CHICAGO, IL – Jerry Herrington was fully exonerated from a wrongful murder conviction by Cook County Judge Alfredo Maldonado March 4, according to the Illinois Innocence Project.
Judge Maldonado vacated the conviction and dismissed all charges against Herrington, a client of the IIP.
The IIP said Harrington was convicted of a murder he did not commit at age 16, and spent 29 years wrongfully imprisoned before his release in 2020, at 45 years old.
IIP Senior Staff Attorney Leanne Beyer said, “Jerry was just a child when he was wrongfully imprisoned,” and “he and his family are overjoyed about his exoneration.”
Attorney Beyer added “their journey through the justice system has taken way too long,” while thanking the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office for righting the wrong of this case.
The IIP details that, in 1991, Herrington was a “talented football player” ready to enter his second year of high school when the accusation of him shooting a woman in Chicago took him from his family, even though “he knew nothing about the crime.”
The IIP detailed the signs of injustice throughout Herrington’s case, including “physical and psychological abuse of a juvenile by law enforcement, interrogation of a juvenile in the absence of an attorney or parent, and the use of a single testimony to create false ‘eyewitness identification.’ ”
The IPP documented the evidence of these injustices, that police “punched and slapped Herrington while he was handcuffed to the wall and denied his request to call his mother or his grandmother.”
IPP said officers reported a verbal confession was made, while “Herrington has always maintained he did not confess.”
The “eyewitness identification,” was from a juvenile informant that gave three different locations of where he was when the shooting occurred, said Beyer, adding “the evidence now shows that the police fabricated the testimony by this juvenile informant, who never participated in a lineup.”
Despite being 16, Herrington was tried as an adult and was sentenced to 60 years in prison, essentially a life-sentence for a juvenile, the IPP writes.
The IPP elaborates that since Herrington’s wrongful conviction, new evidence has emerged, including “two credible new witnesses” coming forward about the identity of the true offender and the officers that investigated this case are the subject of “numerous allegations regarding systematic misconduct and abuse, as well as fabricated evidence.”
After serving 29 years, Herrington completed his sentence in 2020 at 45 years old. The IPP continues, “Harrington was then required to serve a term of mandatory supervised release, which he completed successfully.”
After his exoneration, Herrington said, “I feel overwhelmed and excited at the same time. It’s been a long, long journey. This inspires me to go forth even stronger, to get involved in teens’ lives like I’ve been wanting to do, to give to others. People who do this work give… I want to be a giver, too.’
