December 1, 2022 • 55 mins
On June 1, 1996, Kevin Jackson and Antwaun Cubie accompanied Jeremy Bruder to buy a set of rims for his Jeep. When they arrived, Kevin and Jeremy went to make the purchase while Antwaun waited in the car while on the phone with his girlfriend. Several gunshots rang out and Jeremy was shot multiple times. He died the next day. Kevin and Antwaun were both taken in for questioning at which point Kevin, in exchange for leniency from the state, alleged that Antwaun killed Jeremy. After a series questionable legal maneuvers, Antwaun was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
To hear about the Marcus Wiggins case, go to:
#211 Jason Flom with Marcus Wiggins
To learn more about the junk science of gunshot residue evidence, go to:
#161 Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science - Gunshot Residue Evidence
To learn more and get involved, go to:
https://www.change.org/p/judge-help-free-an-innocent-man
Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila, LLP
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
In the spring of Antoine Cubi, a rising basketball star
from the Sumburbs of Chicago, had a bright future with
offers to play college ball as well as professional basketball abroad.
One night, his friend Jeremy Bruder asked him to accompany
him to a part of town that Antoine knew well
for a hook up on some new tires and rims.
Antoine's friend's younger brother, Kevin Jackson, asked if he could
(00:26):
tag along and get a ride to the liquor store.
While waiting for Jeremy's contact at the tire shop, Antoine
received a phone call from a girlfriend. While they spoke
about their plans to meet up later, Kevin Jackson and
Jeremy Brewder went out of Antoine's site and gunshots rang out.
Antoine didn't know who ad fired the shots, but Kevin
came racing back to the car, telling him to drive.
(00:47):
When Antoine began to drive to safety, he noticed Jeremy
struggling to survive. He stopped the car, demanding answers from
Kevin and began to walk back over to the tire shop.
When police arrived, One think that the field report logging
the inventory of Antoine's pat town would match the inventory
of items locked when he arrived at oak Park PD,
(01:08):
that the officer unseen could not have possibly missed a
large wad of bills alleged to belong to Jeremy Bruder.
One would think you might also believe that a teenager
might not need medical attention after a night spent in
the interrogation room. We certainly hope so, But this is
wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today we have
(01:44):
a story from oak Park, Illinois. Now this is a
nice suburb just outside of Chicago, but still within the
limits of Cook County, and unfortunately for our guests today,
this story features a lot of the hallmarks of Chicago
style powerful conviction. Aunt On Qubi had and still has
so much athletic and intellectual talent, but the time and
(02:07):
opportunity for him to excel at life was robbed from him.
He joins us from Stateville Penitentiary, Antoine, Welcome to ron
for conviction. Thank you. I appreciate you having me and
we appreciate you being here, even though I hate the
reason why you're here in the first place. And with
him today is his attorney from Riley's Safer Homes at
(02:28):
ken Silla. You might recall that firm, of course from
a previous guest, Roun Safer. Well, this is Joe Harris's
first appearance, and we hope it's not the last. So Joe,
welcome to the show. Jason, thank you very much. All right,
So let's start out in the usual place by getting
to know Antoine a bit well. Originally from the South side,
the far south side of Chicago, Argue of Guards project.
(02:49):
That's originally where my mother, darlne Qubis from and her
side of the family. My father, he's from the West
side of Chicago. They separated not too long after my birth.
My mother was able to get us of the projects,
and eventually, you know, she also made sacrifices to get
us to the suburbs, which was oh Park until we
uh eventually end up moving to the further west suburbs,
(03:11):
which was Westmont. Went to school, stay active in sports,
had a lot of friends, never really got into any trouble.
You know. I fell in love with the game of basketball.
I think that's what mostly kept me out of trouble
all those years. Yeah, the elephant in the room is
that you were an amazing basketball player, like you had
that thing right that high schools were checking you out
(03:33):
in junior high colleges were scouting you out as early
as your freshman year, like you had that kind of
special talent. Yeah, I um. I was a starter on
the varsity all four years. I was All Conference, All Area,
All State, All Americans, got nominated to the All American
McDonald Game scholarships. To go to college, I didn't. I
(03:56):
couldn't complain. I couldn't complain during those times. You know. Unfortunately,
you know, that opportunity had, you know, taken from me.
But during that time, it was very promising. You know.
Antoine had a great mom and a salad upbringing, and
he was a good kid and he didn't have any
behavioral problems at all or no criminal record. He finished
his high school career in n six at a school
(04:18):
called Donners Grove South, and he had his sights set
on a variety of options, but the one that he
was really kind of most focused on was going to
the University of Illinois. He wanted to play basketball and
study business and political science. So in June of ninety six,
Antoine Koube had pretty much everything to look forward to.
(04:38):
It sounds like it and it's ironic because your mom
got you out of Chicago, away from not only violent crime,
but also away from the Chicago p D and their
predatory practices. Of course, was just three years after Marcus
Wiggins mother won a civil suit against the city when
John Burge's Midnight crew had beaten and electrocuted him. There
(04:59):
was a eighteen year old child at the time, but
they tortured him into making a false statement incriminating himself.
Is also two years before that same department made its
third and unfortunately their first successful attempt at framing Marcus.
If you haven't heard his story, we're gonna have it
lengked in the episode bio, and I hope you'll listen
(05:21):
to it. But what we'll see here is that oak
Park p D was still very, very capable of similar tactics,
even though the relationship with the oak Park p D
was a bit more cozy with this around the community.
In fact, on that note, Antoine, you knew one of
these cops. But before all this happened because oak Park
p D used to sometimes provide security for sporting events,
(05:43):
including your basketball games. Yes, I don't want to necessarist
a security for the game, but they would be there,
their presence was there. This one particular officerite eighty years.
He's been norm need since I would say, grammar school.
You know, my name was was ranking since then, and
he used to do security at the games. I remember
him speaking to me from time to time. You know,
(06:04):
he was a black officer in that town, and you
know he kind of spood out amongst the rest of them,
which puts a fine point on a dynamic at play
in this story that you and Officer Harris are just
two of the very few black people in this very
homogeneous suburb. Well, Oak Park, It's a predominantly white suburb
of Chicago. It is very close to the city limits.
(06:27):
It's known as a very progressive area. I mean, the
entire Chicago area is certainly not without its racial tensions.
It's obviously also chewing the suburbs of Chicago, right, and
as we see all over this country, especially when you
have a white victim and perceived black assailants, the ham
fisted police violence available in Chicago was ready to be
deployed here as well, even with Officer Harris's participation in
(06:50):
your eventual prosecution. Now, typically on this show, if we're
bringing up a previous relationship with the officer. It's usually
because our guests had been arrest said before, maybe by
that same officer, but you had no criminal record whatsoever.
So here we're talking about an officer who knows about
your talents, and he knew about your promising future, but
he still had no qualms about letting this wrongful conviction happen.
(07:15):
And it appears that his fluid relationship with the truth
was what ultimately brought his career to an end, thankfully.
But before we get to that, let's shift away from
the full grown men who were aware of you to
the guys you knew in high school. And let's start
with the Jackson's Jamie and Kevin, who also grew up
in Oak Park. Jamie is older than Kevin and I,
(07:36):
but me and Jamie were closer because the things that
we had in common, you know, especially when it came
to you know, basketball and girls and you know, things
of that nature. You know, we called each other cousins,
you know, because we were so close. Kevin never really
hung around us, you know, he was always off doing
his own thing with a different crowd of people. So
Kevin was only in your life by virtue of his
(07:58):
brother Jamie. But in the town oak Park, if you
limit yourself to only black friends, you might not have
that many friends at all. What about Jeremy Brewer. Me
and Jeremy we were lab partners, and you know when
your lab partners, you know, you get close. You know
you talk every day. That's cool. And eventually, you know,
it layed out of school from kind of time. You know,
(08:19):
he would come to my house. You know, we play
video games and just hang out. And this brings us
to late spring n You were wrapping up your senior
year of high school and about to start college in
the fall, played basketball somewhere. Who knows where life was
going to take you. At this point, you came to
own a few cars, and Jeremy Brewer had just gotten
a Jeep and had taken notice of one of your cars. Right,
(08:40):
I had a couple of cars, and I had a
Jeep chair key, and I had rams on mine, and
he wanted some rams because he had just got a jeep. So,
you know, Jeremy was always telling me about a guy
that he met at the car wash where he was
working at It was a guy who was going to
you know, hook him up with some rams. And tires. You, oh,
he didn't tell me when he didn't tell me how
(09:02):
or who the guy was. So the conversation pretending to
the rims and tires really didn't go anywhere at that
moment until the faithful night of June one, when you
were with your newborn son and his mother at her
place in Villa Park, Illinois. And you've got a few
pages for people don't remember pages. That's when we used
to some people used to carry pages because before cell phones. Again,
(09:25):
but you've got a few pages from an unfamiliar number.
I called the number back and it was Jeremy. He
just came up on a hook up on some rams
and tires for his jeep and cannot take him to
Oa Park. At first I said no, and he bade
me to take him out there, so I said okay,
And he just wanted somebody to ride with him. So
(09:47):
you drove your girlfriend's car to meet up with Jeremy,
and you drove in separate cars to this tire shop
in Oak Park. It was pitch black in there. The
doors was lied, so you know, we knocked on the door,
we banged on the window, No one came, so we
walked around to the back to the garage door and
we banged on the door, await a couple of minutes.
He said he was early, so I was like, okay, well,
(10:08):
since we're a little early, you know, we can go
waste some time. So I was like, man, we can
go to my cousin's house, which I was speaking of Jamie,
which he stayed maybe about ten minutes away in Chicago,
and uh, you know every weekend, you know, Jamie, you
throw a get together, you know, people is always at
his house. Once we got there, Jeremy didn't want to
go up, so he stayed down. I told him I'll
(10:29):
be right back. And while you're upstairs, you obviously saw
Jamie Jackson and Kevin Jackson was living there at the
time as well. Kevin asked me to what I was
doing out there, and I told him, you know, I
came out here to bring my friend up buy some
rims and tires for his jeep. So he asked me,
do you think you could take me to the liquor store,
and I told him I can probably take you. Once
we're done. Since I'm on this side of town, I
(10:52):
might as well hang out, So yeah, you can ride
with me now. All three of you headed back to
the tire shop in your girlfriend's car. Apartment building diagonal
to the back of the ram shop, so we parked
facing the garage door of the ram shop. All three
of us got out. We went back to the front
(11:12):
of the ram shop, knocked on the door, banged on
the window, no response, so we banged doing the garage
door as well. So instead of us leaving, we just
hung out for about maybe ten fifteen minutes or so.
As we're sitting there talking and waiting, my patron goes off.
It was a friend of mine named Kia. I went
(11:33):
back to the car to use the phone and give
her a call to get in the driver's seat with
the door open, and I can see Kevin and Jeremy
walking towards Madison Street to the front of the ram shop.
