CHESTER, Ill. (AP) — Imprisoned for life for a double killing after what he said was a coerced confession, Eric Caine spent years behind bars quietly wishing he had been condemned to death instead.
Had that been the case, the 45-year-old Caine
figures he would have been freed about eight years ago, when a former governor
emptied Illinois' death row and pardoned four of those inmates — including the
man tried alongside him for the stabbing of an elderly Chicago couple.
After pressing for years to get his case
re-examined, Caine finally walked out of prison and into the sunshine Thursday
after more than two decades of incarceration.
A judge had ordered his release a day earlier, the
same day the former police commander Caine accused of threatening him with a
gun reported to a federal prison for lying about the torture of suspects.
"Let me breathe the air — I just want to enjoy
this moment right now," Caine said after strolling out of Menard
Correctional Center, the maximum-security lockup near the Mississippi River,
about 60 miles southeast of St. Louis.
Wearing jeans, a multicolored striped shirt and
shoes provided by his attorney, Caine brought out with him what little he had —
a Bible and family pictures. He said he craved oxtail stew, hopes to find a
job, start a ministry and marry girlfriend Sara Bush, whom he met while her
grandson was doing time at Menard.
"This is the first day of the rest of my
life," Caine, clutching Bush's hand, told reporters across the road from
the prison.
Just the previous night, he was watching TV and
heard a newscaster mention his name, then something about being released. Caine
got confirmation Thursday morning, after he reported to his assigned detail in
the prison's law library.
Caine said he isn't bitter about his incarceration,
though he plans to seek recourse over his time spent behind bars.
"It will not make me whole. Only the grace of
God will do that," he said. "But I will tell you I cannot describe
the anguish that I have been suffering from throughout the years, seeing
everybody getting justice and me being forgotten. I felt extremely discarded,
as if I didn't matter."
Moments later, Caine was having his first meal as a
free man: A chicken-bacon melt with onion rings at a diner in Chester.
Caine's 1989 conviction came largely on the basis
of his confession and statements made during police questioning. Both he and
his co-defendant, Aaron Patterson, claimed then-Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge
and his "Midnight Crew" of detectives coerced them into implicating
themselves in the 1986 killings of the couple found stabbed 34 times.
Caine says that Burge walked into the police
station room where he was being held, put a gun on the table and told him he'd
be worse off if he didn't confess.
Then one of the detectives cupped his hand and hit
Caine so hard on the side of the head that he ruptured his eardrum, leading him
to give a false statement while "blinded by pain," his attorney,
Russell Ainsworth, said this week.
Ainsworth said there was no other evidence of
Caine's guilt, including fingerprints or DNA. At the time of the slaying, Caine
testified, he was at his aunt's birthday party.
After allegations surfaced that Burge and his
detectives were coercing black suspects into confessing to crimes, prosecutors
began reviewing past convictions involving Burge's squad.
Patterson, who had been sentenced to death, was
pardoned along with three other men on the state's death row in 2003 by then-Gov.
George Ryan after the Republican said he had concluded Patterson's confession
was coerced. All four inmates made similar torture claims and years after being
pardoned reached a $20 million settlement with the city.
Caine said Thursday he came within one vote of
being sentenced to death by a jury. After seeing that death-row cases drew
glaring media and political attention over concerns about wrongful convictions,
he said, he wished he had been condemned as well — especially after Patterson
got freed.
"If I would have been on death row, I would
have been out a long time," he said.
Cook County Judge William H. Hooks ruled in January
that Caine was entitled to a post-conviction hearing based on his allegations
of torture, and prosecutors decided to drop the case rather than proceed, said
Stuart Nudelman, a former judge acting as the special prosecutor in Caine's
case.
"We were left with, at this point, a
questionable confession and really no other evidence," Nudelman said.
Ainsworth speculates that former governor Ryan may
not have known about Caine's case when he freed Patterson.
Hooks' ruling that Caine should be freed came
Wednesday, the same day Burge reported to prison in North Carolina to begin
serving a 4 1/2-year sentence for lying about the torture of suspects.
Ryan's 2003 pardons put a spotlight on Patterson,
who in the wake of his release after 17 years in prison — most of it on death
row — cast himself in the role of a community leader and was highly critical of
the police.
But little more than a year after being freed, he
was arrested and accused of dealing drugs as a ranking street gang leader.
Patterson, 46, is now serving a 30-year sentence at a federal prison in central
Pennsylvania.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
Photo
Caption: Eric
Caine, center, greets his girlfriend Sara Bush upon his release from the Menard
Correctional Facility in Chester, Ill. Thursday, March 17, 2011. WIth Caine and
Bush are Elliot Slosar left, Russell Ainsworth and Frank Bednarz right, all of
the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School. They greeted
Caine on his release after murder charges against him were dismissed. Caine was
first imprisoned on the charges in 1986. (AP Photo/Sid Hastings)
