Accused killer free. Why isn't this man?
- From: indigoace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Indigo Ace)
- Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:25:15 GMT
From the Chicago Tribune--
Accused killer free. Why isn't this man?
Police say Charles Green, then 16, knocked on a door in 1985. Today he
is the only person still imprisoned in a grisly murder case.
By Maurice Possley
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 1, 2007
Charles Green was 16 when he was accused of knocking on the door of a
West Side drug house, so that two rival drug dealers could gain entry,
a moment that authorities said led to four grisly murders.
That was 1985, and Green was sentenced to life in prison. Derrick
House, the man authorities said did the actual killing, was sentenced
to death. A third man was indicted, but the charges were eventually
dropped for lack of evidence.
More than two decades later, House?whose original conviction was
tossed out by the Illinois Supreme Court?has been released from prison
after serving time in a plea deal. The only one still behind bars in
the case is Green, who even by prosecutors' account did little more
than accept $25 to knock on the door.
"This case so undermines . . . fairness that it seems arbitrary and
capricious," said David Zlotnick, a law professor at Roger Williams
University in Rhode Island and an expert on sentencing laws. "This
seems like a horrible waste of a life, a waste of resources and just
fundamentally unfair."
Next month, Cook County Circuit Judge Marjorie Laws could rule on a
petition filed by Green's new lawyer seeking at least a new sentencing
hearing.
Assistant Public Defender Timothy Leeming also argues that Green is
innocent, contending that police and a judge ignored evidence
suggesting they had the wrong group of men.
But with or without the innocence claim, Green's case raises the
question of whether his youth at the time of his arrest worked against
him, subjecting him to less flexible sentencing laws and putting his
appeal on a different track than House's.
"This has been a tragedy for Charles and his family for more than two
decades," Leeming said in an interview. "He was a 16-year-old
special-education kid from Mississippi when he was picked up by police
a month after the incident. He insists he had no part in the crime.
"Police frustration, aggressiveness and public pressure perhaps
encouraged and tolerated short-cuts to close the case," Leeming said.
"And legal ineffectiveness has caused him to be unfairly locked up for
22 years. The crime was terrible and four people died. But the
injustice being done to Charles makes him the fifth victim."
Prosecutors say Green had his chances in court already. As to
fairness, Cook County state's attorney's spokesman John Gorman said,
"Under the law, even if he is not the shooter, he is equally
culpable."
Gruesome scene
When police and firefighters arrived on Jan. 12, 1985 at the 400 block
of North Hamlin Avenue, they found a gruesome scene.
Four people had been doused with kerosene and set ablaze. Reputed drug
dealer Raynard Rule had been stabbed to death. Lauren Rule, 16,
Raynard's sister, and Yvonne Brooks, 18, were found bound with
electrical tape and fatally shot. Brooks' 24-year-old sister, Kim, was
found outside, still alive.
A gunshot had missed her, and as she played dead, she had been set
ablaze with the two other women. When the fire had burned through her
bindings, she staggered out the back door and extinguished herself by
rolling in the snow. Burned over nearly 40 percent of her body, Brooks
died a month later.
By that time, House, then 19, and Green had been charged with the
murders. A third person, Teddy Bobo, 25, was later indicted as well,
but the charges ultimately were dropped for lack of evidence.
Police and prosecutors said that House and Rule were drug dealers on
the West Side who occasionally supplied one another with narcotics.
According to authorities, several days before the murders, Rule had
gotten $300 worth of drugs from House, but refused to pay because the
drugs were poor quality.
Green was picked up, police said, after a relative told them that
Green had confided going to the drug house and getting Rule to open
the door. The relative quoted Green as saying "things happened that
were not suppose[d] to happen."
And they said Green gave them a statement, explaining that House had
given him $25 to go to Rule's building and pretend he wanted to buy
cocaine. After the door was opened for Green, House and Bobo allegedly
barged in and tied up the four people inside with electrical cords,
police said.
When Rule refused to pay the $300 debt, police said, House allegedly
doused him with kerosene and set him on fire. When he began to scream,
House stabbed him with a butcher knife, according to police. The
women, who were in another part of the house, began to scream and so
they were shot and set afire as well, police said.
Questions surface
Questions about Green's involvement quickly surfaced.
Green contended that his statement to police was coerced after 27
hours of questioning. He then repeated it to a grand jury a few hours
later, he said, because he was told he would be released after his
testim
In the current motion attacking Green's life-prison term, Leeming
notes that Green's chief interrogator was Chicago police Detective
John Summerville, a notorious officer who was sentenced to 4 years in
prison in 1995 for sexually abusing women during traffic stops.
Green and House went on trial together before Cook County Criminal
Court Judge Romie Palmer, who made a critical ruling?later overturned
by the Supreme Court?barring a detective from testifying about an
interview with Kim Brooks in the hospital before she died.
The officer had reported that Brooks told police that the two killers
were 30 to 35 years old?much older than House or Bobo. She had said
one man was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, was fat and called "Bo." The
other man, she said, was a man with a dark complexion who weighed
about 140 pounds and had Jheri curls.
The description did not fit House?he had a medium complexion, weighed
210 pounds and had short hair.
