Wayne Washington

SURVIVOR STORIES

Wayne Washington: Ensnared in a web of white supremacy and the Criminal (in)Justice System

Wayne Washington was tortured by Kenneth Boudreau and John Halloran, two Jon Burge’s most notorious school of torture students, and forced to confess to a murder he did not commit. When his innocent co-defendant, Tyrone Hood was convicted and sentenced to 75 year in prison, Washington entered a plea and received 28 years.

Years later, as the convictions unraveled, both Hood and Washington were exonerated and their convictions vacated. But due to racist tunnel vision by the Illinois Appellate Court, Washington cannot be granted a Certificate of Innocence (COI) because he entered a plea of guilty. So employment, housing, and benefits are restricted because he’s still a “convicted murderer.”

The story Wayne Washington

On May 8, 1993, 20-year-old Marshall Morgan, Jr., a stand-out basketball player for the Illinois Institute of Technology, borrowed his mother’s car to get it cleaned prior to going out on a date with his girlfriend that night.

Morgan did not come home and on May 17, 1993, his partially-clad body was found wedged between the front and back seats of the car parked on a side street on the South Side of Chicago. The body was covered with garbage.

Three days later, police matched fingerprints on two beer bottles found in the car to 29-year-old Tyrone Hood, who lived about eight miles from where the body was found. Police questioned him for two days—Hood said he was physically abused—

but he was released after he maintained he was innocent.

Police identified another fingerprint found on one of the bottles in the car as Joe West’s, a man who lived a couple of blocks from Hood. On May 27, 1993, police were looking for West when they found Hood in a neighborhood grocery mart along with 20-year-old Wayne Washington. Detectives took Hood and Washington to a police station and began questioning them.

Washington ultimately confessed—falsely he claimed—that he and Hood had planned to rob someone and that they obtained a gun from Jody Rogers. Washington later said his false confession came after the detectives—Kenneth Boudreau and John Halloran—beat and slapped him. Washington said he signed a confession “because I couldn’t stand the beatings any longer.”

The detectives then brought in Jody Rogers, who later said he, too, was physically abused until he agreed to say that he provided a gun to Hood and that he heard Hood admit to killing Morgan. Rogers gave the same statement to a Cook County grand jury, but later recanted the statements as false.

The detectives also brought in and interrogated Joe West, the second man whose fingerprints they had identified on bottles in the car, and Rogers’ brother, Michael Rogers.

According to detectives, West said he had seen Hood driving in a car and flagged him down to see if Hood could help him find some marijuana. West said he looked backward and saw someone lying across the back seat. He said he asked Hood about the man and Hood brushed him off. West said he got out of the car and as the car drove off, he heard gunshots. Police said Michael Rogers told them that he heard Hood say he was going to do a “sting,” which meant a robbery.

Armed with the statements from West and Rogers’ brother, as well as Washington’s confession, Police charged Hood and Washington with first degree murder and armed robbery.

Not long after, Jody and Michael Rogers both recanted to defense lawyers for Washington and Hood. Both said they were physically abused and threatened to implicate the defendants.

In the fall of 1995, Washington went to trial in Cook County Circuit Court. Jody and Michael Rogers testified that their recantations were false and implicated Washington and Hood in the murder.

West never testified because he died prior to the trial.

Despite Washington’s confession—which the defense argued was coerced and the product of physical torture—the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict and a mistrial was declared.

Hood went to trial in April 1996 and elected to have a judge hear the case without a jury. Jody and Michael Rogers again testified for the prosecution and implicated Hood in the crime.

The prosecution introduced the testimony of an eyewitness, Emanuel Bob, who testified that he saw Hood driving the victim’s car either between 9 p.m. and 11pm on May 9, 1993 or between midnight and 3 a.m. on May 10, 1993. The witness, who emerged three years after the murder and virtually on the eve of trial, said his memory was triggered by a casual conversation about the case.

Hood’s attorney, Jim Mullenix, attempted to convince the trial judge that Morgan had been killed by his own father, Marshall Morgan Sr. Mullenix claimed that in 1995 Marshall Sr.’s fiancé, Michelle Soto, was murdered and her naked body was found wedged between the front and back seats of her car. Although police had questioned him, he was not arrested.

Marshall Sr., who had a prior conviction for voluntary manslaughter, had inserted himself into his son’s life in 1992, shortly before Morgan was killed and after being absent for about 18 years. After Morgan was killed, his father had collected $44,000 on a life insurance policy Marshall Sr. had taken out on his son just a few months earlier.

Mullenix discovered that after Soto was murdered, Marshall Sr. collected $107,000 from an insurance policy he had taken out on Soto’s life.

Mullenix argued that Marshall Sr., killed his son and covered the body with trash

from a dumpster near Corliss High School where Marshall Sr. worked as a janitor. The high school was two blocks from Hood’s house.

Marshall Sr. testified and said that he saw his son on the morning of May 8—the last day he was seen alive and gave him $350 for his date—slightly different from his previous statement to police that he saw Morgan that afternoon and gave him $125. The judge refused to allow Mullenix to question Marshall Sr. about the life insurance policy on his son or the policy and death of Soto.

