"PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: The confession: (Interrogation of a 14-year-old without his mother); "Hester’s lawyers presented evidence that the police never advised Hester of his right to an attorney and that no parent was with him during the interrogation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring police to advise suspects—Miranda v. Arizona—would not come until five years later in 1966. Hester testified that two white detectives, John Killackey and William Keating, screamed at him, called him a liar, and were so close to him that their spit landed on his face. Sessions with them were alternated with sessions with two black detectives, Robert Perkins and Harold Thomas, who told him that they would protect him from the white detectives who were ready to shove his head through a wall. Hester said these officers told him he could go home if he admitted to the crime. They told Hester, who was still in the white gown, that they would go home and return with his mother and another set of clothes to wear. Perkins and Thomas also told Hester falsely that his blood was found on Keane’s clothing, and that one of her hairs was found on his sweater—also untrue. Killackey and Keating told Hester falsely that his fingerprints were on a refrigerator in the book room. Hester said that during the interrogation, he was shown crime scene photographs and that ultimately, he made up a story that seemed to fit the crime scene. Hester testified that he rehearsed his statement several times before sitting down with the court reporter and a prosecutor. Hester also asserted that he asked to see his mother at least three times, but his requests were denied. The detectives testified that they did not verbally or physically abuse Hester, and that he quickly confessed after they confronted him with the crime lab findings. They admitted showing Hester crime scene photos, but not until after he confessed. The officers said they went to Hester’s mother’s home at about 2:45 p.m., but there was no testimony about what they said to her. Judge Napoli denied the motion to suppress the confession. Although Hester was only 14 and was learning disabled, Napoli found that the confession was voluntary and not a product of coercion."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: The forensics: "A pathologist who conducted the autopsy testified that Keane was killed sometime between 8 a.m. and noon. She had been stabbed seven times. During cross-examination, he said he found no semen stains on her body or her clothing. Claude Hazen, a microanalyst for the crime lab, testified that he compared a hair found on Hester’s coat with a hair removed from Keane’s head. He said that the reddish brown material on the hair on Hester’s jacket “could be blood.” He also said that medullary structures of the two hairs were “similar” and that the fissures were “consistent.” The density of the two hairs was “identical” and the refractive index—the measure of how fast light passed through them—also was identical. During cross-examination, Hazen was asked if it was possible that the hair on Hester’s jacket came from a male. “It is very remote,” he said. “It is very, very remote, in my opinion, that the hairs compared could have come from different sources of origin.” Asked if it was possible to “individualize” hair, he said, “Only to a degree.” Pressed further, Hazen said, “I cannot say that the hair removed from the jacket came from the deceased to the exclusion of all other people. But there is, on the basis of the tests made, a great degree of possibility that it came from the same source (Keane).” Andrew Principe, a chemist in the crime lab, testified that Keane’s blood was type A. He said that the reddish substance on the hair found on Hester’s jacket was blood, but he could not determine its type because there was an insufficient amount to test. He said that he found type A blood on the cuff and crotch of Hester’s pants and on the left leg of his underwear. Hester had type O blood, Principe said. Principe said he microscopically compared the smear on Hester’s jacket with smears made on paper with the six lipsticks found in Keane’s purse. He said the smear on the jacket was “similar” in fluorescence and color reflectance with a blue lipstick found in Keane’s purse.Principe also testified that he compared a metal fragment found in Keane’s underwear with metal particles found in a pocket of Hester’s jacket. He said the refractive indexes of the particle from Keane’s underwear and from the jacket pocket were “identical.” He said the particles both had the same number of layers, the same approximate thickness, and were similar in color. “It is my opinion that these particles are of the same origin,” Principe testified.
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "On May 1, 2019, Hester’s legal team presented a motion seeking to vacate Hester’s conviction to Cook County Chief Circuit Court Judge Leroy Martin Jr. The motion said the Conviction Integrity Unit had concluded that Hester’s confession “was not a reliable piece of evidence....The statement was taken under circumstances that, if they arose today, almost certainly would have resulted in the suppression of the statement and its exclusion from evidence. Mr. Hester was not advised about his fundamental Constitutional rights, and he was not permitted to have contact with his mother before making the statement.” Moreover, the review showed the confession was contradicted “in almost every material respect by the physical evidence in the case,” the motion said. In addition, the prosecution concluded that the expert testimony about blood, hair, and other materials “is no longer considered to be scientifically reliable” and was “inaccurate, misleading or based on flawed methodologies.” Judge Martin granted a motion to reinstate the case, vacated the conviction, and the prosecution dismissed the case."
