'We was acting as one. Where I was, he was, acting like each other. He pretended to be me, and I pretended to be him,' Smith said at the time.
A judge Tuesday found the twin's testimony to be 'completely uncredible'.
+3
Dugar was arrested in 2003 and convicted two years later even though his lawyer said the evidence against him was 'razor-thin'.
In 2005, Dugar was sentenced to 54 years in prison for shooting at a group of rival gang members and killing one person.
His twin is serving a 99-year prison sentence for a 2008 home invasion and armed robbery that left a six-year-old boy shot in the head.
During the 2016 trial, his brother told the court: 'I'm here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of.'
Judge Vincent Gaughan said Tuesday that Smith had nothing else to lose from coming forward for his brother.
'I find (Smith's) testimony completely uncredible. No weight whatsoever should be given to his testimony,' Gaughan said.
Dugar's attorney, Karen Daniel, said that her client deserved a new trial because of his brother's on-the-record admission, according to the Chicago Tribune.
'If we had a retrial, we'd have a huge piece of evidence in favor of Karl having committed the crime: a confession that frankly could be used to convict him if the state was so inclined,' she said.
However, the judge sided with prosecutors who pointed out the the twins would often impersonate each other.
Gaughan said it shows 'a pattern of misdirection and deceit.'
One eyewitnesses recanted her testimony, and the other picked out Dugar from a line-up that didn't include Smith, according to his petition for a post-conviction hearing
Their mother cried in the stands as Smith told the court he was hosting a party in March 2003, when he left to buy marijuana.
Smith said he ran into members from the rival gang Black P Stone and opened fire with two guns.
But prosecutors doubted the truth of his confession, since it came after he lost an appeal for an unrelated attempted murder conviction from a 2008 robbery.
Assistant State Attorney Carol Rogala also said Smith had 'nothing to lose' by taking the hit for his brother.
Their mother Judy Dugar defended her son's actions, saying Smith wouldn't lie about the confession.
Despite their close bond, Smith said he never told anyone about the killing, and denied his twin's questions if he had been the gunman.
In 2013, Smith said he wanted to make up for his wrongs after finding God, and wrote his brother to say: 'I have to get it off my chest before it kills me.'
Smith reached out to his brother's lawyers and confessed to the murder through a sworn statement by 2014.
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6309635/Convicted-murderer-identical-twin-brother-confessed-2003-killing-DENIED-retrial.html
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PART TWO: (The present): Major Development: New trial ordered; He has been freed on bond.
STORY: "Kevin Dugar, was 44, was released from the Cook County jail on Tuedsay night, and breathed his first breaths as a free man in almost 20 years, his lawyer, Ronald Safer, said," by Reporter Chantal Da Silva, published by NBC5 Chicago, on January 29, 2022.
GIST: "A Chicago man who spent nearly two decades behind bars for murder over a deadly 2003 shooting has been released years after his identical twin confessed to the crime.
An emotional Kevin Dugar broke down into tears as he was released from the Cook County jail on Tuesday night and reunited with his loved ones as a free man, his lawyer Ronald Safer told NBC News on Friday.
"The judge granted his release pending trial on a signature bond and he walked out into the open air and breathed his first breaths as a free man in almost 20 years," Safer said. "It was gratifying to watch his tears roll down his cheeks and their cheeks before (their tears) froze on their faces because it was about 7 below."
Dugar had spent nearly 20 years in jail after he was convicted in the deadly 2003 shooting of a rival gang member.
A gunman had opened fire on three people in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood in the March 2003 incident, killing Antwan Carter and wounding Ronnie Bolden, according to NBC Chicago.
Dugar was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to 54 years in prison. For years, he maintained his innocence.
Still, his fate appeared to be sealed until what Safer described as a "stranger than fiction" plot twist that saw Dugar's twin brother, Karl Smith, admit to having carried out the murder in a confession that was first made in a letter to Dugar in 2013, nearly a decade after he was convicted.
Initially, the admission had little impact on Dugar’s case, with a judge ruling in 2018 that Smith’s confession was not credible and declining to offer his twin a new trial, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Smith had been denied an appeal himself as he was serving out a 99-year sentence for a home invasion that saw a child shot in the head. Prosecutors questioned the motives behind his confession, telling the judge that he only came forward after a court upheld his own conviction for attempted murder, the Chicago Tribune had reported at the time.
A lawyer with the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions took Dugar's case back to court, however. And now, after Tuesday's ruling, he will have a second chance to prove his innocence.
Safer said he hoped the case, which he described as a "made-for-TV" tale, would not have to go to court again.
"We are hopeful that the (Cook County) state’s attorney will drop the case against Kevin and then do what they will, but drop the case against Kevin because he’s innocent," he said. "It’s clear that he’s innocent, but if they persist we will go to trial and we will vindicate him at trial."
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the meantime, Safer said Dugar was spending his time as a free man with his loved ones as he grapples with the reality of the time lost.
"You know, you would think it’s just unmitigated joy, but the adjustment, the wounds that are inflicted by wrongful incarceration, are deep and enduring and there is an adjustment period that lasts a lifetime but particularly in the early days are very very challenging," Safer said.
"So, (he is) relishing his freedom, but it is a difficult adjustment," he said."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/chicago-man-released-prison-20-years-later-twin-brother-confesses-murd-rcna13924
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