They eventually got out of my sight and as I'm
still talking on the phone, a few seconds a minute
(11:53):
later or a couple of minutes later, I hear a
gunshot and I'm reading after David taking from Kia bank
right now signed under penalty of perjury. In two thousand
and eighteen, she said, and I quote Antoine and I
were arguing about whether we would meet up that night,
and then suddenly I heard multiple gun shots in the background.
The gun shots did not sound like they were immediately
(12:15):
next to the phone, and I did not hear anything
said by anyone in connection with the gun shots. And
quote so from the only other actual witness to some
degree to this crime. The gun shots were in the background,
away from the phone and away from Antoine. Now what
happened next? I see Kevin running towards the car, and
(12:40):
I'm waiting on Jeremy to follow behind him. But Kevin
jumps in the passenger seat. He says, I got the bitch,
let's go. So I immediately started the car and I
put it in dry. As I make a left hand
turn facing Madison Street, arride passed and I see Jeremy
(13:01):
laying in the bushes. So once I get to Madison Street,
I immediately stop on the next block. I don't keep
going to Harlem to get on the expressway and try
and get away. I immediately pull over on the next block,
asked Kevin, like what happened, and before he had a
chance to respond, I just lost it. I don't I
(13:21):
don't remember if I hit him, or if I grabbed
him or if I I don't remember exactly what I did,
but I want to say I hit him. I can't remember.
I told him I'm going back to the scene. I'm
going back, so we get out the car. I immediately
tried to cut through someone's backyard to get straight to
the alley, and the fence was locked. I went to
(13:44):
the next entrance that I saw, and it was some
big green garbage kids blocking the walkway, so I just
started walking. That's when the Forest Park police initially put
the spotlight on us and told us to take our
hands out our pocket and walked towards them, and the
park police came. At this point, you had no idea
(14:07):
why Kevin did what he did. Before you even had
time to work through this scenario in your head, two
police departments and a bunch of E m T s
had already shown up on the scene, and this was
a congested neighborhood. There were lots of people living in
the vicinity and the shots were easily heard, so there
were a number of call ins to the police department.
(14:28):
The Oak Park police start to preserve the scene, interview witnesses,
and essentially they do everything that they need to prosecute
both Kevin Jackson and Antoine inside the first twelve hours,
and that started with padding you down while E. M.
T s were working on Jeremy not too far away
at the tire shop. Now, importantly, they did not find
(14:52):
a gun or a giant watter of cash on you.
The initial report reflects that, but the placement of the
giant a wad of cash mysteriously changed later in a
subsequent report. I'm sure you can guess why. But okay,
let's get back to the immediate aftermath. Did they find
the gun? An Officer Romero actually does find a gun
(15:14):
in a garbage can. Unfortunately finds it in a garbage
can where the towel wrap around it and also submerged
in water, so any fingerprints DNA et cetera from the
gun were no longer viable. What happened next? They put
me in the car and they put him in another car.
I remember them taking us back to the scene of
(15:35):
the crime. What happened when I got out the car,
I remember the first person in voice that I heard
was Officer Harris. He's like, Oh, that's Antoine QB. That's
the basketball star. And they walked me towards Jeremy as
the pyramidics was working on him. I guess they were
trying to get him to identify me. At this point, however,
(15:56):
Jeremy is unconscious and is not able to attempt to
identify either Kevin or Antoine. Now I need to point
out that later on there was a report from Officer
Harris saying that Jeremy named Antoine Qubi. Now this was
touted as a dying declaration, but when the a m
T s on the scene, the ones who had been
on the scene were asked to corroborate this alleged dying declaration.
(16:20):
They did not. Interestingly, this is not from a report
that Eddie Harris prepares himself. It's from a report prepared
by another police officer, supposedly taken from an interview that
occurred at three thirty a m. Which was after Kevin
Jackson had been interviewed by the police and had claimed
(16:40):
that he had nothing to do with this and that
it was Antoine. Right after they had figured out what
the narrative the crime would be, this alleged dying declaration
made its first appearance, but Antoine's name had gone out
over the dispatch, so police had Antoine's name early on,
perhaps from Jeremy. However, the context of how ants once
(17:02):
then came out is bothering to say the least. But
no paramedic heard or saw what Officer Harris later claimed
at trial. That's critical. We're gonna get back to an event.
So back to the scene. Jeremy was unconscious, unable to
make an id. Then what they took us on the
next block for show up, put the spotlight on us
(17:25):
the head, I guess people in the area, and they
did this two times. Come to find out later on
that no one identified me in the two shots, but
they identified Kevin both times. After that last show up,
they took us to the police station and they automatically
did a gunshot resident test on me. And I really
(17:46):
didn't know what that was at the time. I know
they was just swapping my hands right. Why would you
have known? Gunshot residue testing or GSR testing is not
something on any lay person's radar in even not to
this day, I would say, but definitely not back and now.
At the time, it was believed that the presence of
the elements associated with gunfire could only mean one of
(18:06):
three things. Either you handle a gun or Ammo fired
a gun or were in fact a gunshot victim. Please
check out our coverage of gunshot residue, un rawerful conviction
junk science with our host Josh Tubin. We're gonna have
a linked in the bile. But what is now known
is that the elements associated with gunfire can be deposited
by a number of other accessible sources, things like cigarette ash,
(18:27):
dried urine, brake pads. Not to mention, GSR can also
be found all over police stations and in police vehicles,
which means you can easily get what they called touch
transfer just from being in sitting in the back of
a squad cors that. So, the truth is that the
only probative and useful result of a GSR test is
a negative one in which the subject hadn't been given
(18:49):
an opportunity to wash their hands, which you were not. So,
in other words, without having been able to wash your hands,
the absence of any of those elements on your hands
or clothing would have been should have ruled you out
completely as a potential shooter. And the gun that was
used to shoot Jeremy was fired eight times. He was
only hit six times, but it was fired eight times.
(19:11):
It was a nine millimeter handgun, so they both have
the gun shot residue tests administered to them. Now, Antoine
says that his hands were swabbed right away, even though
the police reports said that evidence wasn't collected until after
I think it was three am. Interesting that this information
was recorded around the same time as Officer harris Is
alleged statement about the uncorroborated dying declarations. So what were
(19:34):
the results? Now, what's very interesting is that the police
actually don't bother to have these test results analyzed right away.
They actually sit on them for a two and a
half months. But when the when the results come back
for Antoine, they come back completely negative. So if if
if he had this gun and he shot at eight times,
they're not finding any of these particulates. And Antoine never
(19:56):
washed his hands before he was swabbed to do the
gunshot residue test, and the form is very specific about
whether there's been washing in the hands, because if the
hands are washed, the test is invalid. But you mean,
we'll talk about this a little later. But the lawyer
for Antoine, George Howard, doesn't use them in Antoine's defense
at trial, so that's not part of the story. But
(20:17):
there is another part of the story, as you suggested,
because the same test was performed on Kevin Jackson. Now,
the police report said that those tests weren't done until
like four hours later than Antoine's, like seven in the morning.
But Kevin Jackson was permitted to wash his hands twice
before the test, so before he was being fingerprinted, he
washed his hands and after, so it invalidated the test entirely.
(20:41):
So Antoine did not wash his hands. Kevin washed his
hands twice, so both sr test came back negative. However,
Antoine's was the only ballot test of the two. Why
in the world was Kevin allowed to wash his hands
twice before before the test? Perhaps just a mistake, or
maybe just maybe it was because he agreed to trade
(21:04):
testimony against Antoine for leniency. I mean, he had everything
to gain an exchange for cooperating. And don't forget Illinois
still had the death penalty of the time, so he
had everything at stake. And we'll get to the interview
process in a bit. But first, Antoine, what else do
you remember from your booking? They put me in this
real skinny room, you know, they took my clothes, all
(21:27):
my belongings. They gave me this real thin paper suit
and shoes to put on. As I was in their
room and it was going through the inventory, the officer
came in with a brown paper bag. It was a
big brown paper bag and he said, it on top
of the counter and he said, man, this belongs to
(21:48):
him as well. So when she opened it up and
lifted up it was a cowed the gun and some
money inside of the bag and said it just belongs
to him too. I don't think anyone needs dispelled out
for them, but inventory should be removed from your person
and logged. You can't just introduce new items from cottonos
(22:10):
where there was already a field report done. Logging would
have been found on his person. And we already mentioned
that the gun and towel have been found in a
trash can Bay Officer Romero. Now it's just given to Antone.
And the money, where the hell did that come from?
Why was that not found on Antoine during the path down?
(22:30):
I mean it would be a key fact issue in
a robbery case, like who has the money after the
robbery and the key police officer and all. This is
an Oak Park officer named Tesca. It was Tesca who
personally took custody of Antoine. The first report out from
the police radio is that there's been shots fired, so
he knows there's a gun involved. He knows that he
(22:53):
has one of the kids that might have been responsible
shooting the gun, so he does a full pat down
in the field. He finds Antoine's wallet with his idea
in it, but that's all. When they get back to
the police station, he claims that they had to do
another path down, and supposedly now he finds something brand
(23:16):
new that he didn't find in the field, and that
is a wad of bills. It's eleven hundred and four dollars.
It's eighty separate bills in a big wad. How could
Officer Testcut miss a wad as big as what Antoine
Kobe allegedly had in his right front pocket. The right
front pocket is not a place you just skim over.
(23:39):
It's the main pocket for the majority of humans, the
right of the left front pocket. And he wasn't gonna
miss a load of eighty bills. That's a big wad
that would cause a serious bulge. Not only was there
no lot of cash found on him, but there was
also no gun or wet towel. But now this bag
(23:59):
of evidence, it's just claimed. So what else do you remember?
I remember them putting me in this cell. It was
I think it was right in front of a the
entrance door, because every officer detective that came in they stopped.
They banged on the door. They called me stupid, said
I blew my life away. And I don't know how
(24:23):
how much time had passed. They came and gat me
out of the room and put me inside of an
interrogation room and handcuffed me behind my back. As I
said in the chair, They kept asking me, you know,
so what took place? And I kept telling him I
just want to use the phone. I was a little
sarcastic with him, you know, I wasn't answering that questions.
(24:43):
I told him I didn't have anything to say to him.
And every time they left out of the room a
little while later they had come back, not knowing that
when they were going back and forth, they were talking
to Kevin and then they had come and talk to
me and they say, okay, well this is what we
know took place, and this is what we know happened.
(25:05):
And I told him Okay, well, if you know, just
let me use the phone. I don't have nothing else
to say to you. They did this maybe like two
or three times. So the last time when they came in,
detective Munching and Jergenson kind of got frustrated with me,
the detectives and they walked out, and I was still
handcuffed in the chair. I was facing the door. It
(25:27):
was a piece of paper over the window of the door,
so you couldn't see in. I remember the door cracking open.
I could just see the light from the crack, and
I saw a hand hit the light inside of the room.