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ENTRY: The National Registry of Exonerations entry for Lee Arthur Hester - masterfully written by Maurice Possley - was published on January 23, 2020, and can be read at the link below. The Registry notes that at the tie of publication it had recorded 2,549 exonerations amounting to more than 22,540 years lost.
GIST: On
May 1, 2019, 72-year-old Lee Arthur Hester was exonerated of the 1961
murder of a Chicago elementary school teacher when he was 14 years old.
The dismissal of the charges came nearly 58 years after he was convicted
based on faulty forensics and a false confession coerced by Chicago
police. The exoneration was the result of several years of
investigation by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern
University’s Pritzker School of Law and a review by the Cook County
State’s Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit. On
January 10, 2020, Hester, who was released from prison on parole in
1972, was granted a certificate of innocence in Cook County Circuit
Court, paving the way for him to seek compensation from the state of
Illinois. He was convicted of the murder of Josephine
Keane, a 45-year-old master teacher at Lewis-Champlin Elementary School
in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Keane
frequently tutored children with behavioral or learning disabilities in
one-on-one sessions in a book room located near the cafeteria on the
first floor of the school. On April 20, 1961, she got the key to the
room from the school office first thing in the morning. When she did not
show up in the parking lot at the end of the day to join her carpool
group, a search of the school was organized. Ultimately,
the only room left to search was the book room. Because Keane had taken
the only key, a school engineer was summoned to open the door with a
master key. Keane was found on the floor, stabbed to death and with her
undergarments torn off. Her body was partially covered by her overcoat. The
shocking nature of the crime—the sexual assault and murder of a teacher
in a school—resulted in extensive coverage by the media. The following
day, two detectives went to the school office and asked if any of the
students had ever been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior. A
white gym teacher said that Hester, who was black, once had
been—although the accusation had not been proven and no charges were
ever filed—and that Hester had been tutored by Keane. Hester had an IQ
of 82, and at 14 was in the fifth grade (three grades behind) because he
was a slow learner. He was known to frequently disrupt his classes. The
detectives went to the third-floor classroom and asked the teacher,
Jean Webster, to allow them to speak with Hester. Hester later said one
of the detectives kicked him in the shin. The detectives said that was
not true, and that they decided to take him to the police station for
questioning because they saw blood spots on Hester’s clothing. He was
allowed to go back into the classroom to get his jacket. When asked
what was going on, he said, “They think I killed Mrs. Keane,” and the
students erupted in laughter. At the police station,
detectives noticed what they believed was a lipstick smudge on Hester’s
jacket so they took him to the Cook County Juvenile Center. He was given
a gown and his clothing was confiscated for examination at the Chicago
Police crime laboratory. Police said that when they
informed Hester that forensic evidence linked him to the crime, he
confessed. Later that day, he gave a confession recorded by a court
reporter in which he said that he and a classmate, Sherman Baker, were
on their way back to class after dropping off empty milk cartons from
their morning milk break when he saw Keane in the book room. Hester
said that as he approached Keane, he tripped. He had a knife up his
sleeve connected to his wrist by a rubber band. As he fell forward, the
knife came out and landed in his hand, and he ended up stabbing Keane in
the back. While trying to get up, he tripped on some books and fell,
stabbing her again. He said that when he turned Keane over, he stabbed
her twice more in her breast, then pulled up her dress, and cut her
garter belt off with his knife. He said he pulled out his penis and
“squirted a little bit,” but never penetrated her. At that point, he
leaned over her to listen for a heartbeat and in the process got
lipstick on his coat. According to the confession,
Hester found the key to the room on the floor and locked the door when
he left. He said he then returned to class with Baker, who was waiting
for him. The key and a knife were never recovered. He was charged as an adult with murder. A
case that seemed highly improbable on its face took an even more
bizarre turn in July. Hester’s defense lawyers, Jerome Feldman and twin
brothers Marshall and Edward Kaplan, sent a psychiatrist into the
juvenile facility where Hester was being held. A guard, hearing a
scream, rushed into the room and found Hester in a drowsy state. A nurse
was summoned and retrieved an empty vial of sodium amytal—commonly
known as “truth serum”—in a trash can. The psychiatrist was escorted out
and the lawyers were reprimanded. In September 1961,
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alexander Napoli conducted a hearing on a
defense motion to suppress the confession. Hester’s lawyers presented
evidence that the police never advised Hester of his right to an
attorney and that no parent was with him during the interrogation. The
U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring police to advise suspects—Miranda v.
