Long imprisoned, man wins early release amid pandemic, but efforts to clear his name continue

CHICAGO — Antonio McDowell had been injured in a drive-by shooting, so the 21-year-old thought he was accompanying Chicago police officers back to the station to try to identify his assailant.

Instead, he found himself under arrest for murder, then later convicted and sentenced to 103 years in prison.

But now, nearly 23 years after the fateful night that he lost his freedom, McDowell is on a new, if unlikely path. He walked out of a state prison last month a free man eager to put his past behind him and committed to proving he was wrongfully convicted.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker commuted McDowell’s sentence to time served June 22 in another round of executive clemency decisions amid the coronavirus pandemic. Since March, the governor has either pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of 33 men and women convicted of crimes that date to 1978 and range from cannabis possession to murder.

At least two of them, including McDowell, were convicted based on investigations of former Chicago Detective Reynaldo Guevara, who has been accused by more than four dozen people of manipulating witnesses, fabricating evidence and framing suspects in predominantly Hispanic West Side neighborhoods in the 1980s and 1990s.

In an emergency clemency petition to the governor in early April, McDowell’s legal team at the Exoneration Project in Chicago cited the mushrooming allegations against Guevara to bolster their argument that McDowell is innocent.

They also argued his continued confinement was akin to a death sentence given an autoimmune disorder that affects his ability to breathe. At least 13 Illinois inmates have died since March of COVID-19 complications, including 12 at Stateville Correctional Center, where McDowell was housed.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx did not object to his possible release, based on his medical condition, but prosecutors still maintain evidence points to his guilt.

Though Pritzker did not pardon McDowell, which would have vacated his murder conviction, the governor commuted his sentence to time served. McDowell was released one day later, returning to Chicago and the home of his waiting mother, with whom he has remained close.

Now a 44-year-old grandfather, McDowell said he is eager to rebuild his life and relationships with his two daughters, who were 6 and nearly 3 when he went to prison. He hopes to find a job that allows him “to earn an honest income” and continue with his college education, a journey he began behind bars that he said has sustained him.

“Honestly, I put what happened to me behind me,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “Now I’m looking at what’s in front of me.”

FROM VICTIM TO SUSPECT

McDowell was struggling in 1997.

He grew up in Chicago’s tough Austin neighborhood on the city’s West Side and admits he never dared to dream back then of lofty goals like a college education.

No one in his family ever graduated high school, he said. And he failed to complete even a month of classes.

At 21, McDowell was unemployed with two children. He had a juvenile record for a robbery he committed at 16, records show.

Then his life forever changed in April of that year.

Wearing a cast on his arm due to being shot about two weeks earlier, McDowell said he was looking through photos of alleged gang members to try to identify his assailant when he inexplicably went from victim to suspect and was placed in a lineup for an unsolved murder some seven months earlier.

On the afternoon of Dec. 21, 1996, 41-year-old Mario Castro had walked out of his garage into his backyard in Humboldt Park when he was fatally shot at close range. The assailant fled after a confrontation with the victim’s nephew, who was fired upon after rushing to his uncle’s aid but went uninjured.

Detective Guevara investigated the crime.

Police theorized the murder was linked to a nearby robbery that took place about 25 minutes later, in which a woman said an armed assailant pointed a gun at her and repeatedly threatened to kill her before making off with her purse and car, abandoning the vehicle 2 miles away.

Police believed the perpetrator of both robberies lived in the neighborhood given the location of where the stolen car was found, but the case quickly grew cold. No arrests were made.

Seven months later, McDowell was shot in the hand during a drive-by shooting. His lawyers said it is unknown if he was the target or struck in the crossfire of random violence. Though he told police he did not see his shooter, McDowell accompanied them to look through gang photos at the Area 5 police station two weeks later on July 23, 1997, according to his clemency petition.

In his petition, McDowell alleges Guevara grew angry with him after he refused to identify the detective’s chosen suspect in the drive-by shooting. McDowell was then placed in a lineup himself.

Guevara arrested him for murder that night after two witnesses from Castro’s homicide and a third from the subsequent robbery identified him in the lineup, the petition states. Unbeknown to McDowell, they also identified him in earlier photo arrays that Guevara showed them days earlier.