A few seconds later, the door pushed open. People were
like rushed in and I couldn't see their faces, but
(25:49):
I could see the silhouette of them coming in. I
don't know if it was one or two who was
behind me who was holding my shoulder and arms as
I sat in the chair. The other ones that came in,
they were just hitting me all over my body. This
(26:14):
episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global
insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social
responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives
of its employees and in the communities where we work
and live. In light of the compelling need for pro
bono legal assistance, and in recognition of a i g
s commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the ai
(26:35):
G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. I sat there with
my head down for a while. My body was it
was hurting. They came in with the phone, they said
(26:57):
it on the death, plugged it up, and a blank
piece of paper. And I remember this piece of paper
saying time and signature, and it was like, okay, this
is a new protocol that we used to prove that
we allowed you to use the phone. We need you
to sign here. And he looked at his watch, and
(27:18):
when I did it, he took the phone and he
took the piece of paper and he walked out. I
didn't know if he was coming back or or what.
I know. Some time later, the state's attorney walked in
and then she wanted to go over my confession with me,
and I told her. I was like that I never
made a confession. I didn't do that. I never made
(27:40):
I never talked to anybody. So she showed me the paper.
It was tight and I hit my signature and I
told her I didn't I didn't make this statement, and
she walked out. That was the last time I saw her.
So now the money and gun magically were declared to
be in your possession. They got this piece of paper
that was when you signed it and is now being
(28:01):
passed off as assigned confession. And of course Kevin Jackson's
cooperation was also working against you. Now, there are so
many things wrong with both your alleged confession and Jackson's statement.
So let's just start with what did Kevin Jackson say. Well,
he says that he's recruited by Antoine to take part
(28:24):
in this robbery. You know that they go off in
the car together, and then because he has to separate
himself from the actual pulling of the trigger, he says
that when they're proceeding down the alley, he lags bhind
because he has to urinate in some bushes, and then
he doesn't see what actually happens. But he here's an
(28:44):
inn exchange between Antoine and Jeremy, and then he here's
the shots. And as opposed to Kevin Jackson running back
to the car, it's Antoine running back to the car.
And of course, when given the opportunity to essentially right
antoine statement for him, they aligned some things from Antoine's
alleged statement with Kevin's to make it seem like the
(29:06):
two statements were corroborating one another, like the detail about
Kevin allegedly stopping to pee in the bushes. Now, the
police might take issue with you or Antoine saying that
this alleged confession was anything but above board, But there's
both no evidence that it actually is, but rather there
is evidence to the contrary. There's no video, no audio recording,
(29:28):
no stenographer, and they're not even contemporaneous notes from the
police officers. And we know that abuse did occur. Right
those who came to see him saw that he got
really badly beat up by the cops. And because he
was denied a phone call, the first person who did
see him was not his mother or his lawyer, Mr
(29:48):
Mac who was my junior high basketball coach. Somehow he
knew I was there. They let him visit me. He
was okay, and I told him, no, I'll st our client.
I him I was hurting. He immediately said that he's
going to let my mom know. Because no one knew
where I was at when my mom and my aunt came.
(30:08):
When they saw the condition I was in, they lost it.
They went off on the detectives and and every other
police officer they saw that was in the station, and
they told him they had to leave and that they
wanted to visit me. They con visit me in the
county jail. After that, I was getting transported to the
county jail. It was me, Kevin, and it was another
guy named Anthony Ferguson who got arrested that night for
(30:32):
domestic violence. We were all in the Patti wagon and
I just started spitting up blood. Anthony Ferguson say, man,
was that you who are heard in the other room?
And I was like yeah. He said, man, I heard
everything that they've done to you. This is my name,
this is my number. You know, if your lawyers want
to talk to me, give him my information. And that
(30:52):
was the last that I heard of him until years
later when I was able to get an affidator from him.
Everything that Mr Ferguson, because you are happening to Antoine
corroborating to some degree what we've all heard here. Now
at this point, you had no idea Kevin Jackson had
flipped the situation to his advantage, and this obviously took
the heat off of Kevin Jackson. Kevin Jackson was tried
(31:13):
first under a theory that he was responsible for the
killings in part because he didn't stop what was going on,
and he actually supposedly drove the getaway car, and he
was sentenced to forty years in prison. He is now released.
Did you know that Kevin was doing this to you?
I didn't know this until we went to court in Maybrook,
(31:33):
me would Illinois. I thought you were tried separately. That
was just a regular court date, okay, so you were
both at court for your own proceedings. Was this his
bench trial and just a pre trial hearing for you? Exactly?
That was the pre trial. And all the bailiffs knew me.
So it was one day in court and his lawyer
(31:55):
comes in to the bullpen and it's like me, Kevin
and like other guys and his lawyer because lawyers telling okay,
when we're go in there, this is what's going to happen.
But he was talking so low to her I really
couldn't hear him. So Kevin and his lawyer went out
and immediately the bailiffs came in to the bullpend. He
was like, QB, he's out there saying that you did this,
(32:18):
like he had nothing to do with it. So I
was like, no, that's not true. So Kevin came back,
so I asked him. I say, I said, what just
happened out there? And he says nothing. So now it's
starting to make sense. Kevin saw how I said I
was getting so he bangs on the door and he
tells the bailor that he has to use the washroom,
(32:42):
and the bailor's let him out. I never saw Kevin
again until he came home in twenties seventeen, at which
point he said he was going to give you a
sign after David. That never came to crouation. But Kevin
never even testified at your trial. He didn't have to
confession evidence in your case. A complete fabrication was all
(33:03):
the state really needed. This confession turns into the centerpiece
of the state's case, but there are a number of
features of this so called confession that just make it
obvious that it's not a trustworthy description of what actually happened.
The statement reads nothing like the way Antoine would talk.
Are right, there were facts in the statement that are
(33:24):
totally contradicted by the unchallenged facts, like the statement says
there were four shots and there are actually eight shots.
There are four different versions. There were parts that were
totally inconsistent version diversion, like whose money was involved, Jeremy's
where is it Antoine? Whose gun was involved? Was it
Jeremy's gun? Did Antoine get the gun? When does Antoine
actually supposedly take possession of the gun before that night
(33:47):
or does it get it that night? There are these
versions are very much inconsistent and wild contradictions and inconsistencies
like these are hallmarks of false confessions. In this case,
they're taking wild stabs and a plausible version of its
consistent with their incentivized defendant in order to nap both
young men. So Antoine didn't go to trial for almost
three years. Part of that time he was in the
(34:10):
notorious Cook County jail, and his family hired an attorney,
a reputable guy at the time, George Howard, at this
time had a fairly distinguished record. He was an African
American criminal defense lawyer in Chicago. You know, he had
been a speaker at a lot of the area law
schools tried a lot of cases. But here's the problem.
(34:31):
What they don't know is that he's already clearly overburdened.
He had been suspended actually in and into NIX for
neglecting his cases. This is a time when there were
still death penalty in Illinois. And George Howard look at
Antoine's case and and he immediately told him, he said,
look at they say, you killed a white boy in
(34:53):
oak Park. He doesn't think there's any way to defend
Antoine given the evidence that he is aware of, and
he goes, I'm here to save your life. So George
Howard decides he's going to insert an insanity defense, and incredibly,
he coaches Antoine and his family to fake mental illness.
(35:14):
He told me how to act in front of the
judge when I go see the psychiatrists and psychologists. I
literally had to teach myself like I had to look
at other people behavior who was mentally ill or who
was insane. I mimicked them basically because this is what
my lawyer told me that I needed to do in
her to come home. I think I did it well
(35:35):
because they end up sending me to Elgin Mental Hospital.
So it was like three times, I was found unfit
to stand trial. I stayed in the mineral institution for
a few months, at least the county jail. I knew
what I was dealing with. As far as the violence,
I knew, I knew the environment, but the middle hospital,
(35:56):
you don't know who you're dealing with. And then the
medicines that they hit me on at that time were
spirit all hell, dog thors, the Those are the things
that I had to deal with because I was only
impresson because that's what was going to get me home.
He took his lawyer's advice. He was obviously was successful
(36:18):
at it for a while, but he couldn't sustain it,
and eventually the state is able to prove that this
is just a sham and Antoine is forced to go
to trial. This was a four day trial. The state
called seventeen witnesses, lay fact witnesses, people who saw the
car park, people who saw the car pull away, the
(36:38):
person who found the body. They have medical experts obviously
to talk about the cause of death, and forensic people
who talk about the gun. The gun was actually was
a stolen gun, and they couldn't get prints off the gun.
They certainly didn't have any fingerprints or DNA of Antoine's.
And then they also called some police supervisors and one
of the detectives, and the states that Jarney, you did
(37:00):
the interrogations and we've been over all the most damning
evidence already. They placed the cash among Antoine's possessions. Kevin
Jackson placed himself at the scene and implicated Antoine, although
Kevin did not testify at Antoine's trial. There's also this
fabricated confession and an alleged dying declaration. But George Howard
was not fighting the state's evidence. He didn't develop anything
(37:23):
to combat it. No defense, but the insanity defense. If
almost thinking, I think he said something to the effect
of open argument. My client didn't do this, and there's
no evidence to prove that he did it, but if
he did do it, being he was insane during the time,
so I wishy washy insanity play on top of the
(37:44):
evidence that the state did actually present, fabricated as it was.
It's so crazy way because the state is fabricating all
their evidence, and your attorney is fabricating and insanity. You
weren't insane, and the jury officer was going to see
through that but there was a lot he could have
done instead of leading insanity, including calling your middle school
coach who could have corroborated that you'd been beaten. Or
(38:07):
he could have just pointed out all the glaring inconsistencies
and contradictions between statements, not to mention the inconsistent reports
about Antoine's possessions, namely the lot of cash that wasn't
found in his right front pocket during the initial path
town and of course the E M T s who
would have refused the officer's testimony about the dying declaration.
In light of all of that, Officer Harris's testimony a
(38:28):
trial was particularly devastating. Officer Harris says, what he gets
to the scene and Jeremy is still conscious that he
asks him a question, specifically who shot you? And Harris
says that Jeremy allegedly said it was Antoine QB. The
question is what exactly did Harris ask? We do know
(38:51):
that Antoine's name went out over the police radio, so
Antoine's name came from somewhere and probably came from Jeremy.
