Ford Heights Four

Known as the 'Ford Heights Four', Kenneth Adams, Dennis Williams, Willie Rainge, and Verneal Jimerson were convicted of gang raping and murdering 23-year-old Carol Schmal and murdering her fiancé, Larry Lionberg in in East Chicago Heights, Illinois on May 11, 1978. The four were sentenced to 75 years, death, life without parole, and death respectively. The town would later be renamed Ford Heights in 1987.

Years after the Four's convictions, Northwestern University journalism students began working on the case and they uncovered a police file showing that, within a week of the crime, a witness had told the police that they had arrested the wrong men. The witness said he knew who committed the crime because he heard shots, saw four men run away from the scene, and the next day saw them selling items taken from the robbery of the victims. One of the men identified by that witness was by then dead, but the other three ultimately confessed.

The results of the DNA testing established the innocence of the 'Ford Heights Four' and implicated the three who had confessed. The 'Four' were pardoned and released in 1996. In 1999, the 'Four' were awarded $36 million in damages. Their case was the subject of a 1998 book entitled "A Promise of Justice" by David Protess and Rob Warden. Dennis Williams died of a brain aneurysm less than five years after being freed from prison.

At a retrial in 1987, prosecutor Scott Arthur used blind belief in the police to counter defense arguments, stating: "Maybe the police made up all this evidence … That's too far-fetched. If you find the defendants innocent, don't do it because [of a specific defense argument.] Do it because you believe the police framed these men — because that's what you would have to believe now."

In 1997, following a federal investigation into Ford Heights police corruption, Chief Jack Davis and five other officers — more than half the town's police department — were convicted of extorting bribes from drug dealers and abetting them in their distribution of heroin and crack. It is said that the 'real' killers of Schmal and Lionberg were drug dealers and the police department protected them by charging and convicting four innocents of the murders.

References

* [http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/resources/readings/wardenprotess/ "A Promise of Justice" (Online Book)]
*Center on Wrongful Convictions: [http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/ilAdamsSummary.html Adams] , [http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/ilWilliamsDSummary.html Williams] , [http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/ilRaingeSummary.html Rainge] , [http://www.law.northwestern.edu/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/ilJimersonSummary.html Jimerson]