By The Vanguard Staff
CHICAGO, IL – It’s a holiday “feel good” story—two Illinois cousins were freed after 42 years of incarceration last Thursday, jailed for crimes they apparently never committed—just the latest in a wave of exonerations across the U.S.
A CNN feature focused on James Soto, 62, and David Ayala, 60, and how they “will now spend the holidays with their families for the first time since 1981 – when they were convicted for the deaths of two Chicago teenagers.”
The cousins each received two life sentences without the possibility of parole for the killings, plus 30 years for attempted murder and seven years for conspiracy to commit murder, to be served concurrently.
It’s the longest wrongful conviction sentence in Illinois history, said Lauren Myerscough-Mueller, an attorney with the Exoneration Project, which provides legal representation to the wrongfully convicted, reported CNN
“I feel excited, elated, exuberant, but … a bit of righteous anger,” Soto reportedly said after his release last Thursday, noting, “It should not have taken 42 years for this to happen.”
In fact, the state “agreed to the petitions and asked the judge to vacate the convictions,” Myerscough-Mueller said, adding, “The emotions today really can’t be described. It was beautiful.”
She said Soto celebrated his release with a dinner with loved ones at Rosebud Randolph in Chicago, said CNN, noting, “He had steak and sea bass. He ordered two meals because he couldn’t decide,” the attorney said.
The cousins have been separated in prison for more than two decades, Soto said, adding he hopes they will be able to help each other in the future.
While incarcerated, Soto was a part of the inaugural graduating class of the Northwestern Prison Education Program, according to a Facebook post from Northwestern University, earning a bachelor’s degree in science. He has taken the LSAT and plans to go to law school, he told reporters last Thursday.
“I’m going to go to Northwestern. I have a job waiting for me there, and I intend to apply to law school,” he said. “I want to be able to be that lawyer that can help people just like me. I know there’s people still in the system.”
CNN reported that earlier last week, “another wrongfully imprisoned inmate was freed in Cook County, IL. Brian Beals, who was wrongfully convicted in the 1988 murder of a 6-year-old boy, was released after 35 years behind bars.”
Also last week, California exonerated two men who were wrongfully convicted in separate murder cases. Both were teenagers when they were charged.
And in Minnesota, Marvin Hayes, said CNN, was released last week “after spending almost two decades wrongfully imprisoned in a case that relied almost entirely on witness testimony. One witness later said he never got a good look at the suspect, and another recanted his testimony.”
