This article was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.
In 1983, Alton Logan was convicted of killing off-duty Cook County corrections officer Lloyd Wickliffe in a Chicago McDonald’s, and sentenced to life in prison. What Logan didn’t know was that another man had confessed to the crime.
Andrew Wilson confided his guilt to his attorneys, Dale Coventry and Jamie Kunz, who didn’t come forward with the information for more than two decades. The lawyers said they were bound by a sacrosanct rule of legal conduct: attorney-client confidentiality. But according to the lawyers, Wilson agreed they could disclose the confession after his death.
“Now I pray that the innocent who are imprisoned will hear the steel doors of their cells unlock and will walk out with their heads held high. Even if it takes 26 years.”
-Alton Logan
Read Alton’s story of conviction based on undisclosed ballistic evidence, fighting the system, the emergence of an affidavit that set him free, and life after exoneration here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evb4ap/i-served-26-years-for-murder-even-though-the-killer-confessed
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