But the is what question was he answering? And here's
an important piece of evidence. The paramedics were there in
two minutes from when they were called. So they get
there very shortly, if not exactly, at the time when
(39:12):
the police show and there are five paramedics on the scene,
not one of them corroborates Harris's story. No one other
than the police officers say that Jeremy identified Antoine as
a shooter. Right. We're talking about the same police department
that developed an alternate slate of Antoine's personal effects, that
beat the ship out of him and gave him a
(39:33):
blank piece of paper to sign, then filled it out
with an alleged confession. So pretty close to zero credibility
to go around here. So when you're only sources are
Oak Park p D or the e m T S,
I'd go with the e m T S. Right. They
don't have it, They don't have a motivation to lie,
and they didn't equivocate. They were sure that they hadn't
(39:53):
heard Harris asked the question who shot you? One thing
we do know for sure is that Eddie Harris was
fired by the Old Park Police Department shortly after what
happened here, in part for lying in the course of
his duties. So there's incredible doubt that Eddie Harris told
the truth about what question he asked Jeremy Bruder as
(40:14):
he lay dying. But that's the story that Eddie Harris
told the jury, and George Howard didn't call a single
paramedic to talk to the contrary. There's so much that
he did not do. He did not develop the defense
that Antoine had no motive to shoot Jeremy, that Antoine
had no special need for that kind of money at
knowing her actions with Jeremy, that was anything close to
(40:35):
supporting the possibility that he showed him. He was on
the phone with his girlfriend when this happened. But George
Howard doesn't develop that no phone records, He didn't put
his girlfriend on the stand. You know that Antoine actually
stopped the car, got out and went back to the
scene when he knows that people have heard the shots,
(40:58):
he knows that the police are coming, and he's going
right back there. You know, when George Howard doesn't do
anything with the gunshot residue tests, and you know, he
doesn't attack the supposed dying declaration, the claim that Antoine
had the money on him after the shooting. He doesn't
attack Antoine's alleged confession. He doesn't do these things, and
(41:19):
why do any of that when your strategy was insanity.
George Howard called one witness, a psychiatrist from Michigan, who
came and testified that Antoine qb. Didn't have a sufficient
mental state to understand what he was doing, that he
essentially was insane. The problem was, or one of the problems,
was that he was testifying based on Michigan standards for insanity,
(41:43):
and the fact of the matter is they were in
Illinois court and they needed to have the Illinois standards supplied.
So his testimoney was rejected. So that's how this case
went to the jury. So the state's case went completely
unrebutted and the only defense was rejected. The only thing
that George Howard did that worked was to convince the
judge that because Antoine had no prior criminal history, it
(42:05):
would be cruel to sence him to death. So he
was spared the death penalty, but told that he essentially
would die in prison. They gave me natural life without
the possibility of the role for the murder, and then
they gave me thirty years for the armed robbery. I
remember him saying guilty, and everything else went to blank,
(42:27):
like literally quiet, and I heard one person, my mom.
I heard my mother cry, and I didn't hear anything else.
I didn't hear no one else talking. I didn't hear
anything but my mother, you know, leaving the county jail,
(43:00):
going to UM Joliette, which was annexed, you know, that
was the receiving. I think that was the scariest ride ever.
You know, you get in, you know they strip you
and make you take the shower, and you know, throw
the powder on you and put you in the I
DLC uniform. I stayed in Juliette for a few days
(43:23):
and they told me I was going to the pit.
You know, that was the nickname for Menard. And you
know that's right there in the Mississippi River, like eight
hours away from home. When I got down there, it
was so racist. You know, it was literally separated, you know,
blacks against whites. You know, you had a lot of
(43:44):
race rides down there. Um. You know, people literally dying
on the regular. I've seen everything from murders to rape.
I've seen people die right in front of me. I've
seen people get beat over over packer cookies. It can
be anything, anything can trigger anything be triggering, you know,
(44:07):
We hear about the conditions in our prisons every week,
but no one who hasn't been there can imagine. Unfortunately,
your post conviction proceedings were and are very similar to
things we hear on this show every week as well.
His trial was by two thousand one, his direct appeal
had been denied. Antoine also pursued a habeas petition in
(44:28):
federal court in two thousand months, but that was also
quickly denied. And you think that making the case for
ineffective assistance might not be that hard considering the defense
or lack of defense that you had, but with the
evidence presented, accepted its truth in this case, and knowing
what we know about our impellate system, is understandable that
he was met with the Niles. What about his post
conviction petition. He did not file a post conviction petition
(44:50):
until two thousand six, and then it was amended it
later in two thousand nine to include actual innocence claims
at one point supported by affidavits. Right, You've got a
few who affi David's in two thousand and eight, one
from an ex girlfriend of Jamie Jackson who said that
Kevin was living with Jamie at the time, and when
she called Jamie the day after the shooting this would
be June two, that Jamie was upset that some money
(45:13):
and shoes, along with a nine millimeter pistol were missing.
When she asked Jamie about Antoine's arrest, he told her
that quote, Antoine would not be in trouble because Kevin
Jackson would tell the police what really happened that night
and quote. Also in two thousand eight, man named Robert Walker,
who did time with Kevin Jackson at Danville Correctional from
(45:34):
two thousand three to two thousand five, also swore that
Kevin had admitted to the crime multiple times over that period,
in addition to saying that Antoine was not responsible for it,
saying and I quote Kevin Jackson say that Antoine QBI
got the time for the case that he should have
got end quote. There were also afid David's from Antoine's
(45:56):
mother and aunt who swore to his injured condition when
they visited him at Oak Park p D. And then
in two thousand and ten that caught up with Anthony Ferguson,
who swore to seeing Antoine before and after his night
of horror and torture at the Oak Park Police Station
injury free the night before, followed by spitting up blood
(46:16):
in the patty Way. The state eventually made a motion
to dismiss the original post conviction petition because it was
too late. Unfortunately for Antoine, the appellate court decided in
two thousand thirteen that he was too late, and so
they threw his case out. So in this intermediate period
of time between two thousand thirteen in the present, there
(46:36):
have been a number of different efforts, primarily by Antoine himself,
to try to develop evidence of his innocence. One of
those efforts was having a linguistics expert, Richard Leonard, examine
the language used in the alleged confession and compared to
Antoine's known writings and speech, and the conclusion of this
expert was that there was no similarity between the language
(46:59):
that was used in the sign statement that the police
used as confession and the way in which Antoine actually
speaks and rights. In fact, they found that the language
more accurately reflected the writing of the detective who allegedly
took the statement. For example, quote I met Jeremy at
cass Avenue at sixty third Street in westmont at an
(47:20):
unknown time. That is definitely cop talk. Another example was
the use of the word then, as in I then
told Jeremy to move his jeep to the end of
the alley. We both then went into the building after
ringing Jamie's bell. Every time the word then was used
in the alleged confession, it followed the sentences subject. Now,
(47:42):
compared to other known writings of Antoine, he always put
the word then first. For example, then I went here
that I did this, that I did that right. And
what's more alarming still is that the use of the
word then closely resembles the writings of the detective testifying
as Antoine at his trial. This report was done back
(48:04):
to two thousand fourteen. Now, in two thousand seventeen, as
we referred to earlier, Kevin Jackson was released. I actually
talked to him over the phone. A mutual friend of ours,
you know, connected us and gave me his number. I
wanted him to do the right thing. I wanted him
to tell people that I didn't do it. And I
(48:24):
called him. You know, he was talking to me like
like nothing happened, Like he didn't just sit there and
tell them that I did this. But I asked him
I said, I needed you to talk to my lawyers
and tell him I didn't do this. I need you
to be honest and tell him the truth. And he
said he would. When they did try to set up
(48:46):
meetings and appointments with him, he wouldn't show, so, uh,
you know, he kept saying that he was going to
give me an after David telling the truth, but he
never followed through. So that's where I'm at now. And
this happened just before Joe's firm, Riley Safer Holmes and
Ken Silla picked up Antoine's case pro bono in two
(49:08):
thousand eighteen, and they have also gotten the same run
around from Kevin Jackson. If that's not to say other
avenues are not being explored to solidified Antoine's claim of
actual innocence. So those efforts include efforts to explore Kevin
Jackson's willingness to tell the truth what Kevin Jackson said
to other people about what happened that night. Certain individuals
(49:31):
have been identified who say that Kevin Jackson has said
explicitly that Antoine was not personally involved. So more people
who corroborate what Robert Walker said in two thousand ten.
Now since two thousand eighteen. Both his junior high basketball
coach who visit him at the police station, and his
ex girlfriend, Kia Banks, have both come forward, signing after
Davis corroborating with Antoine and his GSR test has been
(49:54):
saying all along that Kevin Jackson shot Jeremy Bruder, that
Antoine completely unaware of Kevin Jackson's plans, as evidenced by
his behavior in the aftermath. I mean, why the help
with a guilty person returned to the scene to essentially
turn himself in. You know, why would a bright, super
(50:16):
talented high school basketball star with college offers all over
America and no history of criminal behavior, no history of
violent behavior shoot one of his best friends eight times
for you don't have to be sure a lot Holmes
to figure this out. So, is there anything that our
(50:37):
audience can do to help? If anybody who's listening to
this podcast has any information that they think might be
valuable to us in terms of what it is that
we're trying to do for Antoine, that I would sincerely
ask that they contact our office. My name is Joe
O'Hara and the firm is Riley Safer Homes and Cancilla
(51:01):
we'll have action steps lenked in the bio, including the
change dot org petition asking for relief in his case.
And that brings us to the best part of the show.
Let's face it, it's my favorite part, and it's called
closing arguments. And this is the part where I thank
each of you, both of you for joining us today
and courageously sharing Antoine and your story. Um, and now
(51:25):
I'm just gonna turn my mike off, leave my headphones on,
and kick back on my chair to listen to your
closing thoughts. Let's start with Joe and finish up with Antoine.
You know, the criminal justice system has failed Antoine horribly.
You always have to come back to that question, which
is why would hop bright kid, a super talented athlete
(51:46):
like Antoine Cub with no history, no history at all
of criminal behavior, violent behavior, why would he do something
like this? The state's case against Antoine had big holes
from the beginning, and and they knew it because there
was no good motive. He wasn't a kid from the
streets who had done anything like this before, and they
(52:07):
didn't have any witness except for somebody who was involved
in a very biased witness, Kevin Jackson, and they didn't
have any forensic evidence or physical evidence of any kind,
you know, they didn't have any gun evidence, or blood evidence,
or fingerprint evidence or DNA evidence or the The only
test that they did that g SR was was negative.
So the state had to do something and they filled
(52:29):
the holes in the case with the evidence that was
manufactured by the police, and that was essentially the supposed
dying identification of Antoine by Jeremy, the possession of the
robbery money that was planted on Antoine, and then the
the alleged confession, and all of this was exacerbated by
the fact that George Howard decided to rely only on
(52:52):
an insanity defense to try to save Antoine from the
death penalty. So me where we find ourselves as Antoine
is endured over you know, over twenty five years at
this point of incarceration as a result of these failures
of the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, and particularly in Cook County, UH,
(53:14):
situations like Antoine's are not unusual. UH. It is very
important for the public to support the efforts of those
in public service, including the people who run this Wrongful
Conviction podcast. They need your support, they need your encouragement
to continue to identify and rectify some of the horrible
(53:38):
things that have resulted because the system doesn't work the
right way. I want to first thank you for allowing
me this opportunity to speak the truth. A lot of
people didn't know about a lot of these things that
took place during my arrest, before and after, and I'm
glad you gave me this platform to do so. I
just asked that, you know, people not make assumptions, just
(54:03):
use the black and white evidence in front of you.
And I just hope that in the near future that
I'd be home because I missed being a father, I
missed out being a grandfather, and you know, being a son.
All that was taken away from me, including my potential future.
