Chicago City Wire

Ensuring a suspect is aware of his Miranda rights before questioning could still lead to a confession being thrown out, if legislation recently introduced in Springfield makes it to Gov. JB Pritzker– who has indicated his support of HB 5346. Under the measure backed by wrongful conviction activists and plaintiffs’ lawyers, a judge could refuse to allow a confession into evidence if he deems it unreliable.

President of the Illinois States Attorneys Association, Patrick Kenneally, said the group opposes the bill.

“It takes the judgement of the common man out of the criminal justice system, and that is at the core of the integrity of the system,” Kenneally said, speaking to Chicago City Wire in his role as McHenry County State’s Attorney. “There is nothing in a law degree that makes a judge better than a jury at assessing what’s fair and reliable.”

The Innocence Project released a statement supporting the legislation, introduced by State Rep. Justin Slaughter-D-Chicago, chairman of the House Judiciary Criminal Committee. The Chicago-based plaintiffs’ firm of Loevy & Loevy, which has filed dozens of wrongful conviction lawsuits, tweeted its support of the Innocence Project statement. 

The Innocence Project cited the case of the Dixmoor Five, all between the ages of 14 and 16 when accused of the 1991 rape and murder of a woman in Cook County

“Prosecutors argued that the confessions obtained from several of the young men were admissible because they were made voluntarily,” the statement said. “The default test used by most courts to find voluntariness is whether the accused signed their Miranda warnings, which these teenagers signed. However, the mere acknowledgement that you are aware of your rights—for example, the right to remain silent—even assuming the full import of the waiver was understood doesn’t provide the court with any assurance that the confession is reliable.”

But in some cases, Kenneally said, you want to include into evidence a confession where a confessor lied to show the person is not credible. And, he added, the legislation will needlessly delay a trial.

“You’re essentially going to have to argue a case before a judge and then before a jury,” he said.

Kenneally said that reforms in the criminal justice system over the past twenty years, including recording of confessions, have resulted in tremendous strides.

“The jury can see right now on a screen if a confession is voluntary or coerced,” he said.

Illinois law requires the recording of confessions involving homicides, vehicular homicides, and various felonies, including the “predatory criminal assault of a child.”

In its statement, The Innocence Project said that Illinois leads the nation in exonerations with 540, and is also the “false confession” capital of the country.

“Almost all of these exonerees filed motions to suppress their confessions before their trials but because the judge merely tested voluntariness, all of these innocent people were convicted and spent decades in prison before they were cleared,” the statement said.

Over 250 of those exonerations have come under Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Some have been called into question. Foxx exonerated Gabriel Solache and Arturo DeLeon Reyes in 2017 for the 1998 murders of a husband and wife in Bucktown– this, even after assistant prosecutors continued to insist they were guilty of the crime.