Arizona—would not come until five years later in 1966. Hester
testified that two white detectives, John Killackey and William
Keating, screamed at him, called him a liar, and were so close to him
that their spit landed on his face. Sessions with them were alternated
with sessions with two black detectives, Robert Perkins and Harold
Thomas, who told him that they would protect him from the white
detectives who were ready to shove his head through a wall. Hester said
these officers told him he could go home if he admitted to the crime.
They told Hester, who was still in the white gown, that they would go
home and return with his mother and another set of clothes to wear. Perkins
and Thomas also told Hester falsely that his blood was found on Keane’s
clothing, and that one of her hairs was found on his sweater—also
untrue. Killackey and Keating told Hester falsely that his fingerprints
were on a refrigerator in the book room. Hester said that during the
interrogation, he was shown crime scene photographs and that ultimately,
he made up a story that seemed to fit the crime scene. Hester testified
that he rehearsed his statement several times before sitting down with
the court reporter and a prosecutor. Hester also asserted that he asked to see his mother at least three times, but his requests were denied. The
detectives testified that they did not verbally or physically abuse
Hester, and that he quickly confessed after they confronted him with the
crime lab findings. They admitted showing Hester crime scene photos,
but not until after he confessed. The officers said they went to
Hester’s mother’s home at about 2:45 p.m., but there was no testimony
about what they said to her. Judge Napoli denied the
motion to suppress the confession. Although Hester was only 14 and was
learning disabled, Napoli found that the confession was voluntary and
not a product of coercion.
Steven Drizin, a
Northwestern law professor and expert on false confessions who led the
re-investigation of Hester’s case, published a detailed account of the
case in 2011 in the Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy. The
article described Hester’s trial as “a highly contested affair which
involved a battle of the experts with regard to the physical and
scientific evidence in the case and a swearing contest between Hester
and the interrogating officers with regard to the confession.”
Drizin
also noted that the case was a “cauldron of racial tension which boiled
over at times. On one occasion, Hester exploded, breaking away from his
guards, and high-jumping over a bench so that he could talk with his
sister, who was sitting in the gallery. He was eventually restrained by
prosecutors and detectives, but he managed to get in his licks first,
kicking one prosecutor, punching Sergeant William Keating in the face
and kicking Detective Sheldon Teller, before being held under control.
In the midst of this fury, Hester threatened to kill everyone and blow
up the building.” A jury was selected and the first
witness was called on September 26, 1961. Bessie McCaster, who was in
Hester’s fifth grade classroom, told the jury that they had their
morning milk break around 10 a.m. on the day of the crime. Afterward,
Hester and Sherman Baker collected the empty cartons and took them to
the cafeteria to place them in the garbage. Rosetta Harden, another
classmate, testified that Baker came back to the classroom alone. She
also testified that when Hester left the classroom, he was not wearing
his coat. Another classmate, James Daniel, testified
that Baker and Hester left with the empty cartons and came back
together. Classmate Theresa Cooper testified that before class that day,
she saw Hester by the cloak room with “something that looked like a
knife.” Ruth Becker, the assistant principal, testified
that she had a conversation with Keane in the book room about 9:30 a.m.
A pathologist who conducted the autopsy testified that Keane was killed
sometime between 8 a.m. and noon. She had been stabbed seven times.
During cross-examination, he said he found no semen stains on her body
or her clothing. Claude Hazen, a microanalyst for the
crime lab, testified that he compared a hair found on Hester’s coat with
a hair removed from Keane’s head. He said that the reddish brown
material on the hair on Hester’s jacket “could be blood.” He also said
that medullary structures of the two hairs were “similar” and that the
fissures were “consistent.” The density of the two hairs was “identical”
and the refractive index—the measure of how fast light passed through
them—also was identical. During cross-examination,
Hazen was asked if it was possible that the hair on Hester’s jacket came
from a male. “It is very remote,” he said. “It is very, very remote, in
my opinion, that the hairs compared could have come from different
sources of origin.” Asked if it was possible to “individualize” hair, he
said, “Only to a degree.” Pressed further, Hazen said,
“I cannot say that the hair removed from the jacket came from the
deceased to the exclusion of all other people. But there is, on the
basis of the tests made, a great degree of possibility that it came from
the same source (Keane).” Andrew Principe, a chemist
in the crime lab, testified that Keane’s blood was type A. He said that
the reddish substance on the hair found on Hester’s jacket was blood,
but he could not determine its type because there was an insufficient
amount to test. He said that he found type A blood on the cuff and
crotch of Hester’s pants and on the left leg of his underwear. Hester
had type O blood, Principe said. Principe said he
microscopically compared the smear on Hester’s jacket with smears made
on paper with the six lipsticks found in Keane’s purse. He said the
smear on the jacket was “similar” in fluorescence and color reflectance
with a blue lipstick found in Keane’s purse.
