20 Years In Prison For a Rape and Murder Committed By Someone Else -- Courts Ignore Exonerating DNA Evidence

Nine young black men were convicted of two heinous crimes. DNA evidence points to their innocence, but many of the men are still in jail.
August 10, 2011

In the movies or on TV, the crucial piece of DNA or physical evidence that points to another culprit makes the wrongfully accused and their counsel sigh in relief, high five, leave the courtroom free of shackles. They wouldn't have to wait 20 years to see justice served.

In real life, even after so much time, that kind of exonerating DNA evidence may not make things so simple--particularly in a justice system that can be so often unjust toward the disenfranchised.

In each of two older cases currently being revisited in Cook County, Illinois, five teenagers were arrested for murder-rapes and confessions were extracted after interrogations.

But in each, those confessions were recanted and later DNA evidence pointed directly to other men, known criminals who didn't appear to be connected to the convicted young men.

Here's one case, as described in a story from the Chicago Tribune.
Five teenagers were arrested, four convicted:

[In the 1990s] the four were convicted of the murder and rape of Nina Glover, 30, largely on the basis of confessions they made to police and prosecutors, even though primitive DNA testing at the time excluded them as the source of semen evidence. But new testing links Johnny Douglas to Glover's rape and murder, according to court papers filed this week in Cook County Circuit Court.

And here's the other, eerily parallel story, also from the Tribune's reporter Steve Mills, about five other teenagers, three of whom are still in prison:
(Anyone remember "The Central Park Five"?)
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