ROOSEVELT MYLES WITH Attorneys Ashley Cohen (left) and Jennifer Bonjean (right).
After a contentious five-hour evidentiary hearing in a Cook County courtroom, Roosevelt Myles was granted his certificate of innocence, the last step in a long legal battle that finally cleared his name decades after he was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder.
The victory came two years after Judge Carol Howard threw out Myles’ murder conviction following a 22-year wait for an evidentiary hearing. He served 28 years in prison before he was released in 2021.
To clear his criminal record and file a claim for compensation with the Illinois Court of Claims, Myles had to obtain his certificate of innocence by filing a petition in criminal court.
But when Myles filed a petition for his certificate of innocence, State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office filed papers in March asking the court to deny Myles the important document he needed to move on with his life.
After hearing both sides and examining the evidence in a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courts building, Judge Howard sided with Myles, saying he and his attorneys met the standard in proving his actual innocence.
“There’s no physical evidence that links Mr. Myles to the shooting,” Howard said.
“It’s clear that Mr. Myles has established his innocence.”
After the ruling, Myles left the courtroom and hugged Attorneys Jennifer Bonjean and Ashley Cohen. They had spent the last seven years battling the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and Prosecutor Todd Dombrowski. But Myles’ legal battle was much longer.
“I’m just relieved that this is finally over. It feels good,” Myles said minutes after winning in court.
Prosecutors have until August 26 to appeal the ruling.
Roosevelt Myles’ case has been covered by the Crusader for seven years. However, Myles has been fighting to clear his name for three decades.
In 1996, Myles was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery after prosecutors said he shot and killed 16-year-old Shaharan “Tony” Brandon while he and 15-year-old Octavia Morris were walking out of a house on Chicago’s West Side at 2:45 a.m. on November 16, 1992. Myles, who was near the area at the time of the murder, was stopped, questioned and eventually arrested and charged with Brandon’s murder.
Myles was convicted in a jury trial in January 1996. After having his post-conviction case dismissed, Myles appealed to an Illinois appellate court, which granted him an evidentiary hearing in 2000.
For the next 16 years, Myles had a string of public defenders who were granted over 100 continuances by Judge Dennis Porter.
In 2017, Myles retained Bonjean as his private attorney. In 2019, Foxx’s office had Porter dismiss Myles’ post-conviction case, but an appellate court sent it back to Cook County. Porter recused himself and retired from the bench.
In 2021, the case went to Judge Williams Raines. Raines, a former cop, was removed from the bench after he was caught on a hot mic disparaging Bonjean.
The case was assigned to Howard in 2022. She threw out Myles’ conviction on December 5, 2022.
Myles then filed a petition to obtain his certificate of innocence, but in a surprising move, Foxx’s office announced it would oppose Myles’ efforts to obtain the document. Sources told the Crusader that prosecutors visited Morris’ home, asking her to testify on behalf of the state despite her recanted testimony.
There were no fingerprints or DNA evidence that linked Myles to the crime. Myles didn’t even fit the description of the killer. And Myles had an alibi, Michael Hooker, who wasn’t allowed to testify at the trial in 1996.
At the time of the murder, Hooker, in court documents, said he saw Myles leave an apartment located several blocks from the crime scene.
The state relied on the false testimony of Morris to convict Myles. She later recanted her testimony in two affidavits where she said disgraced detective Anthony Wojcik and five police officers kept visiting her home to pressure her into lying that Myles committed the murder.
Two years ago, during the exoneration hearing, Morris appeared in the courtroom before Judge Howard ready to testify and help clear Myles’ name.
Morris was not present Monday at Myles’ hearing for his certificate of innocence for unexplained reasons.
But during the hearing, Dombrowski, the State’s attorney, tried to bring up police reports that involved Sandra Burch, a sex worker and witness who originally said Myles did not commit the murder. Like Morris, Burch told police that Myles didn’t look like the killer, but that she had changed her story in subsequent police reports.
Burch was not at Myles’ hearing on Monday. She died before Myles was convicted in 1996.
During Monday’s hearing, Judge Howard said Myles appeared “confused” when he initially told Dombrowski during cross-examination that he made statements to the police after he was arrested. When Dombrowski asked Myles again, he said, “I told them I didn’t do it.” When Dombrowski asked Myles again if that was a statement, Myles replied, “It’s the truth, not a statement.”
Dombrowski, during the hearing, also tried to bring up Burch and Morris to link Myles to the murder. Dombrowski also tried to bring up another witness Deborah Lenoir, who testified during Myles’ trial in 1996 that she was on her way to a liquor store when she saw Myles in the area.
But Judge Howard said Lenoir “never implicated Mr. Myles as being involved in the shooting.”
At one point during the hearing, Dombrowski blamed Myles for bringing out his own conviction and incarceration. That infuriated Bonjean, who was aggressive throughout the hearing as she objected to many allegedly false statements Dombrowski made.