Chicago City Wire

City attorneys representing former Chicago police detectives in a wrongful conviction case blasted the reporters from the New Yorker magazine, NBC Chicago and other news outlets for pushing a narrative that one of the convicted killers of a college basketball star in 1993 was innocent of the crime. No evidence that would stand up in court exists to exonerate Tyrone Hood for his role in the murder of Marshall Morgan Jr., the attorneys stated in a response to a motion by Hood’s attorneys to bar the evidence of the media’s role in the case. 

“Rather, it (the eventual reversal of the conviction) was the product of an intense media campaign by Hood’s attorneys involving local and international celebrities, ‘friendly reporters’ and, primarily, The New Yorker Magazine,” the response states.

Media pressure led former Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, on his last day in office in 2015 to commute Hood’s sentence, the attorneys say. Hood, and his convicted accomplice in the crime, Wayne Washington, then had their convictions vacated in 2015 by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, and in 2016 they sued in federal court for wrongful conviction.

The media campaign was orchestrated by The Exoneration Project (EP), an activist organization associated with the plaintiffs’ firm of Loevy & Loevy, Hood’s attorneys in the civil trial now before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

“…they waged a media campaign created by Hood’s team at the Exoneration Project (the “EP”) that was designed to try Hood’s case, unopposed, in the court of public opinion in order to get then-Gov. Pat Quinn’s attention and convince him to release Hood,” the attorneys stated.

One of the former city detectives named in the civil suit, Kenneth Boudreau, said that plaintiffs’ attorneys know that officers have no voice when still active. 

“Everything has to be handled by the city,” he told Chicago City Wire. “That's why they can write what they want without being challenged. If you look all the Loevy & Loevy complaints, they cite these articles in their civil complaints to be used against us."

In making his decision, Quinn relied heavily on a 2014 story about the crime by New Yorker reporter Nicholas Schmidle, a story that pointed to Morgan’s own father as the real killer.

“Critical facts were omitted from the story to cast doubt on Hood’s guilt and portray Morgan Sr. as the culprit,” the attorneys said. For example, the story suggests that Morgan Sr. had a financial motive for the murder – he bought a life insurance police for his son just six months before his death.

“However, the article omits several important facts that undermines the insurance fraud theory and put the procurement of the policy in proper context,” the attorneys said. “Morgan Sr. had actually purchased life insurance for Morgan Jr. as far back as 1985, almost eight years before the murder, through a rider to his own life insurance policy.”

In addition, the New Yorker story suggests that the victim’s mother, Marcia Escoffery, believed that Morgan Sr. committed the crime and should be prosecuted for it.

But during a deposition in the case, Escoffery said she had been misquoted in the story, and that reporters had repeatedly pressured her to implicate Morgan Sr. in the crime.

The attorneys also cite the role of former NBC Chicago reporter, Renee Ferguson.

“Ferguson had taken a keen interest in Hood’s case from her days as a reporter and worked closely with Hood’s attorneys to craft a media campaign to pressure public officials,” the attorneys said. “In one email she wrote to one of Hood’s attorneys, Ferguson warned that media pressure had to be ‘carefully managed’ because it can be a ‘double edged sword,' meaning it could backfire.”