McDowell’s attorney, Anand Swaminathan, argues there is strong evidence of his client’s innocence. He said the photo arrays and in-person lineup were procedurally improper and highly suggestive. He noted eyewitness identification — especially seven months later — is often flawed and unreliable.

Swaminathan said McDowell had no connection to the victims or their neighborhood, and police lacked a confession or a shred of physical evidence linking him to the crimes.

McDowell was charged with murder, attempted murder and aggravated vehicular hijacking and held until his trial in March 1999. The case against him was based solely on eyewitness testimony. At his trial, the three witnesses again identified him. Guevara also testified.

McDowell never took the stand. His assistant public defender argued it was a case of mistaken identity and McDowell, who was home babysitting earlier in the day and did not have a car, could not have physically reached the neighborhood so quickly. A friend served as an alibi witness.

Then-Cook County Judge Marcus Salone found McDowell guilty. At his July 26, 1999, sentencing hearing, McDowell apologized to Castro’s family for its loss, but he told the judge he was not responsible.

“I was framed,” McDowell said that day. “Police know they framed me because when they arrested me I was a victim. … They placed me in the lineup. I am talking about I ain’t have no knowledge of (Mario) Castro, his family. I didn’t murder him. Putting me under the jail (is) not going to make the family happy because the killer is still at large. You all, I mean, I can’t, I don’t even know what to say. I know I didn’t kill that man. That is not my M.O. That is all I have to say.”

The judge sentenced him to 103 years in prison. With day-for-day credit, his first opportunity for release was July 2048.

Two decades later, McDowell said he still recalls standing before the judge at sentencing. He said absent from the courtroom gallery was his mother, Florine, who couldn’t bear to witness him be sent to prison.

“You can really see how uneducated I was at that time and the pain in (my) words,” he said. “I was confused. I always thought, ‘OK, I’ll be right out. I didn’t do that. These people know I didn’t do anything wrong.’ That was my naive way of thinking. I had a lot of faith in (the criminal justice system) and they let me down.”

But not everyone is convinced the wrong outcome was reached.

Ruth Morales-Santana, the victim in the carjacking, told the Tribune she vividly recalls the crime and is certain it was McDowell who robbed her. Then a single mother of four children out running an errand for her son’s birthday, she said that December afternoon was warm, with melting snow.

Her assailant pointed a gun at her stomach and repeatedly threatened to kill her as she tried to negotiate with him to at least keep her identification. She envisioned her children growing up without her.

“It was him,” she said, “and he knows it.”

CANARY IN A COAL MINE?

McDowell would serve the first decade of his confinement at Menard Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison in southern Illinois.

When asked how he coped with his lot in life, especially if innocent, his response reflects the harsh reality of his world before his arrest.

“I come from nothing,” he said. “I come from a place that’s hard already.”

As the years passed and his appeals to higher courts failed, McDowell said there were many times he lost hope.

“There was a lot of pain and a lot of anger,” he said. “There’s things I still grapple with.”

His request for a transfer was granted in 2008, and by that summer corrections officials moved him to Stateville, near Joliet, closer to his family and with more educational programs for inmates.

By then, the allegations against Detective Guevara were swirling.

Dozens of people have accused him over the years of either pinning false murder cases on suspects, shaking down drug dealers for protection money or taking payments from gang members to change the outcomes of police lineups.

The cases against 20 defendants either collapsed or their convictions were tossed out, public records show. Federal juries in 2009 and 2018 awarded multimillion-dollar verdicts. Several other lawsuits are pending.

In case after case, Guevara refused to testify when asked under oath about the allegations. When forced to take the stand in 2017 in a case involving two men who accused him of abuse, he gave testimony so muddled that a judge accused him of “bald-faced lies” and said he had lost all credibility as a witness.

Attempts to reach Guevara, 76, were unsuccessful. He has never been charged with wrongdoing. He retired in 2005 after a 29-year police career and drew a city pension of nearly $81,000 last year, records show.

Other imprisoned defendants connected to his work are pushing prosecutors to have their cases reheard. Foxx’s conviction integrity unit is conducting a “comprehensive review” of Guevara’s cases, an office spokeswoman said.

Swaminathan, who through the Exoneration Project is representing other clients connected to Guevara, said he hopes prosecutors will review the cases “with fresh eyes and will act swiftly where justice demands it.”

