had been picked up March thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. Then Detective Hallerin denied any abuse in
Speaker 1: the mission room or the detective Foli had even been there,
Speaker 1: and he was joined by an assistant state's attorney named
Speaker 1: Virginia Brigaine, who claimed that she was present on March
Speaker 1: thirty first and that no abuse took place. And it
Speaker 1: appears that the jury gave them all the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt over Reggie, who also took the stand that day.
Speaker 4: I was doing man from the beginning, sadly to say man,
Speaker 4: but my mother she had to sit and watch. That
Speaker 4: got so intense with the aggression of the state's attorney
Speaker 4: and trying to get me to respond. Matthew Cocklem even
Speaker 4: came behind the encounter and jumped in my face of
Speaker 4: saying how he was going to prove that I was
Speaker 4: a gang banger and looking for a response. And I
Speaker 4: didn't respond, but my mother did. It was at that
Speaker 4: point that they removed her from the court room. I
Speaker 4: don't think we were ever able to say what transpired
Speaker 4: because of the dynamics we were in the story of
Speaker 4: the fixed fight, and who would listen back then, the
Speaker 4: jury wasn't able to come to the greatest conclusion without
Speaker 4: the history of these guys.
Speaker 1: And you know, you've already seen what had happened to
Speaker 1: your brother. So did you have any hope at all
Speaker 1: that the jury would finally see the light and get
Speaker 1: this right?
Speaker 4: Gave me hope. It was a juror. It was a
Speaker 4: Latino juror, and he was staring at me doing trial.
Speaker 4: The guy shook his head like, man, I guess to say,
Speaker 4: you're doing good. And when they came from deliberating, this
Speaker 4: guy couldn't look at me no more. And I was
Speaker 4: trying to get his eye contact and the man literally
Speaker 4: turned his head.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: That was kind of like how known I was found guilty.
Speaker 4: I just hated to see my mother go through it again.
Speaker 4: They escorted her out because she ran to the thing,
Speaker 4: screaming to the jurors like like, no, this is my segment,
Speaker 4: Like no, y'all got it wrong.
Speaker 5: It's the second one. So my auntie grabbed her and
Speaker 5: they escorted her out. You know what's crazy is that
Speaker 5: the bailiffs. They know it's wrong, Miss Roberts. And this
Speaker 5: was another Latino bailiff. I'll never forget miss Roberts. They
Speaker 5: knew they was wrong. They said, I knew you too,
Speaker 5: two guys, was going wrong.
Speaker 2: When my mother told me to do the right thing
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one, and then when y'all came looking
Speaker 2: for me in the Rodney Collins case and said we
Speaker 2: needed to talk to him and left a card. Clearly,
Speaker 2: you presented yourself as someone who was nice and it
Speaker 2: was gonna be okay when you left the card because
Speaker 2: she told me to go to the police station. You
Speaker 2: understand that. So to be a mother who two times
Speaker 2: called herself doing the right thing what America tell her
Speaker 2: to do, see something, say something, help out, she did
Speaker 2: that tried to lead me to do the same thing,
Speaker 2: and each time y'all took advantage of her. So to
Speaker 2: be in prison for something you didn't do, to be
Speaker 2: wrongfully convicted to call home and find out that she's
Speaker 2: had a stroke, and the things that led to the
Speaker 2: stroke was to worry, and because you called and home
Speaker 2: constantly to check on your mother, and people are telling
Speaker 2: you things that you don't want to hear.
Speaker 4: Literally and from prison, how she's going crazy damn hugging
Speaker 4: trees and shit and losing two boys at the same time.
Speaker 4: The depth of the trauma, man, is undisputable.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Can't nobody tell me that the weight of all of this,
Speaker 2: that this situation was responsible for not just her two strokes,
Speaker 2: but eventually the heart attack that she suffered. It'll never
Speaker 2: be okay, Jason, And I'm seeing the therapist right now,
Speaker 2: and I can say that priordly, but it'll never be
Speaker 2: okay because what I've seen from seventeen to forty two.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have seen. I shouldn't have been placed an
Speaker 2: adults for something I didn't do during twenty five years.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have been subjected to all the things that
Speaker 2: incarceration does. But you did so for a seventeen year
Speaker 2: old kid.