(54:23):
You know, who knows what could have came of it,
But I am grateful and I'm going to continue to fight,
and I just want to thank you. So I know
my time is wrapping up now. So um, I just
want to thank everybody for being an advocate for me
and supporting me. Thank you for listening to Ron for Conviction.
(54:48):
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne,
and Kevin Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
(55:09):
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flom.
Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
In the spring of Antoine Cubi, a rising basketball star
from the Sumburbs of Chicago, had a bright future with
offers to play college ball as well as professional basketball abroad.
One night, his friend Jeremy Bruder asked him to accompany
him to a part of town that Antoine knew well
for a hook up on some new tires and rims.
Antoine's friend's younger brother, Kevin Jackson, asked if he could
(00:26):
tag along and get a ride to the liquor store.
While waiting for Jeremy's contact at the tire shop, Antoine
received a phone call from a girlfriend. While they spoke
about their plans to meet up later, Kevin Jackson and
Jeremy Brewder went out of Antoine's site and gunshots rang out.
Antoine didn't know who ad fired the shots, but Kevin
came racing back to the car, telling him to drive.
(00:47):
When Antoine began to drive to safety, he noticed Jeremy
struggling to survive. He stopped the car, demanding answers from
Kevin and began to walk back over to the tire shop.
When police arrived, One think that the field report logging
the inventory of Antoine's pat town would match the inventory
of items locked when he arrived at oak Park PD,
(01:08):
that the officer unseen could not have possibly missed a
large wad of bills alleged to belong to Jeremy Bruder.
One would think you might also believe that a teenager
might not need medical attention after a night spent in
the interrogation room. We certainly hope so, But this is
wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction. Today we have
(01:44):
a story from oak Park, Illinois. Now this is a
nice suburb just outside of Chicago, but still within the
limits of Cook County, and unfortunately for our guests today,
this story features a lot of the hallmarks of Chicago
style powerful conviction. Aunt On Qubi had and still has
so much athletic and intellectual talent, but the time and
(02:07):
opportunity for him to excel at life was robbed from him.
He joins us from Stateville Penitentiary, Antoine, Welcome to ron
for conviction. Thank you. I appreciate you having me and
we appreciate you being here, even though I hate the
reason why you're here in the first place. And with
him today is his attorney from Riley's Safer Homes at
(02:28):
ken Silla. You might recall that firm, of course from
a previous guest, Roun Safer. Well, this is Joe Harris's
first appearance, and we hope it's not the last. So Joe,
welcome to the show. Jason, thank you very much. All right,
So let's start out in the usual place by getting
to know Antoine a bit well. Originally from the South side,
the far south side of Chicago, Argue of Guards project.
(02:49):
That's originally where my mother, darlne Qubis from and her
side of the family. My father, he's from the West
side of Chicago. They separated not too long after my birth.
My mother was able to get us of the projects,
and eventually, you know, she also made sacrifices to get
us to the suburbs, which was oh Park until we
uh eventually end up moving to the further west suburbs,
(03:11):
which was Westmont. Went to school, stay active in sports,
had a lot of friends, never really got into any trouble.
You know. I fell in love with the game of basketball.
I think that's what mostly kept me out of trouble
all those years. Yeah, the elephant in the room is
that you were an amazing basketball player, like you had
that thing right that high schools were checking you out
(03:33):
in junior high colleges were scouting you out as early
as your freshman year, like you had that kind of
special talent. Yeah, I um. I was a starter on
the varsity all four years. I was All Conference, All Area,
All State, All Americans, got nominated to the All American
McDonald Game scholarships. To go to college, I didn't. I
(03:56):
couldn't complain. I couldn't complain during those times. You know. Unfortunately,
you know, that opportunity had, you know, taken from me.
But during that time, it was very promising. You know.
Antoine had a great mom and a salad upbringing, and
he was a good kid and he didn't have any
behavioral problems at all or no criminal record. He finished
his high school career in n six at a school
(04:18):
called Donners Grove South, and he had his sights set
on a variety of options, but the one that he
was really kind of most focused on was going to
the University of Illinois. He wanted to play basketball and
study business and political science. So in June of ninety six,
Antoine Koube had pretty much everything to look forward to.
(04:38):
It sounds like it and it's ironic because your mom
got you out of Chicago, away from not only violent crime,
but also away from the Chicago p D and their
predatory practices. Of course, was just three years after Marcus
Wiggins mother won a civil suit against the city when
John Burge's Midnight crew had beaten and electrocuted him. There
(04:59):
was a eighteen year old child at the time, but
they tortured him into making a false statement incriminating himself.
Is also two years before that same department made its
third and unfortunately their first successful attempt at framing Marcus.
If you haven't heard his story, we're gonna have it
lengked in the episode bio, and I hope you'll listen
(05:21):
to it. But what we'll see here is that oak
Park p D was still very, very capable of similar tactics,
even though the relationship with the oak Park p D
was a bit more cozy with this around the community.
In fact, on that note, Antoine, you knew one of
these cops. But before all this happened because oak Park
p D used to sometimes provide security for sporting events,
(05:43):
including your basketball games. Yes, I don't want to necessarist
a security for the game, but they would be there,
their presence was there. This one particular officerite eighty years.
He's been norm need since I would say, grammar school.
You know, my name was was ranking since then, and
he used to do security at the games. I remember
him speaking to me from time to time. You know,
(06:04):
he was a black officer in that town, and you
know he kind of spood out amongst the rest of them,
which puts a fine point on a dynamic at play
in this story that you and Officer Harris are just
two of the very few black people in this very
homogeneous suburb. Well, Oak Park, It's a predominantly white suburb
of Chicago. It is very close to the city limits.
(06:27):
It's known as a very progressive area. I mean, the
entire Chicago area is certainly not without its racial tensions.
It's obviously also chewing the suburbs of Chicago, right, and
as we see all over this country, especially when you
have a white victim and perceived black assailants, the ham
fisted police violence available in Chicago was ready to be
deployed here as well, even with Officer Harris's participation in
(06:50):
your eventual prosecution. Now, typically on this show, if we're
bringing up a previous relationship with the officer. It's usually
because our guests had been arrest said before, maybe by
that same officer, but you had no criminal record whatsoever.
So here we're talking about an officer who knows about
your talents, and he knew about your promising future, but
he still had no qualms about letting this wrongful conviction happen.
(07:15):
And it appears that his fluid relationship with the truth
was what ultimately brought his career to an end, thankfully.
But before we get to that, let's shift away from
the full grown men who were aware of you to
the guys you knew in high school. And let's start
with the Jackson's Jamie and Kevin, who also grew up
in Oak Park. Jamie is older than Kevin and I,
(07:36):
but me and Jamie were closer because the things that
we had in common, you know, especially when it came
to you know, basketball and girls and you know, things
of that nature. You know, we called each other cousins,
you know, because we were so close. Kevin never really
hung around us, you know, he was always off doing
his own thing with a different crowd of people. So
Kevin was only in your life by virtue of his
(07:58):
brother Jamie. But in the town oak Park, if you
limit yourself to only black friends, you might not have
that many friends at all. What about Jeremy Brewer. Me
and Jeremy we were lab partners, and you know when
your lab partners, you know, you get close. You know
you talk every day. That's cool. And eventually, you know,
it layed out of school from kind of time. You know,
(08:19):
he would come to my house. You know, we play
video games and just hang out. And this brings us
to late spring n You were wrapping up your senior
year of high school and about to start college in
the fall, played basketball somewhere. Who knows where life was
going to take you. At this point, you came to
own a few cars, and Jeremy Brewer had just gotten
a Jeep and had taken notice of one of your cars. Right,
(08:40):
I had a couple of cars, and I had a
Jeep chair key, and I had rams on mine, and
he wanted some rams because he had just got a jeep. So,
you know, Jeremy was always telling me about a guy
that he met at the car wash where he was
working at It was a guy who was going to
you know, hook him up with some rams. And tires. You, oh,
he didn't tell me when he didn't tell me how
(09:02):
or who the guy was. So the conversation pretending to
the rims and tires really didn't go anywhere at that
moment until the faithful night of June one, when you
were with your newborn son and his mother at her
place in Villa Park, Illinois. And you've got a few
pages for people don't remember pages. That's when we used
to some people used to carry pages because before cell phones. Again,
(09:25):
but you've got a few pages from an unfamiliar number.
I called the number back and it was Jeremy. He
just came up on a hook up on some rams
and tires for his jeep and cannot take him to
Oa Park. At first I said no, and he bade
me to take him out there, so I said okay,
And he just wanted somebody to ride with him. So
(09:47):
you drove your girlfriend's car to meet up with Jeremy,
and you drove in separate cars to this tire shop
in Oak Park. It was pitch black in there. The
doors was lied, so you know, we knocked on the door,
we banged on the window, No one came, so we
walked around to the back to the garage door and
we banged on the door, await a couple of minutes.
He said he was early, so I was like, okay, well,
(10:08):
since we're a little early, you know, we can go
waste some time. So I was like, man, we can
go to my cousin's house, which I was speaking of Jamie,
which he stayed maybe about ten minutes away in Chicago,
and uh, you know every weekend, you know, Jamie, you
throw a get together, you know, people is always at
his house. Once we got there, Jeremy didn't want to
go up, so he stayed down. I told him I'll
(10:29):
be right back. And while you're upstairs, you obviously saw
Jamie Jackson and Kevin Jackson was living there at the
time as well. Kevin asked me to what I was
doing out there, and I told him, you know, I
came out here to bring my friend up buy some
rims and tires for his jeep. So he asked me,
do you think you could take me to the liquor store,
and I told him I can probably take you. Once
we're done. Since I'm on this side of town, I
(10:52):
might as well hang out, So yeah, you can ride
with me now. All three of you headed back to
the tire shop in your girlfriend's car. Apartment building diagonal
to the back of the ram shop, so we parked
facing the garage door of the ram shop. All three
of us got out. We went back to the front
(11:12):
of the ram shop, knocked on the door, banged on
the window, no response, so we banged doing the garage
door as well. So instead of us leaving, we just
hung out for about maybe ten fifteen minutes or so.
As we're sitting there talking and waiting, my patron goes off.
It was a friend of mine named Kia. I went
(11:33):
back to the car to use the phone and give
her a call to get in the driver's seat with
the door open, and I can see Kevin and Jeremy
walking towards Madison Street to the front of the ram shop.
They eventually got out of my sight and as I'm
still talking on the phone, a few seconds a minute
(11:53):
later or a couple of minutes later, I hear a
gunshot and I'm reading after David taking from Kia bank
right now signed under penalty of perjury. In two thousand
and eighteen, she said, and I quote Antoine and I
were arguing about whether we would meet up that night,
and then suddenly I heard multiple gun shots in the background.
