Cook County pros­e­cu­tors have dropped all charges against Michael Evans and Paul Terry, two men who had been con­vict­ed of rap­ing and mur­der­ing a 9‑year-old girl in 1976. Following DNA test­ing that cleared the Illinois men, the state freed Evans and Terry 26 years after they were sen­tenced to serve 200 to 400 years in prison for the crime. (In many states, the defen­dants could have been sen­tenced to death and exe­cut­ed before their exon­er­a­tion.) The men were 17 at the time of the crime, and no phys­i­cal evi­dence linked them to the mur­der. The case began to unrav­el in 1994, when the lead pros­e­cu­tor in the case con­fid­ed to a friend at Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions that he had mis­giv­ings about the case. The Center peti­tioned to con­duct mul­ti­ple DNA tests that each con­clud­ed the men were not respon­si­ble for the crime, and a sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion by the Chicago Tribune revealed addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion cast­ing doubt on their con­vic­tions. Prosecutors say that they have reopened the case. (Chicago Tribune, August 22, 2003) See Innocence.

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