Judge won't overturn man's murder conviction despite report that found 'powerful evidence' he may be innocent

A Cook County judge on Monday denied a man’s request to overturn his murder conviction, even as the state's attorney’s office said it would not oppose it or seek to retry the case.

In a nearly two-hour ruling, Judge Angela Petrone said Kevin Jackson’s latest attempt to overturn his conviction did not cite evidence that had not already been considered by his jury and other courts.

In a statement released by his attorneys, Jackson said he believed the decision was “severely irrational and unjust.” His lawyers filed a notice of appeal hours later.

Petrone’s decision comes after she reviewed volumes of history in the case, including a report by special prosecutors appointed to review Jackson’s conviction who found “powerful evidence that Jackson may be innocent.”

Special prosecutors Thomas Geraghty and Robert Owen were appointed in 2022 after it came to light that a former detective in the case was married to an assistant state’s attorney in the Conviction Integrity Unit, which is tasked with reviewing potential wrongful conviction cases.

Jackson has accused the former detective, Brian Forberg, of coercing witnesses to testify against him.

The special prosecutors, after a 10-month investigation, concluded that the integrity unit had failed to look into possible police misconduct in the murder case.

The unit’s former director, Nancy Adduci, wrote in a 2020 memo that after a “thorough” and “complete” review of Jackson’s conviction, “nothing requires a change of … course” and “this matter requires no further review.”

But Geraghty and Owen said they found an “unacceptably high likelihood that the prior witness statements that form the sole evidentiary basis for Jackson’s conviction were obtained by pressure, coercion, and overreaching by the police.”

Further, the special prosecutors said detectives who investigated Jackson’s case “have employed those same tactics in other cases.”

The report, marked “confidential” and delivered to State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and First Assistant Risa Lanier last summer, led to prosecutors’ decision not to oppose Jackson’s motion to vacate his conviction.

A copy of the report, obtained by the Sun-Times, has not been fully made public. Jackson’s attorneys have said the state’s attorney’s office has declined to release more than a redacted copy to them.

Petrone was critical of the report in her ruling Monday, saying she believed the special prosecutors had “inappropriately assessed” the credibility of testimony by witnesses more than two decades after the murder.

She also observed that both special prosecutors have extensive experience representing defendants in post-conviction pleadings, specifically noting Geraghty’s work as director of the Bluhm Legal Clinic at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

However, she said she did not believe either special prosecutor had a conflict of interest.

Petrone said the jury at Jackson’s trial in 2003 had weighed the credibility of witnesses who recanted their earlier statements pointing to Jackson’s guilt when they took the stand at trial and claimed they were coerced into giving false statements.

Petrone also said she agreed with earlier court rulings that found prosecutors had no duty to tell Jackson’s defense about statements made by a man who was wounded in the shooting but survived. The man said he had “never seen” Jackson before and that the person who shot him didn’t look anything like Jackson.

Petrone said those arguments and others in Jackson’s latest motion to vacate had been raised previously before state and federal courts, and she believed Jackson’s convictions were “properly affirmed” in those instances.

Petrone has declined to vacate convictions in at least three other cases that prosecutors did not oppose. Those decisions were overturned on appeal, Jackson’s attorneys noted Monday.

They said they expected the same would happen for Jackson eventually, and they will seek to have him released while awaiting a decision by the appellate court.

Jackson’s family have steadfastly attended his hearings and had their hopes raised last year that he would be released when they learned prosecutors would no longer oppose vacating his conviction.

After Monday’s hearing, his sister, Lakisha Jackson, said they were “disappointed, frustrated” but would not give up. “We gonna keep fighting, every day.”