Defense lawyers contended that the descriptions fit two other men, one
called Bodine, according to court records. Bodine was killed shortly
after the quadruple murder, police said.
Palmer barred the testimony as hearsay and impermissible because
Brooks was dead and could not be cross-examined.
Largely on the basis of Green's grand jury testimony and an alleged
oral admission police said House made during 49 hours of
interrogation, Palmer convicted both men. He sentenced House to death,
saying, "This defendant . . . is not fit to live." He gave Green a
life sentence without parole?the only alternative?because he was too
young for the death penalty.
That is where the two men's fates diverged.
Different fates
Green's case was appealed, and on Nov. 14, 1988, the Illinois
Appellate Court upheld his conviction and sentence. Appellate Justice
Eugene Pincham wrote a 53-page dissent, arguing that Green's rights as
a juvenile were violated by detectives and that his admissions should
have been barred from the trial.
That ruling did not affect House, because by law all death penalty
cases are automatically appealed directly to the state Supreme Court.
There, justices would come to a much different conclusion two years
later.
In their ruling, handed down on Dec. 20, 1990, House's conviction and
sentence were tossed out. The Supreme Court ruled that Brooks'
description of the murderers should have been allowed at the trial.
Had Green's case ever reached the Supreme Court, justices would have
faced the same legal question about Brooks' statements. But by that
time, Green no longer had a lawyer, and the deadline to ask for a
Supreme Court review of his appeal had long since passed.
House never went to trial again. Instead, House accepted a deal from
Cook County prosecutors, pleading guilty to just one of the four
murders. In return, House would receive the maximum sentence of 40
years.
As in all criminal cases then, the sentence allowed an inmate to be
released for good behavior after serving half of the sentence. House
was released from prison on May 5, 2006.
A family member said House would not agree to an interview. Bobo died
several years after his charges were dropped.
Green, meanwhile, is in prison, still trying to plead his case.
Green was one of six children and, according to his mother, Viola,
"always had a mental disorder. He was often teased by other kids as
being dumb. Other kids would take his money. He had a lot of trouble
reading."
Now at Menard Correctional Center in Downstate Chester, Green recalls
that he liked to play basketball and roller skate at a neighborhood
rink.
After his conviction, he was initially housed at Stateville
Correctional Center in a cell on an upper floor that looked out onto a
courtyard below. He said he stayed mostly in his cell.
"I'm scared of heights," he said in an interview. "I didn't want to
get close to the rail."
He said he tried to earn his GED, but failed repeatedly and gave up.
He tried working out, as a diversion?he didn't have a TV until
1994?but didn't like being around other inmates.
"I wanted to stay away from trouble," he said.
That hasn't always worked. A quarrel with a guard over a radio during
a shakedown led to 18 months in segregation in Pontiac Correctional
Center.
Now 39, Green has spent time over the years in prison law libraries.
With help from other inmates, he has filed motions trying to get his
case reviewed. He learned of the decision in House's case and thought
the legal system had wronged him because he didn't get a new trial.
Key discovery
He discovered a ruling by the Supreme Court in 2002 involving a
15-year-old who was convicted as an adult of acting as a lookout
during a double shooting. The 15-year-old?like Green?was too young for
the death penalty, but his sentencing judge refused to impose the
prescribed life sentence without parole, giving him 50 years.
Prosecutors appealed and the Supreme Court ruled that judges were
allowed to impose a more lenient sentence.
In the ruling, the court noted that the 15-year-old?like Green?did not
handle a gun. The opinion said that "a mandatory sentence of natural
life in prison with no possibility of parole grossly distorts the
factual realities of the case and does not accurately represent
defendant's personal culpability . . ."
Green filed his motions for review on his own and repeatedly was shot
down.
In the meantime, he lost touch with his family?the prison is too far
for any of them to visit. His only letters come from a couple in
Amsterdam and a woman in Canada who began writing after Green had a
friend post his name on the Internet as an inmate looking for a pen
pal.
Finally a judge saw something in one of Green's filings that caused
her to assign a public defender. Leeming examined the case, then filed
a lengthy motion arguing three points: that Green was unfairly
sentenced, that he should get a new trial based on the ruling in
House's case and that he is innocent.
In the motion, Leeming argues that Green was actually in a shoe store
at the time of the crime, that his family told his defense lawyer at
trial the name of the store and the name of the owner who was prepared
to testify and provided a copy of the receipt for shoes Green
purchased. That evidence was not presented at trial, though, according
to the motion.
The motion also includes an affidavit from a man who now says that the
crime was committed by his brother?the man known as Bodine?and another
man who, at the time of the murders, wore Jheri curls.
Cook County prosecutors oppose the motion, arguing that since Green's
previous motions seeking a new sentencing or trial were denied,
further challenges are procedurally barred.
As for his claim of innocence, the state's motion says that must be
rejected because it comes too late and that some of it was rejected at
trial.
Green, the state says, "utterly fails to establish that fundamental
fairness requires this court to consider his defaulted claims."
Green is hopeful. "I'm looking at being free from here some day," he
said. "I speak to God and to be honest with you, I know he hears me.
When he feels he can clear the way for me, he will."
mpossley;@tribune.com
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-green_bd01jul01,1,4293243.story?coll=chi-news-hed
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