26-Year Inmate Freed After Lawyers Reveal Real Killer
A Chicago-area judge has ordered a new trial for a man serving a life sentence for the murder of a security guard. He walked out of the Cook County, Ill., jail after relatives quickly raised the $1,000 bail in the case.
Alton Logan, 54, had little hope of being freed until two lawyers stepped forward earlier this year and revealed that one of their clients, who has since died, confessed to murdering the security guard.
“I never gave up hope because I knew this was something that I didn’t do,” Logan told ABC News.
A Chicago Tribune reporter rode with Logan and detailed his first reactions to being a free man after being imprisoned for nearly three decades. “He’s not been exonerated yet … but it will happen,” Logan’s brother Eugene is quoted saying.
Judge James Schreier ruled on Friday that new evidence made it “a reasonable probability” that Logan would be acquitted if tried again.
Indeed, earlier this year, it was revealed that two attorneys for another convict have reportedly known all along about Logan’s innocence but kept silent because of the attorney-client privilege. Their client, Andrew Wilson, had confessed to them that he shot a security guard to death in 1982, but insisted that they only come forward after Wilson’s death. Wilson died in prison in November, the Tribune reports.
“They prosecuted an innocent man,” one of Wilson’s lawyers, Dale Coventry, told ABC. “How do you live with yourself having this secret?… I couldn’t do anything legally or ethically. I represented Andrew Wilson.”
But Coventry, reportedly tormented by the knowledge, wrote an affidavit that Wilson was the real killer, had the affidavit notarized and put it in a lockbox until Wilson’s death.