Hood was convicted by a judge of first-degree murder and armed robbery on May 6, 1996. He was sentenced to 75 years in prison. Later that year, Washington, fearing he would receive the same sentence, pled guilty to murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

In 2000, in response to a plea for help from a pen-pal network for inmates, a woman from Australia named Barbara Santek contacted Hood. She began exchanging letters with Hood and he eventually sent her the record of his case. She became convinced he was innocent and in 2002 came to the U.S. She never returned to Australia and spent the next several years attempting to get someone to take his case. She discovered, as she investigated, a series of articles in 2001—five years after Hood’s trial—in the Chicago Tribune newspaper about false and coerced confessions. Detective, Kenneth Boudreau—one of the officers who questioned Hood and Washington—had obtained false confessions from more than a dozen defendants.

Ultimately, in 2007, after Hood’s appeals had long been rejected, Santek persuaded Loevy & Loevy, a law firm in Chicago to re-examine the case. Loevy & Loevy attorney Gayle Horn, a founding member of the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago, volunteered to work without a fee and began interviewing witnesses. Washington, who was released on parole in May 2007, said his confession was false and the result of physical abuse by the detectives.

In 2008, Jody Rogers and his brother, Michael, signed sworn recantations. Michael also said that he had been paid $1,000 in cash by police for his cooperation. The payment had not been revealed to Hood or Washington’s lawyers by the prosecution.

That same year, Marshall Sr. went to trial on charges of murdering Deborah Jackson—another girlfriend. Marshall Sr. admitted he shot her while they were quarreling in a car. He confessed that although she was still alive, he put her in the trunk of the car and abandoned it on the street. Morgan Sr. was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison.

In 2012, Hood’s attorney, Horn, assembled all the evidence she had that pointed to Marshall Sr. as the killer and asked the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit to reinvestigate the case. State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez agreed to re-examine the case, but in 2013, she ended the investigation and concluded that Hood was guilty.

In August 2014, the New Yorker magazine published a lengthy article that detailed all the evidence that Marshall Sr. killed his son. In November 2014, lawyers for Hood filed a clemency petition, noting that Marshall Sr. had not seen his son almost since birth when he suddenly re-appeared in 1992 and took out an insurance policy on his son's life. They argued that the evidence against Hood was based on testimony that had been recanted. In addition, an expert on eyewitness evidence filed a report for the defense that explained that the eyewitness identification at Hood’s trial was virtually impossible given the physical layout of the neighborhood.

On January 12, 2015, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn commuted Hood’s sentence and two days later, on January 14, Hood was released.

On February 9, 2015, Alvarez’s Conviction Integrity Unit requested that the convictions of Hood and Washington be vacated. The motion was granted and the charges against the two were dismissed. In January 2016, Washinton filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Chicago and the police department accusing police officers of framing him. Washington also sought a certificate of innocence, which is required to obtain compensation from the state of Illinois. The certificate was denied and the denial was upheld in 2021 by the Illinois Appellate Court.

All of this happened despite the fundamental proof of Mr. Washington’s innocence that had come to light. Per the First District (which granted Tyrone Hood a COI on appeal, but not Mr. Washington), Marshall Morgan, Jr.’s father almost certainly killed him (People v. Hood, 2021 IL App (1st) 162964). Indeed, Morgan Sr., the father, has since “confessed to murdering another girlfriend in 2001,” and others,

i The information in this fact sheet is from “Wayne Washington,” by Maurice Possley, National Registry of Exonerations, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4639, and “People v Washington, Amicus Brief” filed by eleven organizations, including the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

including for money.

However, when Washington filed a petition for a COI with the Circuit Court—without the State opposing the request—the Court denied the request without being asked. Washington requested that the Circuit Court reconsider its opinion and hold an evidentiary hearing, which it did. At the hearing, the State presented no evidence whatsoever. Washington testified to his innocence, presented evidence of the Boudreau’s and Halloran’s illicit conduct in this case and others, and provided evidence of Marshall Morgan, Sr.’s guilt.

Despite the manifest evidence of his torture and innocence, the Circuit Court refused to grant Mr. Washington a COI based on 735 ILCS 5/2-702(g)(4), which prohibits the granting a Certificate where the petitioner “by his or her own conduct voluntarily cause[s] or bring[s] about his or her conviction.” The decision rested in no small part on the court’s conclusion that Washington was not credible, based on a comparison of his 1995 testimony (which had not been submitted to the court by any party) to his present testimony.

On appeal, the Appellate Court upheld this interpretation of the law. Further, it set forth a universal rule that prohibits the issuance of a COI whenever a party entered a guilty plea in their case, no matter the circumstances. (See People v. Washington, 2020 IL App (1st) 163204) Further, the First District went so far as to say that Mr. Washington’s conviction was not only caused by his guilty plea, but also “because … his confession” brought about his conviction. Id.

Washington is now appealing to the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn this outrageous decision.

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