Speaker 4: I think we always kept the faith that was instilled
Speaker 4: inis as children. Man, whose core values is what got
Speaker 4: us through him through his twenty five years and me
Speaker 4: through my twenty six years and nine months. There was
Speaker 4: many people impacted by this. I left the world with
Speaker 4: a five month old child and to come home with
Speaker 4: a damn that twenty eight year old child and three
Speaker 4: grant children, Like, how do you accept that.
Speaker 1: All that was taken from Shawn and Reggie's family and
Speaker 1: countless other families by the Midnight Crew and their enablers
Speaker 1: in the State's Attorney's office and on the bench. It's
Speaker 1: unfucking believable and it's unforgivable. Eventually, John Burde served a
Speaker 1: few years in prison for perjury in a civil suit,
Speaker 1: but again cold comfort. Meanwhile, none of his accomplices ever
Speaker 1: lost their freedom. So let's get to how Sean and
Speaker 1: Reggie regained theirs. Starting with Sean, so he appealed his conviction.
Speaker 1: The conviction was a firm in June of nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: when the post conviction petition was filed in October of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. That post conviction petition was pending continuously
Speaker 1: up and down from the appellate courts is nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: so he files his own pro se post conviction petition
Speaker 1: his allegations were that Marcus Wiggins public defender Julie Hall
Speaker 1: would be available to testify about what happened in the
Speaker 1: Marcus Wiggins case. Clearly an effective assistance of his trial council,
Speaker 1: who should have raised the Texas motivation to target him.
Speaker 1: So when did the petition start to gain traction?
Speaker 3: In two thousand and eight, the exoneration project ends up
Speaker 3: filing an amendment to it. I'd say there were sort
Speaker 3: of four big pieces of evidence of actual innocence. We
Speaker 3: had new evidence of these officers patterned in practice of misconduct.
Speaker 3: We had additional evidence from alibi witnesses. We had new
Speaker 3: evidence related to the fact that Sean had been vomiting
Speaker 3: blood and that was caused by the beating that he received.
Speaker 3: And we had Andrea Murray's recantation. In her affidavit, Andrea
Speaker 3: Murray said that we heard these gunshots. She called nine
Speaker 3: one one. She saw two boys run through the alley
Speaker 3: near her house, and she felt that she didn't get
Speaker 3: a good enough look at the two boys to really
Speaker 3: be of any assistance. She felt that the police intimidated
Speaker 3: her and threatened her, and that she had no choice
Speaker 3: but to go to the police. Station. They wanted her
Speaker 3: to come see a lineup, and the first thing they
Speaker 3: do is show her photos of Sean Tyler and Michael
Speaker 3: Taylor and said that they needed her to pick these
Speaker 3: two out of the lineup.
Speaker 6: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So they blew right past suggestion to full blown fabrication.
Speaker 3: She's then taken to the lineup. She said that she
Speaker 3: remembered Sean's face from the photo and so she was
Speaker 3: able to pick him out, and she says the detective
Speaker 3: said something to her like, good job. She at first
Speaker 3: wasn't able to pick out Michael Taylor. She thought that
Speaker 3: two of the guys in the lineup looked similar to
Speaker 3: the photo she had been shown, but she wasn't sure.
Speaker 3: So she says that she basically guessed and said it's
Speaker 3: the person in the number two position in the lineup,
Speaker 3: and detective says something on the lines that are you sure,
Speaker 3: and that led her to say, actually, it's the person
Speaker 3: in number one, and the detective said, good job.
Speaker 1: And so the only evidence that did not arise from
Speaker 1: torture and brutality had now finally been exposed.
Speaker 3: And also she disclosed that she'd been paid in exchange
Speaker 3: for her testimony that was new evidence for us.
Speaker 1: So how did this recantation play out in appellate court?
