People v. Wash.

226 N.E.3d 1218

2023 IL 127952

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee,

v.Wayne WASHINGTON, Appellant.

(Docket No. 127952)

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Filed July 18, 2023

Steven A. Greenberg, of Greenberg Trial Lawyers, and David M. Shapiro and Andrea Lewis Hartung, of Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, both of Chicago, and Bemjamin T. Gunning, of Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, of Washington, D.C., for appellant.

Kwame Raoul, Attorney General, of Springfield (Jane Elinor Notz, Solicitor General, and Katherine M. Doersch and Erin M. O’Connell, Assistant Attorneys General, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

Daniel Massoglia, of First Defense Legal Aid, and Daniel Schneider, of Legal Action Chicago, both of Chicago, for amici curiae Chicago Torture Justice Center et al.

Hunter Howe, of Jones Day, of Chicago, Neal Stephens and Kapri Saunders, of Jones Day, of Palo Alto, California, Lauren Gottesman, of The Innocence Project, of New York, New York, and Tricia Rojo Bushnell, of Innocence Network, of Kansas City, Missouri, amici curiae.

Michael A. Scodro, Elaine Liu, Clare Myers, and Sara Norval, of Mayer Brown LLP, of Chicago, for amici curiae David J. Bradford et al.

Joshua Tepfer, of Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, of Chicago, for amici curiae Illinois Certificate of Innocent Recipients Daniel Anderson et al.

Eileen E. Rosen, Patrick R. Moran, and Austin G. Rahe, of Rock Fusco & Connelly, LLC, and James G. Sotos, Joseph N. Polick, and David A. Brueggen, of The Sotos Law Firm, P.C., both of Chicago, for amicus curiae Former Chicago Police Officers John Ball et al.

OPINION

JUSTICE O’BRIEN delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 Petitioner Wayne Washington pleaded guilty to first degree murder after Chicago police officers coerced a false confes- sion from him. After petitioner served his sentence, his conviction was reversed and the charges against him dismissed. Petitioner sought a certificate of innocence, the Cook County circuit court denied his petition, and the appellate court affirmed the denial. 2020 IL App (1st) 163024, 453 Ill. Dec. 21, 186 N.E.3d 1055 (2021). We reverse both the appellate court and the trial court, finding that the statute does not impose a categorical bar precluding petitioners who pleaded guilty. We further find that this petitioner did not cause or bring about his conviction by pleading guilty.

¶ 2 BACKGROUND

¶ 3 Petitioner was arrested in May 1993 along with Tyrone Hood, and they were both charged with the armed robbery and murder of Marshall Morgan Jr. Petitioner was 19 years old at the time and had no criminal record. He claims City of Chicago police detectives John Halloran, Kenneth Boudreau, and James O’Brien, subordinates of infamous Chicago police detective Jon Burge, handcuffed petitioner to a chair, interrogated him, beat him, and kicked over his chair while he remained handcuffed to it. They also subjected him to psychological abuse. After being detained for more than a day and a half, petitioner signed a prewritten statement and falsely confessed to the murder.

¶ 4 A jury trial took place, which resulted in a hung jury and mistrial. Hood, who had not confessed, was then tried before the bench, convicted, and sentenced to a 75-year term of imprisonment. On the morning of petitioner’s retrial, he saw Hood, who said he would pray for petitioner. Knowing he could not spend 75 years in prison, petitioner accepted the State’s offer of a 25-year sentence in exchange for a guilty plea.

¶ 5 After a 2014 investigative article in The New Yorker, then-Governor Patrick Quinn commuted Hood’s sentence. See Nicholas Schmidle, Did the Chicago Police Coerce Witnesses Into Pinpointing the Wrong Man for Murder?, The New Yorker (July 28, 2014), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/crime-fiction[https://perma.cc/7ST9-HE3V]. On February 9, 2015, the State, on its own motion, moved to vacate petitioner’s and Hood’s convictions and grant them new trials. The State then nol-prossed the charges against both petitioner and Hood pursuant to section 2-1401 of the Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2-1401 (West 2016)). Subsequently, petitioner and Hood each filed verified petitions for certificates of innocence setting forth nearly identical claims. Petitioner additionally claimed that his guilty plea was coerced by way of physical abuse and incorrect or misleading information told to him by the police. The trial court denied the petitions but subsequently granted petitions for rehearing.

