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Another Black teenager is accusing Waukegan police of extracting a false confession to a shooting.
A lawsuit filed by the teen, Corinthian “Corey” Burns, alleges that detectives of the north Chicago suburb failed to grant his request for an attorney and repeatedly lied to him during an all-night 2018 interrogation when he was 15 years old after a fatal shooting. His confession led to first-degree murder charges and 16 months behind bars until a judge threw out the confession.
The case follows an apology by Waukegan officials for a false confession that detectives extracted this past February from another 15-year-old, Martell Williams, who was charged with shooting a store clerk — charges that were dropped only after his family proved he was playing basketball in another town during the crime.
“A good investigator can get an adult to say things that they did not do, especially over a long period of interrogating,” said former Waukegan Det. Larnell Farmer, who retired from the department in 2012 and said false confessions are even easier to extract when the suspect is a child.
“If that kid confesses to killing Jimmy Hoffa, then we write that down [and] he must be guilty,” Farmer said. “All that juvenile wants to do is to get out of that room.”
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