Speaker 3: When it came time to have an evidentiary hearing, the
Speaker 3: State went and spoke to her. She ultimately sat for
Speaker 3: a deposition at which she was not fully consistent with
Speaker 3: what she said in her affidavit to us. I don't
Speaker 3: know what her motivations were for changing her story, but
Speaker 3: she did. All the claims were denied. We appealed, the
Speaker 3: appellate court reversed and sent it back for another evidentiary
Speaker 3: hearing that happened in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, during that stretch, the Illinois General Assembly formed the
Speaker 1: Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission in two thousand and nine
Speaker 1: to investigate the Midnight Crew, exposing a dense history of
Speaker 1: tortured false confessions and witness statements, and the findings of
Speaker 1: this commission eventually played a role in this case.
Speaker 3: Following the remand from the appellate court in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: the State's Attorney's office undertook a really lengthy investigation attempted
Speaker 3: to get all sorts of files from other cases, what
Speaker 3: we would call the pattern cases. The other individuals which
Speaker 3: I've accused the same officers of similar misconduct. They did
Speaker 3: a bunch of work researching those. That process took an
Speaker 3: extremely long time. In the meantime, Reginald filed his post
Speaker 3: conviction petition in twenty nineteen, which then sort of followed
Speaker 3: the same path as Sean's delegations of misconduct by the
Speaker 3: same officers, ineffective assistance of counsel for failing to investigate
Speaker 3: an alibi.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to that in a minute. But Reggie,
Speaker 1: did I read this right? Your initial appeal that was
Speaker 1: filed in two thousand, it was just lost, like gone.
Speaker 4: It was crazy to me. I went to looking for it,
Speaker 4: knew it was filed, and somehow it disappeared and I
Speaker 4: couldn't tell you how, where, when, But it disappeared after
Speaker 4: they lost my petition in two thousand and then I
Speaker 4: found in two thousand and seven. Again, I said, for
Speaker 4: eleven years almost with continuous and continuous and continuous by
Speaker 4: two thoy nineteen, and once I seen the petitioned the
Speaker 4: I'm like, wow, he he was targeted, Like I'm like
Speaker 4: what I never knew? And dn exceed the history of it,
Speaker 4: The depth of it was our judge Henry L. Simmons
Speaker 4: being attached to these detectives, and my attorneys took it
Speaker 4: from there.
Speaker 1: And that was Stephen Hall and Jennifer bon Jean. But
Speaker 1: even with the evidence that was available in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, coupled with the momentum from the Torture Commission,
Speaker 1: it's insane how long it all took.
Speaker 3: Talking about the delays a little bit, it reminded me
Speaker 3: of another case that involves some of the same detectives,
Speaker 3: another Exoneration Project case George Anderson. He was recently exonerated.
Speaker 3: The Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission had looked at the case,
Speaker 3: and there was a concurring opinion from one of the
Speaker 3: Appellate Court justices, Justice Hyman, who addressed sort of this
Speaker 3: issue and said Anderson was twenty eight years old in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one. Anderson, now sixty years old, has waited
Speaker 3: over three decades for this day. For an injustice like
Speaker 3: that should have provoked an urgent reaction from the beginning. Instead,
Speaker 3: for far too many of these victims of police brutality,
Speaker 3: delay has immeasurably deprived them of their liberty, compounded their suffering,
Speaker 3: impeded their healing. An injustice never ceases to be an
Speaker 3: injustice until justice prevails.
Speaker 1: Amen to that. And your cases were no different because
Speaker 1: it wasn't a judicial process but parole that saw Sean
Speaker 1: release after twenty five years on Beverly fifteenth, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and Reggie after twenty six years and nine months on
Speaker 1: April sixteenth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Thirty days after COVID struck.
Speaker 1: Unreal, but at least you got to reunite with your
Speaker 1: family after all these years.
Speaker 4: Well, the greatest part about it was that I was
Speaker 4: able to see my mother gam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you shared video of that moment.
Speaker 6: It's beautiful.
Speaker 4: Probably like a year after coming home. My birthday is thirteen.
Speaker 4: Mother's day was May fourteenth, and was getting a call
Speaker 4: at three in the morning. She was telling me she
Speaker 4: couldn't breathe. I rushed over to her. She clapsed, Moms,
Speaker 4: and I minished the CEPR tour. She ended up passing.
Speaker 4: The crazy part about it is when I looked up
Speaker 4: my grandchildren sitting on and there looking at me right
Speaker 4: after that. Man, it was just it was horrific, man,
Speaker 4: because every thirty to forty days it was from my
Speaker 4: mother to my younger cousin. Literally the people who was
Speaker 4: accepting our collect calls is the people that passed away.
