A Chicago man was exonerated Wednesday after spending almost three decades behind bars for two 1994 murders — a conviction he and his lawyers claim was based on a false confession he signed after a “grueling, abusive” 14-hour interrogation by three Chicago detectives.
David Wright, 46, was arrested when he was 17 in August 1994 in the slaying of two friends, 16-year-old Tyrone Rockett and 26-year-old Robert Smith. They had been shot in Smith’s backyard after returning from a convenience store. But according to Wright’s lawyers, no forensic evidence linked him to his friends’ killings, and no eyewitness identified him as the perpetrator.
“I was 17. I was a kid. I still had a lot to figure out, and I still have a lot to learn,” Wright told reporters after his conviction was thrown out by Cook County Judge Carol Howard at the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Wednesday. “But that don’t make me guilty of a crime.”
After a decade of litigation, Wright was released from prison in September 2022, weeks after his conviction was vacated and shortly before his 46th birthday. Since his release, Wright has been making up for lost time by spending time with his family and studying to take a GED test. On Wednesday, he said it felt good to be exonerated, but that he still has mixed feelings.
“People are going to sit in jail for another 30 years on the credibility of dirty police,” he said. “Now, I understand that everybody’s trying to do their job, I understand everybody is trying to...
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