Former Illinois Death-Sentenced Prisoner Robert Melock’s Charges Dismissed, Court Acknowledges Innocence

After spend­ing more than three decades behind bars for a crime he did not com­mit, Robert Melock was issued a Certificate of Innocence (COI), with a court for­mal­ly clear­ing his name and order­ing his record expunged. On April 21, 2025, the Circuit Court of the 19^th Judicial Circuit issued Mr. Melock the cer­tifi­cate fol­low­ing his December 2023 release from prison after 34 years of incar­cer­a­tion. His case is emblem­at­ic of the many prob­lems known to result in wrong­ful death sen­tences: a coerced false con­fes­sion, junk sci­ence, false wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, sup­pressed evi­dence, and police misconduct. 

Mr. Melock is the 201^st per­son to be added to the Death Penalty Information Center’s Innocence Database, which doc­u­ments peo­ple who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death and legal­ly exon­er­at­ed. He is also the 23^rd per­son from Illinois to be exon­er­at­ed; the state abol­ished the death penal­ty in 2011 in part because of the state’s trou­bled his­to­ry of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. The same rea­son was also cit­ed by Governor George Ryan when he com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of 167 peo­ple in 2003.

Mr. Melock was arrest­ed for the 1989 mur­der and sex­u­al assault of his 72-year-old pater­nal grand­moth­er, Augustine Melock in Waukegan, Illinois. Police focused on Mr. Melock, then 22, who was on parole for theft and liv­ing with his mater­nal grand­moth­er near­by. Just days after Ms. Melock’s body had been found, Waukegan Police detec­tives Lou Tessman and Donald Meadie brought Mr. Melock in for ques­tion­ing. After three hours of inter­ro­ga­tion, their super­vi­sor report­ed that the offi­cers ​“felt that Melock was being hon­est and straight­for­ward” and ​“didn’t appear to be lying about any­thing.” But the detec­tives brought Mr. Melock to John E. Reid & Associates, a pri­vate, for-prof­it poly­graph busi­ness, where he under­went sev­er­al hours of addi­tion­al ques­tion­ing. Polygraph exam­in­er Michael Masokas false­ly told Mr. Melock he had failed the poly­graph test. However, dur­ing lat­er court tes­ti­mo­ny, Mr. Masokas acknowl­edged the poly­graph ​“had in fact returned no result,” but assert­ed that he believed the absence of response meant the indi­vid­ual was lying. After the poly­graph, Detective Tessman obtained a sev­en-page con­fes­sion from Mr. Melock, and lat­er tes­ti­fied that he wrote the state­ment using Mr. Melock’s exact words.

Mr. Melock was charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in November 1989. The Illinois Supreme Court over­turned his con­vic­tion in 1992, hold­ing that Mr. Melock should have been allowed to present evi­dence about the cir­cum­stances of his poly­graph exam­i­na­tion and the meth­ods used to obtain his con­fes­sion. The Court acknowl­edged that while the poly­graph result may have indi­cat­ed decep­tion or inter­fer­ence, that was not what Mr. Masokas told Mr. Melock. “[Mr.] Masokas’ accu­sa­tion con­cern­ing defendant’s cul­pa­bil­i­ty, cou­pled with his false state­ment con­cern­ing the nonex­is­tent results, clear­ly sug­gest­ed to defen­dant that he had lied.” The Court also not­ed that Mr. Masokas’ own decep­tion ​“large­ly con­tributed to [Mr. Melock’s] deci­sion to incul­pate him­self” and that these state­ments were ​“decep­tive­ly designed” to elic­it a con­fes­sion. At his sec­ond tri­al in 1993, Mr. Melock was again con­vict­ed but sen­tenced to 85 years in prison. His con­vic­tion was upheld on appeal and sub­se­quent appeals were unsuccessful.

In 2023, Mr. Melock’s case was reviewed by the Lake County State Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit. During this review, his defense team gained access to the pros­e­cu­tion file and dis­cov­ered new evi­dence that had not been pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed. A pris­on­er log showed that Susan Holloway, a jail­house infor­mant who tes­ti­fied at tri­al that she heard Mr. Melock con­fess, was not actu­al­ly incar­cer­at­ed at the same time as Mr. Melock. The records indi­cat­ed a dif­fer­ent incar­cer­at­ed woman was present dur­ing the rel­e­vant time peri­od, and she had ear­li­er denied hear­ing a con­fes­sion from Mr. Melock. Additional evi­dence emerged regard­ing Detective Tessman’s involve­ment in oth­er wrong­ful con­vic­tions. The detec­tive had been con­nect­ed to fab­ri­cat­ing false con­fes­sions in the cas­es of Juan Rivera, who was exon­er­at­ed in 2011, and Herman Williams, who was exon­er­at­ed in 2022.

In December 2023, Mr. Melock’s con­vic­tion was vacat­ed, charges were dis­missed, and he was released after serv­ing 34 years in prison. The Certificate of Innocence issued in April 2025 goes beyond the dis­missal of charges, for­mal­ly declar­ing Mr. Melock inno­cent and expung­ing his record. ​“With this cer­tifi­cate, the court is offi­cial­ly rec­og­niz­ing that Bob is inno­cent of this hor­ri­ble crime,” said one of his attor­neys, Fatima Ladha, from civ­il rights law firm Loevy + Loevy. ​“He nev­er should have been charged in the first place, and now the court has right­ed that wrong.”

David Brodsky served as coun­sel for Mr. Melock dur­ing both tri­als. After being appoint­ed to the bench and lat­er retir­ing, Judge Brodsky rejoined the defense team for Mr. Melock and helped secure his exon­er­a­tion. ​“Robert Melock can nev­er get back the 35 years that were so cal­lous­ly tak­en from him,” said Judge Brodsky. ​“However, the fact that he has now been declared inno­cent by the same sys­tem that once sen­tenced him to death is a major step for­ward. For those of us who have always known that Robert is inno­cent, this has been a long time coming.”

In December 2024, Loevy + Loevy filed a fed­er­al law­suit on behalf of Mr. Melock against the City of Waukegan, nine for­mer police offi­cers, and John E. Reid & Associates. The law­suit alleges vio­la­tions of Mr. Melock’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in con­nec­tion with the inves­ti­ga­tion and inter­ro­ga­tion that led to his wrong­ful con­vic­tion. This is not the first law­suit some of these indi­vid­u­als have faced. In 2015, Juan Rivera won a $20 mil­lion set­tle­ment after being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in anoth­er case involv­ing some of the same Waukegan offi­cers and John Reid & Associates.

Mr. Melock, now 58, has been adjust­ing to life out­side of prison. ​“The hard­est part of my time in prison was being away from my fam­i­ly,” he said. ​“I am now work­ing on build­ing my life and rekin­dling my fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships.” Mr. Melock also said the Certificate of Innocence grant­ed to him is more impor­tant than the out­come of the law­suit. ​“A court of law has declared me inno­cent, and that was what I want­ed all along,” he said. With a Certificate of Innocence, Mr. Melock is now able to seek com­pen­sa­tion from the state of Illinois for his wrong­ful con­vic­tion and imprisonment.