Former Gov. Pat Quinn
Former Gov. Pat Quinn
A key part of a wrongful conviction case against former city detectives is coming back to haunt former Gov. Pat Quinn.
In 2015, Quinn, a Democrat, commuted the sentence of Tyrone Hood, who was convicted in the 1993 murder of college basketball star Marshall Morgan Jr.
Quinn later said that he relied heavily on a 2014 New Yorker magazine story about the case for his rationale is commuting the sentence, according to a recent filing in federal court by city attorneys representing the former detectives. But when deposed in the case, Quinn told a different story.
“At his deposition, Gov. Quinn could not remember anything about Hood except that he was sure he did not read The New Yorker story about Hood before he commuted Hood’s sentence,” according to city attorneys who were responding to Hood’s attorneys' motion to bar the evidence from the trial.
Quinn admitted in a 2015 panel discussion at the University of Chicago Law School that the New Yorker story strongly influenced his decision to commute Hood’s sentence. In the story by Nicholas Schmidle, Hood claimed that detectives “slapped him in the head, and thrust a gun in his face” in an attempt to get him to confess. Schmidle also pointed to Morgan’s father as the real killer. But the story, the city attorneys say, omitted key facts, and misquoted Morgan’s mother implicating her son’s father in the murder. Detectives, moreover, deny abusing Hood.
The media campaign, city attorneys further say, was orchestrated by the Exoneration Project (EP), an arm of Loevy & Loevy, the law firm representing Hood. EP attorneys were part of the same University of Chicago panel discussion with Quinn.
“At the Panel Discussion, members of the EP and Gov. Quinn openly acknowledged just how important the strategy was in getting Hood’s case on Quinn’s radar,” the court filing said. “Two EP attorneys credited the media with ‘playing a huge role in multiple stages with Hood,’ including the ability to either pressure Quinn or get his attention over 4,000 other petitions.”
“EP attorney Karl Leonard,” the filing continued, “said that ‘one of the big advantages’ the EP had to offer was its media contacts and ‘friendly reporters who will report on these stories when we ask them to.’”
The same day Quinn commuted Hood’s sentence he granted clemency in 41 other cases. One was Howard Morgan who served just 10 years of a 40-year sentence for the attempted murder of four police officers.
“Morgan's freedom has his family and supporters rejoicing, but has outraged others, among them Chicago Police Officer John Wrigley,” ABC Chicago reported at the time. “Wrigley was one of three cops shot by Morgan in a fateful encounter 10 years ago next month.”
“Police and prosecutors didn't know Quinn was even considering clemency for Morgan, and they likely will never know why,” the story continued.
"I was never asked any questions, never given a chance to give my side of the story or tell the facts of the case, the true facts of the case," Wrigley told ABC.
Alerts Sign-up