“There is no doubt that there are many men who remain locked up based on convictions that were obtained by Detective Guevara through false and fraudulent police work,” Swaminathan said. “There are innocent men who are languishing and suffering in prison and they need to get released.”

In a statement from the city’s legal department, officials said they stand firmly against police misconduct but, based on the unwavering identification from the carjacking victim, who said police did not coerce her, McDowell’s case is “deeply concerning.”

“Victims’ rights must be upheld despite any involvement by discredited officers, and the city will always work to protect those whose lives have been impacted by violent crimes, while honoring our duty to carefully and thoroughly investigate each case,” the statement read. “In our quest for justice we must always be sure not to fall into the trap of fitting facts into specific narratives — the truth must always be paramount.”

A TURNING POINT

McDowell said 2018 was particularly difficult.

Two grandparents had died and a best friend was murdered. He grew anxious each time he called home to check in for fear there’d be more bad news.

McDowell said it was then that he decided to get his GED. He had earlier opportunities in prison, but he said never felt he was smart enough.

“I felt like for them, for those I lost, for those I love, I’m going to be a better person. I’m going to make it,” he said. “It was just something I felt I needed to do.”

His mother bought him books, which McDowell said he studied “front to back,” especially absorbing math. McDowell not only passed, he next was chosen as one of a select number of inmates for the Northwestern Prison Education Program, which offers college-level courses in cooperation with Oakton Community College.

His essay on why getting his GED was so important helped get him into the program.

“It was something I really wanted because no one in my family has a GED,” he said. “No one in my family ever graduated out of high school. So I’m the first. That’s a proud moment.”

Of the Northwestern program, McDowell said being in a classroom made him “feel like a human again.”

“I learned that I’m better than I thought,” he said.

By then, his legal situation also had improved. Attorney Jennifer Bonjean was the first to take an interest in his case. Swaminathan and attorney Joshua Tepfer through the Exoneration Project more recently joined efforts, filing the emergency clemency request in April and reexamining his conviction.

Morales-Santana, who lives in Puerto Rico, told the Tribune a member of McDowell’s team later tracked her down, as have city officials, and she held firm with both that she correctly identified him. She said Guevara was professional and, “nobody told me to say it was (McDowell). I know it was him. … I’m not a person who forgets.”

Besides arguing actual innocence, and heavily citing the allegations against Guevara, the clemency petition said McDowell has sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disorder in which clusters of inflammatory cells collect in his body, resulting in scar tissue, impacting his breathing.

McDowell said some of the first men in Stateville who died related to the coronavirus were from his cell house. He complained about a lack of personal protective equipment in those first couple of months of the pandemic while he was in prison.

The petition to Pritzker also noted McDowell’s efforts to better himself in prison, including a lack of disciplinary tickets, his work history in the prison kitchen and his participation in educational programs. Northwestern faculty familiar with his efforts wrote letters of support included in the petition.

Based on his health, especially amid the pandemic, Foxx did not oppose his release. The Cook County state’s attorney did, though, object to the potential of him being pardoned.

“At this time, (the) state maintains that petitioner is guilty of the multiplicity of crimes of which he was convicted,” Foxx said in a letter to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

McDowell said he had faith he would someday be free again, but he was awash with emotion when he learned Pritzker commuted his sentence. His attorneys next plan to try to have his conviction vacated in court — something Morales-Santana finds troubling.

“He did his time and I’m glad he’s doing well,” she said. “But I don’t like that they’re saying he’s innocent. The reason I’m over here in Puerto Rico with my kids, I was scared to live in Chicago. I couldn’t sleep. It was a nightmare.”

As he has for about 23 years, Antonio McDowell insists he is innocent. Two weeks after his release, he remains thankful and said he still feels like he did in that moment he found out he was going home. He savors the little things, like his first strawberry milkshake in decades.

And he’s back home with his mother. McDowell said the impoverished conditions of the West Side where he grew up are heartbreaking to see. He would like to find a way to help his community, though he isn’t sure how yet.

For now, he plans to continue working on his associate degree while attending Oakton Community College in the fall with the goal of achieving a four-year degree from Northwestern.

He still is working with his professors from the university’s prison program. On a recent summer day, McDowell was on the Evanston campus, its famous arch beckoning to new students within his sights.

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(Chicago Tribune’s Jason Meisner and Megan Crepeau contributed to this report.)

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