Speaker 4: And the day we were exonerated September seventeenth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: no older cousin. She always been like my sister. She
Speaker 4: died an hour later. Once we left the courthouse, she
Speaker 4: died an hour later.
Speaker 2: She is the same cousin who came to see me
Speaker 2: when they tortured me and testified that my face was swollen.
Speaker 2: On the day of the exoneration, it was over with.
Speaker 2: We was on the stairs and they planned to put
Speaker 2: a little get together that night. She hugs us, congratulations,
Speaker 2: I fila, go get my hair done and I see
Speaker 2: all the night. And hour later they called a cessation
Speaker 2: had auto attacked, and.
Speaker 1: That so how much tragedy can one family handle? Even
Speaker 1: the day they were exonerated was overshadowed. Nonetheless, it had
Speaker 1: finally come to pass. Their convictions were vacated and the
Speaker 1: state chose not to pursue anything further. Yet they still
Speaker 1: have not granted their certificates of actual innocence, which would
Speaker 1: make them eligible for state compensation. They're suing civilly, but
Speaker 1: neither of them have been waiting around for that. They're
Speaker 1: doing public speaking, They've written books, and Sean has a
Speaker 1: clothing line that he began working on in prison called
Speaker 1: New Vision.
Speaker 2: New Vision is spelled in U V I S E
Speaker 2: A N. I'm in the process of the building a
Speaker 2: whale page, but you can't see most of it on
Speaker 2: the Instagram or the New Vision underscore, and you can
Speaker 2: DM me. I'm also an author of six books I
Speaker 2: would love assistance own. They're completed now they're putting them in.
Speaker 2: The form is up to the people that got that
Speaker 2: job titled, so look me up.
Speaker 1: So we'll have your Instagram linked in the bio so
Speaker 1: folks can check out the clothing and reach out for
Speaker 1: public speaking or to help with publishing these books and
Speaker 1: your website. Now, Reggie, I understand you do spoken word
Speaker 1: and have a book of poems called Emancipated Thoughts, and
Speaker 1: people can also reach out to you for public speaking, right.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, you can find me on Instagram at the
Speaker 4: Ripple Effect Tha Ripple Effects. Outside of spoken Word, I
Speaker 4: have a show on app amp where you can look
Speaker 4: me up The Ripple Effect. Again. I love to speak
Speaker 4: on all topics, whether it be prison reform, vinus prevention,
Speaker 4: cognitive behavior therapy, traumatization. So again I'm just, you know,
Speaker 4: just trying to get out there and do the right
Speaker 4: thing by speaking about the wrongdoings of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll have both of your handles linked in the bio.
Speaker 1: And now that brings us to my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the show, closing arguments, which works like this. I'm first
Speaker 1: of all gonna thank you guys for courageously sharing this
Speaker 1: incredible and terrifying, harrowing and sickening story. And now I'm
Speaker 1: going to kick back and by chair, turn my microphone off,
Speaker 1: leave my headphones on, close my eyes, and just listen
Speaker 1: for any final thoughts you want to share with us.
Speaker 3: I think my sort of closing thoughts are just to
Speaker 3: thank people for listening to this. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of times people ask what can we do? How can
Speaker 3: we help? And I never know, but I think you're
Speaker 3: doing it by listening to this podcast or reading about
Speaker 3: Sean and Reggie's story. I think at some point you're
Speaker 3: going to be called for jury duty, or your friends
Speaker 3: are or your spouse's or something like that, or you're
Speaker 3: going to be called upon to vote for prosecutor a
Speaker 3: judge or something like that, and you have done a
Speaker 3: lot to educate yourself that people falsely confess, sometimes the
Speaker 3: police get the wrong guy, sometimes people lie in court.
Speaker 3: And you know that by educating yourself about Sean and
Speaker 3: Reggie's story and listening to them, and I think that helps,
Speaker 3: and talking dear friends and family about this sort of
Speaker 3: thing helps. So I just try to thank the program
Speaker 3: for doing this story and thank everyone for listening to it.
