Chicago City Wire

This time, a full court press by exoneration activists and the media wasn’t enough to get a convicted murderer out of prison.

A Monday order by Cook County Judge Angela Petrone not to vacate the sentence of Kevin Jackson, convicted of a 2001 murder, was a rare victory for the Chicago Police Department and county prosecutors targeted by exoneration activists and plaintiffs’ attorneys driving a multi-million-dollar wrongful conviction industry.  

“The court finds the current filings repeat the same claims and the same arguments that were previously made and rejected multiple times…” Judge Petrone ruled. “Investigations by the SASAs (Special Assistant State’s Attorneys) and the CIU (Conviction Integrity Unit) found nothing new.”

Jackson is serving 45 years for the deadly shooting of Ernest Jenkins at a Southwest Side gas station.

On Friday before the hearing, the Sun-Times ran a story that targeted former head of the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), Nancy Adduci, citing the opinion of two special prosecutors assigned to the case that her review of it was incomplete.

But the Sun-Times also cited a 2020 memo obtained by the paper that said that Adduci’s assessment of the review was that it was “thorough” and “complete, and that nothing requires a change of … course” and “this matter requires no further review.”

In her order, Judge Petrone was critical of the report by the special prosecutors, saying they “inappropriately assessed” the credibility of testimony by witnesses more than two decades after the murder.

She also noted that that both special prosecutors have extensive experience representing defendants in post-conviction pleadings.

The SASAs were hired because the wife of one of the detectives in the case, Brian Forberg, worked as an assistant state’s attorney (ASA) in the CIU. But Judge Petrone wrote that “…the court finds no conflict based on an ASA in CIU having been married to a detective the defense accused of coercion."

“This court asked an ASA who presented an ‘agreed order’ to vacate convictions," the judge continued, "if the detective’s wife had worked on this investigation; the answer was no that she had been on extended medical leave for some time and has since passed away.”

The case is one of dozens against the Chicago police brought on claims of the torture of suspects, the coercion of witnesses and fabrication of evidence. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx alone has vacated over 250 based on these claims since the start of her tenure in late 2016.

A recent USA Today analysis found that since 2008 the city of Chicago had shelled out nearly $329,000,000 in wrongful conviction settlements.

Foxx announced last year that she would not be running for another term. In April, Eileen O’Neill Burke won the Democratic primary to replace her. She is the heavy favorite to win the General Election in November.