The gun shots did not sound like they were immediately
(12:15):
next to the phone, and I did not hear anything
said by anyone in connection with the gun shots. And
quote so from the only other actual witness to some
degree to this crime. The gun shots were in the background,
away from the phone and away from Antoine. Now what
happened next? I see Kevin running towards the car, and
(12:40):
I'm waiting on Jeremy to follow behind him. But Kevin
jumps in the passenger seat. He says, I got the bitch,
let's go. So I immediately started the car and I
put it in dry. As I make a left hand
turn facing Madison Street, arride passed and I see Jeremy
(13:01):
laying in the bushes. So once I get to Madison Street,
I immediately stop on the next block. I don't keep
going to Harlem to get on the expressway and try
and get away. I immediately pull over on the next block,
asked Kevin, like what happened, and before he had a
chance to respond, I just lost it. I don't I
(13:21):
don't remember if I hit him, or if I grabbed
him or if I I don't remember exactly what I did,
but I want to say I hit him. I can't remember.
I told him I'm going back to the scene. I'm
going back, so we get out the car. I immediately
tried to cut through someone's backyard to get straight to
the alley, and the fence was locked. I went to
(13:44):
the next entrance that I saw, and it was some
big green garbage kids blocking the walkway, so I just
started walking. That's when the Forest Park police initially put
the spotlight on us and told us to take our
hands out our pocket and walked towards them, and the
park police came. At this point, you had no idea
(14:07):
why Kevin did what he did. Before you even had
time to work through this scenario in your head, two
police departments and a bunch of E m T s
had already shown up on the scene, and this was
a congested neighborhood. There were lots of people living in
the vicinity and the shots were easily heard, so there
were a number of call ins to the police department.
(14:28):
The Oak Park police start to preserve the scene, interview witnesses,
and essentially they do everything that they need to prosecute
both Kevin Jackson and Antoine inside the first twelve hours,
and that started with padding you down while E. M.
T s were working on Jeremy not too far away
at the tire shop. Now, importantly, they did not find
(14:52):
a gun or a giant watter of cash on you.
The initial report reflects that, but the placement of the
giant a wad of cash mysteriously changed later in a
subsequent report. I'm sure you can guess why. But okay,
let's get back to the immediate aftermath. Did they find
the gun? An Officer Romero actually does find a gun
(15:14):
in a garbage can. Unfortunately finds it in a garbage
can where the towel wrap around it and also submerged
in water, so any fingerprints DNA et cetera from the
gun were no longer viable. What happened next? They put
me in the car and they put him in another car.
I remember them taking us back to the scene of
(15:35):
the crime. What happened when I got out the car,
I remember the first person in voice that I heard
was Officer Harris. He's like, Oh, that's Antoine QB. That's
the basketball star. And they walked me towards Jeremy as
the pyramidics was working on him. I guess they were
trying to get him to identify me. At this point, however,
(15:56):
Jeremy is unconscious and is not able to attempt to
identify either Kevin or Antoine. Now I need to point
out that later on there was a report from Officer
Harris saying that Jeremy named Antoine Qubi. Now this was
touted as a dying declaration, but when the a m
T s on the scene, the ones who had been
on the scene were asked to corroborate this alleged dying declaration.
(16:20):
They did not. Interestingly, this is not from a report
that Eddie Harris prepares himself. It's from a report prepared
by another police officer, supposedly taken from an interview that
occurred at three thirty a m. Which was after Kevin
Jackson had been interviewed by the police and had claimed
(16:40):
that he had nothing to do with this and that
it was Antoine. Right after they had figured out what
the narrative the crime would be, this alleged dying declaration
made its first appearance, but Antoine's name had gone out
over the dispatch, so police had Antoine's name early on,
perhaps from Jeremy. However, the context of how ants once
(17:02):
then came out is bothering to say the least. But
no paramedic heard or saw what Officer Harris later claimed
at trial. That's critical. We're gonna get back to an event.
So back to the scene. Jeremy was unconscious, unable to
make an id. Then what they took us on the
next block for show up, put the spotlight on us
(17:25):
the head, I guess people in the area, and they
did this two times. Come to find out later on
that no one identified me in the two shots, but
they identified Kevin both times. After that last show up,
they took us to the police station and they automatically
did a gunshot resident test on me. And I really
(17:46):
didn't know what that was at the time. I know
they was just swapping my hands right. Why would you
have known? Gunshot residue testing or GSR testing is not
something on any lay person's radar in even not to
this day, I would say, but definitely not back and now.
At the time, it was believed that the presence of
the elements associated with gunfire could only mean one of
(18:06):
three things. Either you handle a gun or Ammo fired
a gun or were in fact a gunshot victim. Please
check out our coverage of gunshot residue, un rawerful conviction
junk science with our host Josh Tubin. We're gonna have
a linked in the bile. But what is now known
is that the elements associated with gunfire can be deposited
by a number of other accessible sources, things like cigarette ash,
(18:27):
dried urine, brake pads. Not to mention, GSR can also
be found all over police stations and in police vehicles,
which means you can easily get what they called touch
transfer just from being in sitting in the back of
a squad cors that. So, the truth is that the
only probative and useful result of a GSR test is
a negative one in which the subject hadn't been given
(18:49):
an opportunity to wash their hands, which you were not. So,
in other words, without having been able to wash your hands,
the absence of any of those elements on your hands
or clothing would have been should have ruled you out
completely as a potential shooter. And the gun that was
used to shoot Jeremy was fired eight times. He was
only hit six times, but it was fired eight times.
(19:11):
It was a nine millimeter handgun, so they both have
the gun shot residue tests administered to them. Now, Antoine
says that his hands were swabbed right away, even though
the police reports said that evidence wasn't collected until after
I think it was three am. Interesting that this information
was recorded around the same time as Officer harris Is
alleged statement about the uncorroborated dying declarations. So what were
(19:34):
the results? Now, what's very interesting is that the police
actually don't bother to have these test results analyzed right away.
They actually sit on them for a two and a
half months. But when the when the results come back
for Antoine, they come back completely negative. So if if
if he had this gun and he shot at eight times,
they're not finding any of these particulates. And Antoine never
(19:56):
washed his hands before he was swabbed to do the
gunshot residue test, and the form is very specific about
whether there's been washing in the hands, because if the
hands are washed, the test is invalid. But you mean,
we'll talk about this a little later. But the lawyer
for Antoine, George Howard, doesn't use them in Antoine's defense
at trial, so that's not part of the story. But
(20:17):
there is another part of the story, as you suggested,
because the same test was performed on Kevin Jackson. Now,
the police report said that those tests weren't done until
like four hours later than Antoine's, like seven in the morning.
But Kevin Jackson was permitted to wash his hands twice
before the test, so before he was being fingerprinted, he
washed his hands and after, so it invalidated the test entirely.
(20:41):
So Antoine did not wash his hands. Kevin washed his
hands twice, so both sr test came back negative. However,
Antoine's was the only ballot test of the two. Why
in the world was Kevin allowed to wash his hands
twice before before the test? Perhaps just a mistake, or
maybe just maybe it was because he agreed to trade
(21:04):
testimony against Antoine for leniency. I mean, he had everything
to gain an exchange for cooperating. And don't forget Illinois
still had the death penalty of the time, so he
had everything at stake. And we'll get to the interview
process in a bit. But first, Antoine, what else do
you remember from your booking? They put me in this
real skinny room, you know, they took my clothes, all
(21:27):
my belongings. They gave me this real thin paper suit
and shoes to put on. As I was in their
room and it was going through the inventory, the officer
came in with a brown paper bag. It was a
big brown paper bag and he said, it on top
of the counter and he said, man, this belongs to
(21:48):
him as well. So when she opened it up and
lifted up it was a cowed the gun and some
money inside of the bag and said it just belongs
to him too. I don't think anyone needs dispelled out
for them, but inventory should be removed from your person
and logged. You can't just introduce new items from cottonos
(22:10):
where there was already a field report done. Logging would
have been found on his person. And we already mentioned
that the gun and towel have been found in a
trash can Bay Officer Romero. Now it's just given to Antone.
And the money, where the hell did that come from?
Why was that not found on Antoine during the path down?
(22:30):
I mean it would be a key fact issue in
a robbery case, like who has the money after the
robbery and the key police officer and all. This is
an Oak Park officer named Tesca. It was Tesca who
personally took custody of Antoine. The first report out from
the police radio is that there's been shots fired, so
he knows there's a gun involved. He knows that he
(22:53):
has one of the kids that might have been responsible
shooting the gun, so he does a full pat down
in the field. He finds Antoine's wallet with his idea
in it, but that's all. When they get back to
the police station, he claims that they had to do
another path down, and supposedly now he finds something brand
(23:16):
new that he didn't find in the field, and that
is a wad of bills. It's eleven hundred and four dollars.
It's eighty separate bills in a big wad. How could
Officer Testcut miss a wad as big as what Antoine
Kobe allegedly had in his right front pocket. The right
front pocket is not a place you just skim over.
(23:39):
It's the main pocket for the majority of humans, the
right of the left front pocket. And he wasn't gonna
miss a load of eighty bills. That's a big wad
that would cause a serious bulge. Not only was there
no lot of cash found on him, but there was
also no gun or wet towel. But now this bag
(23:59):
of evidence, it's just claimed. So what else do you remember?
I remember them putting me in this cell. It was
I think it was right in front of a the
entrance door, because every officer detective that came in they stopped.
They banged on the door. They called me stupid, said
I blew my life away. And I don't know how
(24:23):
how much time had passed. They came and gat me
out of the room and put me inside of an
interrogation room and handcuffed me behind my back. As I
said in the chair, They kept asking me, you know,
so what took place? And I kept telling him I
just want to use the phone. I was a little
sarcastic with him, you know, I wasn't answering that questions.
(24:43):
I told him I didn't have anything to say to him.
And every time they left out of the room a
little while later they had come back, not knowing that
when they were going back and forth, they were talking
to Kevin and then they had come and talk to
me and they say, okay, well this is what we
know took place, and this is what we know happened.
(25:05):
And I told him Okay, well, if you know, just
let me use the phone. I don't have nothing else
to say to you. They did this maybe like two
or three times. So the last time when they came in,
detective Munching and Jergenson kind of got frustrated with me,
the detectives and they walked out, and I was still
handcuffed in the chair. I was facing the door. It
(25:27):
was a piece of paper over the window of the door,
so you couldn't see in. I remember the door cracking open.
I could just see the light from the crack, and
I saw a hand hit the light inside of the room.
A few seconds later, the door pushed open. People were
like rushed in and I couldn't see their faces, but
(25:49):
I could see the silhouette of them coming in. I
don't know if it was one or two who was
behind me who was holding my shoulder and arms as
I sat in the chair. The other ones that came in,
they were just hitting me all over my body. This
(26:14):
episode is underwritten by A i G, a leading global
insurance company. A i G is committed to corporate social
responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives
of its employees and in the communities where we work
and live. In light of the compelling need for pro
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s commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the ai
(26:35):
G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to underrepresented communities and individuals. I sat there with
my head down for a while. My body was it
was hurting. They came in with the phone, they said
(26:57):
it on the death, plugged it up, and a blank
piece of paper. And I remember this piece of paper
saying time and signature, and it was like, okay, this
is a new protocol that we used to prove that
we allowed you to use the phone. We need you
to sign here. And he looked at his watch, and
(27:18):
when I did it, he took the phone and he
took the piece of paper and he walked out. I
didn't know if he was coming back or or what.
