Chicago City Wire

The Conviction Review Unit (CRU) in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) has taken plenty of heat in the mainstream media in recent years for clearing too few of the convicted murderers who claimed they were framed for the murder, or forced to confess, or both.

The latest is from former Chicago Tribune reporter Dan Hinkel, who recently wrote a piece for the exoneration group, Injustice Watch, entitled “Cook County’s conviction integrity unit repeatedly denied freedom to incarcerated people who were later cleared.”

Hinkel’s story hinges on an incorrect premise regarding the function of the CRU, formerly the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) before being renamed by former CCSAO Kim Foxx, according to a former Assistant State’s Attorney familiar with its operations.

“Hinkel has a premise, an assumption, that everything the defendants say is true, and all acts and statements of police are suspect,” the former ASA wrote to Chicago City Wire in an email. “He has a false syllogism that because relief was later granted that that was correct and CIU was wrong when really CIU was correct and the later decisions were either wrong and based on pressure, lack of will, lack of resources, failed policies that were not aligned with the oath of that office, or was granted on wholly other legal grounds that were indicative of actual innocence.”

The former ASA also said that no legal requirement exists within the office to even conduct conviction review and described the CRU as “an act of grace.”

“To undo a conviction you must have new evidence,” the former ASA added. “The CIU cannot just re-hash the same evidence the trier of fact (jury or judge) heard and form a different opinion, or reach an opposite conclusion. And that evidence must be of such a conclusion character as to rise to the level that the person is probably not the one who performed the acts.”

One of the cases cited in Hinkel's article is that of Kevin Jackson, who was released from prison last October after serving more than 23 years for the May 2001 murder of Ernest Jenkins at a gas station in Englewood.

Jackson claimed that former Detective Brian Forberg pressured him into confessing to the murders. In the article, Hinkel repeated a frequent claim in the media that a conflict existed within the State’s Attorney’s office because Forberg’s wife, Kirsten Ann Olsen, who died of cancer in 2022, worked as an Assistant State’s Attorney. 

Most reports fail to note that Olson had recused herself from the case involving her husband that came across her desk.

Moreover, in 2020 the CIU conducted an investigation into the Jackson case but found “nothing requires a change of course.”

And as recently as June 2024, Cook County Judge Angela Petrone denied a motion to vacate Jackson’s conviction. She ruled that the conviction was sound, noting it was “troubling” that the State’s Attorney’s office, at the time led by Foxx, asked her to approve a motion to vacate. The motion was based on a special prosecutor’s report that assessed witness testimony as “improperly assessed,” a finding that shaped the state’s decision.

The Illinois Appellate Court later overruled Petrone, despite the lack of new evidence suggesting Jackson’s innocence, and ordered his release. Foxx’s office had already indicated it would not retry the case.