Four men hope DNA will overturn 1994 murder convictions

 
 Terrill Swift, who is seeking to have his conviction in a 1994 murder overturned, leaves court Monday. A judge said he would issue a ruling on Swift and three other men next month. (Antonio Perez, Chicago Tribune / October 10, 2011)

By Melissa Jenco, Tribune reporter

10:31 p.m. CDT, October 10, 2011

Terrill Swift showed little emotion Monday as he listened to attorneys argue over whether his conviction for a 1994 rape and murder should be overturned, but when a Cook County judge held off his ruling, Swift's frustration was unmistakable.

"I've been waiting on justice for 17 years, and I'm still waiting," he said as he rejoined family members outside the courtroom of Criminal Court Presiding Judge Paul Biebel Jr.

Swift and three others — Michael Saunders, Harold Richardson and Vincent Thames — hope new DNA evidence will clear them of the rape and murder of 30-year-old Nina Glover in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. Richardson and Saunders are still serving time.

Though most of the Criminal Courts Building was closed for Columbus Day, Biebel held a three-hour hearing on the case.

Joshua Tepfer, an attorney at Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, said a recent DNA test linked Johnny Douglas to Glover's murder. Before he was shot to death in 2008, Douglas was convicted of murdering one woman, acquitted of a second homicide and was a suspect in other murders and sexual assaults.

Tepfer said Glover's murder followed Douglas' "pattern and practice" of strangling prostitutes during a sexual encounter.

He also said that no semen evidence linked the four convicted defendants — all teens at the time of the murder — to the crime.

Tepfer argued that even though all four confessed to the murder, the trial would have ended differently if the judge knew the DNA belonged to Douglas.

However, Assistant State's Attorney Mark Ertler said the new evidence was "not significant enough to merit new trials."

Glover, he said, was known to exchange sex for drugs, so it was "not surprising" she came in contact with Douglas and "other unsavory characters." Douglas' DNA wasn't necessarily left on Glover at the time of her murder, Ertler contended.

Ertler also argued that if Douglas had killed Glover, he probably wouldn't have been at the scene when the body was found. Ertler also noted that in the murder for which he was later convicted, Douglas left the body at the crime scene — not wrapped in a sheet and moved to a different location, as Glover's body was.

Swift also led police to a lagoon where they found a shovel they believed was used to strike Glover, along with the handle of a mop that may have been used to clean the crime scene, Ertler said.

Throughout the hearing, Biebel told the defense that he was struggling over the four men's confessions to the crime. He asked for evidence that the confessions were coerced.

Attorneys for the men said Douglas' DNA proves the confessions were false, and that the four men's youth at the time made them vulnerable to coercion, even if it was unintentional on the part of police. They also said the confessions differed on some key details.

Biebel said he would rule next month.



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