¶ 6 On rehearing, an evidentiary hearing on both petitions took place. The parties stipulated that the 46 exhibits attached to Hood’s petition and adopted by petitioner were "deemed authentic and admissible into evidence for purposes of this matter." These documents included, in relevant part, the following.

¶ 7 An affidavit submitted by petitioner stated that, after he was arrested for Morgan’s murder and told the police he knew nothing about it, the detectives began to beat him, slap him in the face, and push over the chair to which both of his wrists were handcuffed. The abuse continued throughout the day, and he was told he could not leave until he confessed. That night, he was given a prewritten confession and signed it because he "couldn’t stand the beatings any longer." He further attested that he agreed to the plea deal because his codefendant was sentenced to 75 years in prison and petitioner calculated he could "still have a life" after prison if he took the State’s deal.

¶ 8 Hood’s affidavit provided that, during the criminal investigation, the detectives kicked, punched, choked, and pushed him to the ground, pointed a gun at his head, and demanded he confess.

¶ 9 Jody Rogers, a trial witness for the State, provided a statement that he was arrested and questioned about the murder and that, when he denied any knowledge of it, the detectives threatened to physically harm him and to charge him with Morgan’s murder. He was questioned over two days by different teams of three detectives. One detective twisted his arm and pushed him around the interrogation room and up against the wall. Although he told the police and testified to the grand jury that he gave the murder weapon to Hood and heard Hood confess to Morgan’s murder, he thereafter disavowed his statements. In a November 2008 affidavit, Rogers stated that his May 1993 statement implicating petitioner and Hood was untrue and that he recanted it in March 1994 but then testified against the petitioners so he could receive a deal from the State for pending charges. Rogers attested that he knew nothing about Morgan’s murder and had no knowledge that petitioner and Hood were involved in it.

¶ 10 An affidavit submitted by another trial witness, Kenneth Crossley, also known as Michael Rogers, Jody’s brother, provided that he testified in Hood’s trial and implicated Hood and petitioner but did not know anything about Morgan’s murder. He further attested that the officers who interviewed him told him he and Jody would be accused of the murder if he did not tell the detectives what they wanted to hear regarding petitioner and Hood. After he initially recanted his account, the detectives gave him gifts and money totaling $1000, and he then testified for the State. He again disavowed his testimony after Hood’s trial.

¶ 11 A statement of Joe West, a suspect and trial witness against petitioner, provided that the detectives accused him of Morgan’s murder and held him for an extended period of time, during which the detectives pointed a gun at various parts of his body and screamed at him, "‘you did it, we know you did it[;] just tell us how it happened.’ " The detectives demanded that he identify petitioner and Hood as involved in the murder, which he ultimately did so he could be released. He thereafter recanted his statement implicating petitioner and Hood.

¶ 12 Another suspect, Terry King, was hit by three detectives, who also "stepped on his penis," "threw him to the floor, stepped on his neck and put a gun in his mouth." The City of Chicago ultimately reached a settlement in King’s civil action against it based on police misconduct.

¶ 13 A report from Richard Brzeczek, a former Chicago police superintendent and expert in police procedures, police practices, and wrongful convictions, prepared a report regarding the Morgan murder investigation for Hood’s postconviction proceedings. He noted that Boudreau, Halloran, and O’Brien "have been previously identified as engaging in patterns of similar coercive conduct" and that two of them asserted their fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination in civil cases about coercing witnesses. In particular, Brzeczek’s report mentions that Boudreau had been accused of physical abuse against detainees, including punching, slapping, and kicking them; using psychological coercion against detainees with reduced cognitive and mental abilities; and interrogating juveniles without an adult present.

¶ 14 The report also discounted the supposed inculpatory statements provided by the Rogers brothers, West, and petitioner as "disavowed as untrue prior to trial" and resulting from police coercion. He concluded his report with the finding that the "pattern of investigative malpractice on the part of these detectives is significantly and obviously present in this investigation." Attached to Brzeczek’s report was a Chicago Tribune article dated July 26, 2013, detailing that the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) "found credible evidence that Chicago detectives," including Boudreau, tortured suspects to confess to murders they did not commit. Jason Meisner, Commission Finds Evidence of Police Torture in 5 Convictions, Chi. Trib. (July 26, 2013), https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2013-07-26-ct-met-burge-torture-20130726-story.html[https://perma.cc/CF3 S-DZ8G].

¶ 15 Petitioner also...