Principe
also testified that he compared a metal fragment found in Keane’s
underwear with metal particles found in a pocket of Hester’s jacket. He
said the refractive indexes of the particle from Keane’s underwear and
from the jacket pocket were “identical.” He said the particles both had
the same number of layers, the same approximate thickness, and were
similar in color. “It is my opinion that these particles are of the same
origin,” Principe testified. The detectives testified
and denied showing crime scene photos to Hester before he confessed and
denied that Hester had asked to see his mother. The detective who
initially took Hester from his classroom denied that he kicked Hester in
the shins. Hester testified as he had at the pretrial
hearing about the circumstances of his confession and denied that he
committed the crime. He denied taking cartons down to the cafeteria that
day and said he did not leave the classroom at all. Hester’s mother
testified that she did not learn her son was in police custody until 6
p.m. after he had confessed. Jean Webster, the teacher
in the classroom that day, testified for the defense that the class was
given a 15-minute bathroom break at 9:45 a.m., and that Hester was in
the classroom from 10 a.m. to noon when she sent him home early because
he was being disruptive. Webster said Hester did not take the empty
cartons to the cafeteria. Baker testified and said he
took the empty cartons to the cafeteria not with Hester, but with
another classmate named Lorenzo Walker. On October 9,
1961, the jury convicted Hester of murder. He was sentenced to 55 years
in prison. On March 28, 1969, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Hester’s
conviction and sentence, although Justice Walter Schaefer dissented,
particularly over the majority’s finding that the officers who went to
Hester’s mother’s home “apparently” told her that he was in police
custody. In fact, Schaefer noted, the prosecution “persistently
objected” to questions about what the officers told her. “Testimony
as to that conversation was totally excluded,” Schaefer said. “What the
record shows is that the prosecution consistently and successfully
resisted every attempt to find out whether the police officers told the
defendant's mother where he was, and what efforts she made to see him.”
Hester was released on parole on August 8, 1972. In
his 2011 article, Drizin said the re-investigation of Hester’s case was
“in full swing.” This included an interview with Jerome Feldman, one of
Hester’s trial lawyers. Feldman reported that after Hester was
arrested, a psychologist at the Psychiatric Institute of the Municipal
Court of Chicago called him and told him “in confidence” that a white
man who was a janitor at the school at the time of Keane’s murder tried
to commit suicide shortly after the crime. “The psychologist told
Feldman that when the janitor was brought to the Institute to be
evaluated, he had confessed to raping and killing Mrs. Keane and said
that someone else had been charged with the crime.” Feldman
said that at the time he believed—but had no proof—that the man in
question was an engineer at the school who was a World War II veteran
with a history of mental health issues and who had been the subject “of
several complaints by female teachers at the school.” In
2018, Drizin, along with Northwestern lawyers Laura Nirider, Tom
Geraghty, and Maria Hawilo as well as Hester’s other lawyers, Patrick
Fitzgerald, Brian Wallach, and Daniel Scime, requested the Conviction
Integrity Unit examine their findings and re-investigate Hester’s case. On
May 1, 2019, Hester’s legal team presented a motion seeking to vacate
Hester’s conviction to Cook County Chief Circuit Court Judge Leroy
Martin Jr. The motion said the Conviction Integrity
Unit had concluded that Hester’s confession “was not a reliable piece of
evidence....The statement was taken under circumstances that, if they
arose today, almost certainly would have resulted in the suppression of
the statement and its exclusion from evidence. Mr. Hester was not
advised about his fundamental Constitutional rights, and he was not
permitted to have contact with his mother before making the statement.” Moreover,
the review showed the confession was contradicted “in almost every
material respect by the physical evidence in the case,” the motion said.
In addition, the prosecution concluded that the expert testimony about
blood, hair, and other materials “is no longer considered to be
scientifically reliable” and was “inaccurate, misleading or based on
flawed methodologies.” Judge Martin granted a motion to reinstate the case, vacated the conviction, and the prosecution dismissed the case.