I know. Some time later, the state's attorney walked in
and then she wanted to go over my confession with me,
and I told her. I was like that I never
made a confession. I didn't do that. I never made
(27:40):
I never talked to anybody. So she showed me the paper.
It was tight and I hit my signature and I
told her I didn't I didn't make this statement, and
she walked out. That was the last time I saw her.
So now the money and gun magically were declared to
be in your possession. They got this piece of paper
that was when you signed it and is now being
(28:01):
passed off as assigned confession. And of course Kevin Jackson's
cooperation was also working against you. Now, there are so
many things wrong with both your alleged confession and Jackson's statement.
So let's just start with what did Kevin Jackson say. Well,
he says that he's recruited by Antoine to take part
(28:24):
in this robbery. You know that they go off in
the car together, and then because he has to separate
himself from the actual pulling of the trigger, he says
that when they're proceeding down the alley, he lags bhind
because he has to urinate in some bushes, and then
he doesn't see what actually happens. But he here's an
(28:44):
inn exchange between Antoine and Jeremy, and then he here's
the shots. And as opposed to Kevin Jackson running back
to the car, it's Antoine running back to the car.
And of course, when given the opportunity to essentially right
antoine statement for him, they aligned some things from Antoine's
alleged statement with Kevin's to make it seem like the
(29:06):
two statements were corroborating one another, like the detail about
Kevin allegedly stopping to pee in the bushes. Now, the
police might take issue with you or Antoine saying that
this alleged confession was anything but above board, But there's
both no evidence that it actually is, but rather there
is evidence to the contrary. There's no video, no audio recording,
(29:28):
no stenographer, and they're not even contemporaneous notes from the
police officers. And we know that abuse did occur. Right
those who came to see him saw that he got
really badly beat up by the cops. And because he
was denied a phone call, the first person who did
see him was not his mother or his lawyer, Mr
(29:48):
Mac who was my junior high basketball coach. Somehow he
knew I was there. They let him visit me. He
was okay, and I told him, no, I'll st our client.
I him I was hurting. He immediately said that he's
going to let my mom know. Because no one knew
where I was at when my mom and my aunt came.
(30:08):
When they saw the condition I was in, they lost it.
They went off on the detectives and and every other
police officer they saw that was in the station, and
they told him they had to leave and that they
wanted to visit me. They con visit me in the
county jail. After that, I was getting transported to the
county jail. It was me, Kevin, and it was another
guy named Anthony Ferguson who got arrested that night for
(30:32):
domestic violence. We were all in the Patti wagon and
I just started spitting up blood. Anthony Ferguson say, man,
was that you who are heard in the other room?
And I was like yeah. He said, man, I heard
everything that they've done to you. This is my name,
this is my number. You know, if your lawyers want
to talk to me, give him my information. And that
(30:52):
was the last that I heard of him until years
later when I was able to get an affidator from him.
Everything that Mr Ferguson, because you are happening to Antoine
corroborating to some degree what we've all heard here. Now
at this point, you had no idea Kevin Jackson had
flipped the situation to his advantage, and this obviously took
the heat off of Kevin Jackson. Kevin Jackson was tried
(31:13):
first under a theory that he was responsible for the
killings in part because he didn't stop what was going on,
and he actually supposedly drove the getaway car, and he
was sentenced to forty years in prison. He is now released.
Did you know that Kevin was doing this to you?
I didn't know this until we went to court in Maybrook,
(31:33):
me would Illinois. I thought you were tried separately. That
was just a regular court date, okay, so you were
both at court for your own proceedings. Was this his
bench trial and just a pre trial hearing for you? Exactly?
That was the pre trial. And all the bailiffs knew me.
So it was one day in court and his lawyer
(31:55):
comes in to the bullpen and it's like me, Kevin
and like other guys and his lawyer because lawyers telling okay,
when we're go in there, this is what's going to happen.
But he was talking so low to her I really
couldn't hear him. So Kevin and his lawyer went out
and immediately the bailiffs came in to the bullpend. He
was like, QB, he's out there saying that you did this,
(32:18):
like he had nothing to do with it. So I
was like, no, that's not true. So Kevin came back,
so I asked him. I say, I said, what just
happened out there? And he says nothing. So now it's
starting to make sense. Kevin saw how I said I
was getting so he bangs on the door and he
tells the bailor that he has to use the washroom,
(32:42):
and the bailor's let him out. I never saw Kevin
again until he came home in twenties seventeen, at which
point he said he was going to give you a
sign after David. That never came to crouation. But Kevin
never even testified at your trial. He didn't have to
confession evidence in your case. A complete fabrication was all
(33:03):
the state really needed. This confession turns into the centerpiece
of the state's case, but there are a number of
features of this so called confession that just make it
obvious that it's not a trustworthy description of what actually happened.
The statement reads nothing like the way Antoine would talk.
Are right, there were facts in the statement that are
(33:24):
totally contradicted by the unchallenged facts, like the statement says
there were four shots and there are actually eight shots.
There are four different versions. There were parts that were
totally inconsistent version diversion, like whose money was involved, Jeremy's
where is it Antoine? Whose gun was involved? Was it
Jeremy's gun? Did Antoine get the gun? When does Antoine
actually supposedly take possession of the gun before that night
(33:47):
or does it get it that night? There are these
versions are very much inconsistent and wild contradictions and inconsistencies
like these are hallmarks of false confessions. In this case,
they're taking wild stabs and a plausible version of its
consistent with their incentivized defendant in order to nap both
young men. So Antoine didn't go to trial for almost
three years. Part of that time he was in the
(34:10):
notorious Cook County jail, and his family hired an attorney,
a reputable guy at the time, George Howard, at this
time had a fairly distinguished record. He was an African
American criminal defense lawyer in Chicago. You know, he had
been a speaker at a lot of the area law
schools tried a lot of cases. But here's the problem.
(34:31):
What they don't know is that he's already clearly overburdened.
He had been suspended actually in and into NIX for
neglecting his cases. This is a time when there were
still death penalty in Illinois. And George Howard look at
Antoine's case and and he immediately told him, he said,
look at they say, you killed a white boy in
(34:53):
oak Park. He doesn't think there's any way to defend
Antoine given the evidence that he is aware of, and
he goes, I'm here to save your life. So George
Howard decides he's going to insert an insanity defense, and incredibly,
he coaches Antoine and his family to fake mental illness.
(35:14):
He told me how to act in front of the
judge when I go see the psychiatrists and psychologists. I
literally had to teach myself like I had to look
at other people behavior who was mentally ill or who
was insane. I mimicked them basically because this is what
my lawyer told me that I needed to do in
her to come home. I think I did it well
(35:35):
because they end up sending me to Elgin Mental Hospital.
So it was like three times, I was found unfit
to stand trial. I stayed in the mineral institution for
a few months, at least the county jail. I knew
what I was dealing with. As far as the violence,
I knew, I knew the environment, but the middle hospital,
(35:56):
you don't know who you're dealing with. And then the
medicines that they hit me on at that time were
spirit all hell, dog thors, the Those are the things
that I had to deal with because I was only
impresson because that's what was going to get me home.
He took his lawyer's advice. He was obviously was successful
(36:18):
at it for a while, but he couldn't sustain it,
and eventually the state is able to prove that this
is just a sham and Antoine is forced to go
to trial. This was a four day trial. The state
called seventeen witnesses, lay fact witnesses, people who saw the
car park, people who saw the car pull away, the
(36:38):
person who found the body. They have medical experts obviously
to talk about the cause of death, and forensic people
who talk about the gun. The gun was actually was
a stolen gun, and they couldn't get prints off the gun.
They certainly didn't have any fingerprints or DNA of Antoine's.
And then they also called some police supervisors and one
of the detectives, and the states that Jarney, you did
(37:00):
the interrogations and we've been over all the most damning
evidence already. They placed the cash among Antoine's possessions. Kevin
Jackson placed himself at the scene and implicated Antoine, although
Kevin did not testify at Antoine's trial. There's also this
fabricated confession and an alleged dying declaration. But George Howard
was not fighting the state's evidence. He didn't develop anything
(37:23):
to combat it. No defense, but the insanity defense. If
almost thinking, I think he said something to the effect
of open argument. My client didn't do this, and there's
no evidence to prove that he did it, but if
he did do it, being he was insane during the time,
so I wishy washy insanity play on top of the
(37:44):
evidence that the state did actually present, fabricated as it was.
It's so crazy way because the state is fabricating all
their evidence, and your attorney is fabricating and insanity. You
weren't insane, and the jury officer was going to see
through that but there was a lot he could have
done instead of leading insanity, including calling your middle school
coach who could have corroborated that you'd been beaten. Or
(38:07):
he could have just pointed out all the glaring inconsistencies
and contradictions between statements, not to mention the inconsistent reports
about Antoine's possessions, namely the lot of cash that wasn't
found in his right front pocket during the initial path
town and of course the E M T s who
would have refused the officer's testimony about the dying declaration.
In light of all of that, Officer Harris's testimony a
(38:28):
trial was particularly devastating. Officer Harris says, what he gets
to the scene and Jeremy is still conscious that he
asks him a question, specifically who shot you? And Harris
says that Jeremy allegedly said it was Antoine QB. The
question is what exactly did Harris ask? We do know
(38:51):
that Antoine's name went out over the police radio, so
Antoine's name came from somewhere and probably came from Jeremy.
But the is what question was he answering? And here's
an important piece of evidence. The paramedics were there in
two minutes from when they were called. So they get
there very shortly, if not exactly, at the time when
(39:12):
the police show and there are five paramedics on the scene,
not one of them corroborates Harris's story. No one other
than the police officers say that Jeremy identified Antoine as
a shooter. Right. We're talking about the same police department
that developed an alternate slate of Antoine's personal effects, that
beat the ship out of him and gave him a
(39:33):
blank piece of paper to sign, then filled it out
with an alleged confession. So pretty close to zero credibility
to go around here. So when you're only sources are
Oak Park p D or the e m T S,
I'd go with the e m T S. Right. They
don't have it, They don't have a motivation to lie,
and they didn't equivocate. They were sure that they hadn't
(39:53):
heard Harris asked the question who shot you? One thing
we do know for sure is that Eddie Harris was
fired by the Old Park Police Department shortly after what
happened here, in part for lying in the course of
his duties. So there's incredible doubt that Eddie Harris told
the truth about what question he asked Jeremy Bruder as
(40:14):
he lay dying. But that's the story that Eddie Harris
told the jury, and George Howard didn't call a single
paramedic to talk to the contrary. There's so much that
he did not do. He did not develop the defense
that Antoine had no motive to shoot Jeremy, that Antoine
had no special need for that kind of money at
knowing her actions with Jeremy, that was anything close to
(40:35):
supporting the possibility that he showed him. He was on
the phone with his girlfriend when this happened. But George
Howard doesn't develop that no phone records, He didn't put
his girlfriend on the stand. You know that Antoine actually
stopped the car, got out and went back to the
scene when he knows that people have heard the shots,
(40:58):
he knows that the police are coming, and he's going
right back there. You know, when George Howard doesn't do
anything with the gunshot residue tests, and you know, he
doesn't attack the supposed dying declaration, the claim that Antoine
had the money on him after the shooting. He doesn't
attack Antoine's alleged confession. He doesn't do these things, and
(41:19):
why do any of that when your strategy was insanity.
