Cook County’s conviction integrity unit repeatedly denied freedom to prisoners who were later cleared

Still in prison after 18 years despite the flimsy evidence of his guilt, Kevin Jackson tore open the letter from the Cook County conviction integrity unit — a squad in the prosecutor’s office set up to dig into cases such as his and free the wrongfully convicted.

He was filled with hope prosecutors in the unit would see his innocence in the accounts of witnesses who recanted, the allegations of strong-arming by detectives and the surviving victim who testified Jackson didn’t pull the trigger that night in 2001 on Chicago’s South Side.

Read more reporting by Dan Hinkel in Injustice Watch on the Cook County Conviction Integrity Unit and issues, including conflicts of interest by its attorneys, that have prevented it from fully achieving the goals it was created to accomplish.