Speaker 2: I equally want to thank you, guys, because you know,
Speaker 2: without you guys, you know a lot of us who
Speaker 2: have been through this, the struggle on the platform like this,
Speaker 2: you know a lot of us don't get the opportunity
Speaker 2: to you know. And I know a lot of guys
Speaker 2: who are still incarcerated, who have been wrongfully convicted, who
Speaker 2: are torture survivors, who should equally be here. But the
Speaker 2: system is not swift. It's not fast, you know, and
Speaker 2: guys shouldn't have to, like he said, with George Anderson,
Speaker 2: be sixty before they received something they should have been received,
Speaker 2: you know. So I thank you guys for just you know,
Speaker 2: allowing us to have a voice, man, because we do
Speaker 2: look to inspire, uplift and motivate people when people hit
Speaker 2: a story want them to say to theyself that it
Speaker 2: really ain't that bad for them, Because if your situation
Speaker 2: ain't mind, if you wasn't tortured as a teen, if
Speaker 2: you wasn't kidnapped from your mother, if you wasn't, you know,
Speaker 2: forced to serve twenty five years, you know, if that's
Speaker 2: not your story and it ain't close to that, then
Speaker 2: tiny your boots up, dust yourself, all say to yourself
Speaker 2: that it ain't that bad, because it really can be worse.
Speaker 2: But I thank you, man, and I thank the listeners
Speaker 2: for allowing us the opportunity to share our story with
Speaker 2: you guys out there, because again, those of us who
Speaker 2: are seeking justice, we can't get it without the assistance
Speaker 2: of everybody.
Speaker 4: Is it okay?
Speaker 2: If Reggie closed one of his spoken word pieces.
Speaker 6: It's totally up to him.
Speaker 4: Put me on funks, all right, no pressure, man, Go ahead,
Speaker 4: Big broke in with this poem called growing Things. It's
Speaker 4: been three years since I've been back on the streets,
Speaker 4: and things that was once misunderstood it's now seen is
Speaker 4: mentally deep. I was an adolescent who once questioned the
Speaker 4: wrongs and rights of life. So where's the curiosity that
Speaker 4: produced its rebellious plight? Society? Said, blame on my mother,
Speaker 4: But in actuality she had done that best, from the
Speaker 4: nurturing of her breast to the appropriate way I was
Speaker 4: taught to dress and address. So I guessed it was
Speaker 4: just a young man's quest for self respect, and in
Speaker 4: retrospect there's a few things I regret, but nevertheless it
Speaker 4: was all a part of life's test. So many say
Speaker 4: take the bit of what to sweep, Yet things has
Speaker 4: never been sweet for me. Raised in a single parent home,
Speaker 4: mine left the room always thinking, damn, what was really
Speaker 4: wrong that me and my brother deserve to be left alone?
Speaker 4: Through it all, Mom stood strong, but the psychological alteration
Speaker 4: was done, and as time went on it all started
Speaker 4: to show, from her late night hanging out to the
Speaker 4: abuse of drugs and alcohol. So with the decrease of
Speaker 4: love now being shown at home, I had to the streets,
Speaker 4: where the snakes in the rest room started hustling stealing.
Speaker 4: So the void feeling that the career was given the
Speaker 4: streets was now fulfilling. Damn, how was our tribulations before
Speaker 4: the world's eyes. Family members criticized, never once considering the
Speaker 4: fact that my mother's public aid could no longer provide,
Speaker 4: and their heavy attempt to retrieve a nine to five
Speaker 4: ended with silent christ from one didn't have what she
Speaker 4: and her children survived. So action. Are we the pitting
Speaker 4: me of poverty stricken lives or just a misfortune through
Speaker 4: the world's eyes? These are my growing things.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for listening to Wrong for Conviction.
Speaker 6: You can listen to this.
Speaker 1: And all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early
Speaker 1: by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: I want to thank our production team Connor hall Any, Chelsea,
Speaker 1: Lyla Robinson, and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow
Speaker 1: executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Awardis, and Jeff Cleiber. The
Speaker 1: music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR
Speaker 1: nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across
Speaker 1: all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at
Speaker 1: It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava
Speaker 1: for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one