Two ex-prosecutors charged for their alleged role in lying in the case of a man who wrongfully ended up spending more than three decades in prison are now on trial.
The former Cook County assistant state attorneys are in hot water after they were accused of misconduct in the case of Jackie Wilson. Nick Trutenko faces charges, including obstruction of justice and perjury, and his co-defendant Andrew Horvat was charged with official misconduct, ABC 7 reported.
Wilson was exonerated in 2020. He endured 36 years behind bars for killing two Chicago cops — a crime he reportedly did not commit, but his now-deceased brother did. Wilson and his brother, Andrew, were arrested in February 1982 concerning the deaths of officers William Fahey and Robert O’Brien. They died from gunshot wounds.
Trending Today:
When Lt. Jon Burge and his team interrogated the duo, they were tortured and ultimately forced into making false confessions after getting brutally beaten, according to a post from the National Registry of Exonerations. They were allegedly punched and kicked and received electric shocks. At one point, Andrew was burned after being tied to a radiator.
According to reports, Wilson’s first conviction was tossed out on an appeal. When he was retried in 1989, he was cleared of Fahey’s death but convicted for O’Brien’s. Wilson’s defense team heavily argued that Burge’s team pressured him to confess, resulting in his conviction being overturned again in 2018, as reported by The Associated Press.
“They beat me over the head with a dictionary, stuck a gun in my mouth. Then they did the electric shock,” Wilson recalled his experience at the time, per the outlet. “That came after this guy played Russian roulette with a gun in my mouth.”
Two years later, during Wilson’s third trial, it was revealed that Trutenko had a close relationship with a significant witness in his second trial.
Trutenko, the head…
Read the full article here