George Howard called one witness, a psychiatrist from Michigan, who
came and testified that Antoine qb. Didn't have a sufficient
mental state to understand what he was doing, that he
essentially was insane. The problem was, or one of the problems,
was that he was testifying based on Michigan standards for insanity,
(41:43):
and the fact of the matter is they were in
Illinois court and they needed to have the Illinois standards supplied.
So his testimoney was rejected. So that's how this case
went to the jury. So the state's case went completely
unrebutted and the only defense was rejected. The only thing
that George Howard did that worked was to convince the
judge that because Antoine had no prior criminal history, it
(42:05):
would be cruel to sence him to death. So he
was spared the death penalty, but told that he essentially
would die in prison. They gave me natural life without
the possibility of the role for the murder, and then
they gave me thirty years for the armed robbery. I
remember him saying guilty, and everything else went to blank,
(42:27):
like literally quiet, and I heard one person, my mom.
I heard my mother cry, and I didn't hear anything else.
I didn't hear no one else talking. I didn't hear
anything but my mother, you know, leaving the county jail,
(43:00):
going to UM Joliette, which was annexed, you know, that
was the receiving. I think that was the scariest ride ever.
You know, you get in, you know they strip you
and make you take the shower, and you know, throw
the powder on you and put you in the I
DLC uniform. I stayed in Juliette for a few days
(43:23):
and they told me I was going to the pit.
You know, that was the nickname for Menard. And you
know that's right there in the Mississippi River, like eight
hours away from home. When I got down there, it
was so racist. You know, it was literally separated, you know,
blacks against whites. You know, you had a lot of
(43:44):
race rides down there. Um. You know, people literally dying
on the regular. I've seen everything from murders to rape.
I've seen people die right in front of me. I've
seen people get beat over over packer cookies. It can
be anything, anything can trigger anything be triggering, you know,
(44:07):
We hear about the conditions in our prisons every week,
but no one who hasn't been there can imagine. Unfortunately,
your post conviction proceedings were and are very similar to
things we hear on this show every week as well.
His trial was by two thousand one, his direct appeal
had been denied. Antoine also pursued a habeas petition in
(44:28):
federal court in two thousand months, but that was also
quickly denied. And you think that making the case for
ineffective assistance might not be that hard considering the defense
or lack of defense that you had, but with the
evidence presented, accepted its truth in this case, and knowing
what we know about our impellate system, is understandable that
he was met with the Niles. What about his post
conviction petition. He did not file a post conviction petition
(44:50):
until two thousand six, and then it was amended it
later in two thousand nine to include actual innocence claims
at one point supported by affidavits. Right, You've got a
few who affi David's in two thousand and eight, one
from an ex girlfriend of Jamie Jackson who said that
Kevin was living with Jamie at the time, and when
she called Jamie the day after the shooting this would
be June two, that Jamie was upset that some money
(45:13):
and shoes, along with a nine millimeter pistol were missing.
When she asked Jamie about Antoine's arrest, he told her
that quote, Antoine would not be in trouble because Kevin
Jackson would tell the police what really happened that night
and quote. Also in two thousand eight, man named Robert Walker,
who did time with Kevin Jackson at Danville Correctional from
(45:34):
two thousand three to two thousand five, also swore that
Kevin had admitted to the crime multiple times over that period,
in addition to saying that Antoine was not responsible for it,
saying and I quote Kevin Jackson say that Antoine QBI
got the time for the case that he should have
got end quote. There were also afid David's from Antoine's
(45:56):
mother and aunt who swore to his injured condition when
they visited him at Oak Park p D. And then
in two thousand and ten that caught up with Anthony Ferguson,
who swore to seeing Antoine before and after his night
of horror and torture at the Oak Park Police Station
injury free the night before, followed by spitting up blood
(46:16):
in the patty Way. The state eventually made a motion
to dismiss the original post conviction petition because it was
too late. Unfortunately for Antoine, the appellate court decided in
two thousand thirteen that he was too late, and so
they threw his case out. So in this intermediate period
of time between two thousand thirteen in the present, there
(46:36):
have been a number of different efforts, primarily by Antoine himself,
to try to develop evidence of his innocence. One of
those efforts was having a linguistics expert, Richard Leonard, examine
the language used in the alleged confession and compared to
Antoine's known writings and speech, and the conclusion of this
expert was that there was no similarity between the language
(46:59):
that was used in the sign statement that the police
used as confession and the way in which Antoine actually
speaks and rights. In fact, they found that the language
more accurately reflected the writing of the detective who allegedly
took the statement. For example, quote I met Jeremy at
cass Avenue at sixty third Street in westmont at an
(47:20):
unknown time. That is definitely cop talk. Another example was
the use of the word then, as in I then
told Jeremy to move his jeep to the end of
the alley. We both then went into the building after
ringing Jamie's bell. Every time the word then was used
in the alleged confession, it followed the sentences subject. Now,
(47:42):
compared to other known writings of Antoine, he always put
the word then first. For example, then I went here
that I did this, that I did that right. And
what's more alarming still is that the use of the
word then closely resembles the writings of the detective testifying
as Antoine at his trial. This report was done back
(48:04):
to two thousand fourteen. Now, in two thousand seventeen, as
we referred to earlier, Kevin Jackson was released. I actually
talked to him over the phone. A mutual friend of ours,
you know, connected us and gave me his number. I
wanted him to do the right thing. I wanted him
to tell people that I didn't do it. And I
(48:24):
called him. You know, he was talking to me like
like nothing happened, Like he didn't just sit there and
tell them that I did this. But I asked him
I said, I needed you to talk to my lawyers
and tell him I didn't do this. I need you
to be honest and tell him the truth. And he
said he would. When they did try to set up
(48:46):
meetings and appointments with him, he wouldn't show, so, uh,
you know, he kept saying that he was going to
give me an after David telling the truth, but he
never followed through. So that's where I'm at now. And
this happened just before Joe's firm, Riley Safer Holmes and
Ken Silla picked up Antoine's case pro bono in two
(49:08):
thousand eighteen, and they have also gotten the same run
around from Kevin Jackson. If that's not to say other
avenues are not being explored to solidified Antoine's claim of
actual innocence. So those efforts include efforts to explore Kevin
Jackson's willingness to tell the truth what Kevin Jackson said
to other people about what happened that night. Certain individuals
(49:31):
have been identified who say that Kevin Jackson has said
explicitly that Antoine was not personally involved. So more people
who corroborate what Robert Walker said in two thousand ten.
Now since two thousand eighteen. Both his junior high basketball
coach who visit him at the police station, and his
ex girlfriend, Kia Banks, have both come forward, signing after
Davis corroborating with Antoine and his GSR test has been
(49:54):
saying all along that Kevin Jackson shot Jeremy Bruder, that
Antoine completely unaware of Kevin Jackson's plans, as evidenced by
his behavior in the aftermath. I mean, why the help
with a guilty person returned to the scene to essentially
turn himself in. You know, why would a bright, super
(50:16):
talented high school basketball star with college offers all over
America and no history of criminal behavior, no history of
violent behavior shoot one of his best friends eight times
for you don't have to be sure a lot Holmes
to figure this out. So, is there anything that our
(50:37):
audience can do to help? If anybody who's listening to
this podcast has any information that they think might be
valuable to us in terms of what it is that
we're trying to do for Antoine, that I would sincerely
ask that they contact our office. My name is Joe
O'Hara and the firm is Riley Safer Homes and Cancilla
(51:01):
we'll have action steps lenked in the bio, including the
change dot org petition asking for relief in his case.
And that brings us to the best part of the show.
Let's face it, it's my favorite part, and it's called
closing arguments. And this is the part where I thank
each of you, both of you for joining us today
and courageously sharing Antoine and your story. Um, and now
(51:25):
I'm just gonna turn my mike off, leave my headphones on,
and kick back on my chair to listen to your
closing thoughts. Let's start with Joe and finish up with Antoine.
You know, the criminal justice system has failed Antoine horribly.
You always have to come back to that question, which
is why would hop bright kid, a super talented athlete
(51:46):
like Antoine Cub with no history, no history at all
of criminal behavior, violent behavior, why would he do something
like this? The state's case against Antoine had big holes
from the beginning, and and they knew it because there
was no good motive. He wasn't a kid from the
streets who had done anything like this before, and they
(52:07):
didn't have any witness except for somebody who was involved
in a very biased witness, Kevin Jackson, and they didn't
have any forensic evidence or physical evidence of any kind,
you know, they didn't have any gun evidence, or blood evidence,
or fingerprint evidence or DNA evidence or the The only
test that they did that g SR was was negative.
So the state had to do something and they filled
(52:29):
the holes in the case with the evidence that was
manufactured by the police, and that was essentially the supposed
dying identification of Antoine by Jeremy, the possession of the
robbery money that was planted on Antoine, and then the
the alleged confession, and all of this was exacerbated by
the fact that George Howard decided to rely only on
(52:52):
an insanity defense to try to save Antoine from the
death penalty. So me where we find ourselves as Antoine
is endured over you know, over twenty five years at
this point of incarceration as a result of these failures
of the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, and particularly in Cook County, UH,
(53:14):
situations like Antoine's are not unusual. UH. It is very
important for the public to support the efforts of those
in public service, including the people who run this Wrongful
Conviction podcast. They need your support, they need your encouragement
to continue to identify and rectify some of the horrible
(53:38):
things that have resulted because the system doesn't work the
right way. I want to first thank you for allowing
me this opportunity to speak the truth. A lot of
people didn't know about a lot of these things that
took place during my arrest, before and after, and I'm
glad you gave me this platform to do so. I
just asked that, you know, people not make assumptions, just
(54:03):
use the black and white evidence in front of you.
And I just hope that in the near future that
I'd be home because I missed being a father, I
missed out being a grandfather, and you know, being a son.
All that was taken away from me, including my potential future.
(54:23):
You know, who knows what could have came of it,
But I am grateful and I'm going to continue to fight,
and I just want to thank you. So I know
my time is wrapping up now. So um, I just
want to thank everybody for being an advocate for me
and supporting me. Thank you for listening to Ron for Conviction.
(54:48):
I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall, Jeff Clyburne,
and Kevin Wardis with research by Lila Robinson. The music
in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram
at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and
on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava
(55:09):
for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow
me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flom.
Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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