NEW FACTS EXONERATE 4 MEN IN '97 KILLING

U.S. Investigation Leads to Reversals

A federal gang task force has exonerated four men whom Chicago police
investigated and Cook County prosecutors sent to prison for a 1997
murder, which U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald said Wednesday was
committed by gang members accused in a string of drug-related
kidnappings and tortures.

Police Supt. Terry Hillard and Cook County State's Atty. Richard
Devine said they are reviewing the handling of the cases against the
four men--two of whom were released Wednesday--but they had not seen
any evidence of misconduct.

However, a public defender for one of the men contended Wednesday
afternoon that prosecutors essentially falsified a confession against
her client. And a public defender for another of the men said that
Chicago police did little investigative work after finding a witness
who is now under federal indictment for lying in the case.

Two of the men were in Cook County Jail for four years without a trial
before finally making plea bargains earlier this year.

While Fitzgerald called the development a "bittersweet" turn in an
investigation that has charged nine men with terrorizing other drug
dealers, the wrongly-accused men, their families and lawyers said the
original prosecutions were an outrage from the beginning.

"I was hoping this day would come," said Duarte Santos' wife, Lillian
Santana, as she waited outside the jail for the husband she had last
seen free six years ago. "I knew he had nothing to do with this."

When he finally emerged from the jail, Santos, 31, said he was looking
forward to seeing his 12-year-old girl, and 10-year-old boy, who is
mentally disabled.

"I'll spend Christmas with my daughter and son. It's a real blessing"
he said.

The other man released Wednesday, Omar Aguirre, 33, said he would
spend the night with Santos' family.

Luis Ortiz, 24, remains in prison serving an eight-year
aggravated-battery sentence for stabbing a man in jail while he
awaited trial in the murder. The fourth, Robert Gayol, 39, is serving
a 14-year sentence for an unrelated string of burglaries. Gayol had
been sentenced to life.

Latin Kings Probe

The new information about the July 1997 murder of 56-year-old Sindulfo
Miranda was developed jointly by FBI agents and Chicago detectives "in
recent months" as they worked together to bring down a faction of the
Latin Kings, Fitzgerald said.

Three of the nine men charged in the gang case have been charged with
Miranda's murder.

Richard Carman, 25, of the 3200 block of West 73rd Street; Daniel
Perez, 24, of the 3300 block of West Beach Avenue; and Omar Avila, 24,
of the 2700 block of North Fairfield Avenue were all charged with
murder for killing Miranda while committing a drug crime, prosecutors
said. A fourth man, Francisco Ortiz, 31, with no known address, was
charged with attempting to possess and distribute 1,000 kilograms of
marijuana in connection with Miranda's murder.

Avila remains a fugitive. The other three are in federal custody.

Federal prosecutors also charged Miguel LaSalle, 40, a former
Chicagoan, with making false statements that pointed the finger at the
four wrongfully convicted men and a fifth man, a bar owner, who was
acquitted in the case.

Surrender Expected

LaSalle, who now lives in Florida, is expected to surrender to police
Thursday. He claimed in 1997 that he overheard the men plotting the
murder at Ronny's Bar, 2103 N. California Ave. But Gayol's lawyer,
Assistant Public Defender John Conniff, said defense lawyers in the
case believed immediately that LaSalle was not credible.

LaSalle "named people and police really did not do much of an
investigation and ran with it," Conniff said.

Conniff said that when he walked into Judge Paul Biebel's courtroom at
the Criminal Courts Building Wednesday afternoon for a hearing in the
case he saw Assistant State's Atty. Mary Jennings, who was involved in
the original prosecutions.

"I walked into the hearing this morning, and she said, 'Please don't
say, I told you so,'" Conniff said. "I said, 'I told you so.'"

Devine's spokesman John Gorman responded to the criticism late
Wednesday night by saying that alleged confessions and the plea deals
made the cases seem airtight.

"The statements in these four cases fooled the police, fooled
prosecutors and fooled the defense attorneys," Gorman said. "Everybody
bit on it."

Hillard said that he would let "the chips fall where they may" in his
department's review of the case.

"As for as our involvement in the original homicide investigation, I
can tell you that our detectives followed the evidence as it existed
back in 1997. That evidence included an eyewitness account of the
crime by a person who knew the offenders," Hillard said.

Marijane Placek, the public defender for Omar Aguirre, criticized
Devine, saying the men should have been released six weeks ago when
the new information became known.

She also criticized Devine for saying that defense attorneys did not
contest Aguirre's alleged confession. She said she did not try to
suppress it because she was arguing that her client never made it.

Aguirre was an "easy patsy," she said, because as a day laborer, there
were no official records showing he was at work when Miranda was killed.

Duarte Santos' lawyer, Chester Slaughter, said his client and Luis
Ortiz took plea deals earlier this year after sitting in jail for four
years without a trial. With time served in jail, Santos' plea deal
would have released him from the Western Illinois Correctional Center
in August 2003, Slaughter said.

Former judge Ronald Himel, who resigned in July and is now a defense
attorney, found Gayol guilty and sentenced him to life in 2001.

"I believed the accomplice," he said of Ortiz, who was offered a
shortened sentence in return for his testimony against Gayol.

The bar owner, who was prosecuted but acquitted, said the case has
taken a toll on his life.

Bar Owner Blames Case

Ronny Gamboa said Wednesday night that he went into debt because he
had to borrow money for his $1 million bond."If they'd investigated it
right to begin with, I wouldn't have been having all these problems,"
Gamboa said.

Fitzgerald said that Jerome Carman, Richard's brother, also remains at
large in the racketeering and torture case that led to the new
evidence in the Miranda murder. The members of the Carman Brothers
Crew were originally charged last May with a series of crimes in which
they targeted victims they thought were drug dealers, kidnapping and
torturing them until they gave up their stashes of drugs and money.

Miranda was one such target, prosecutors said.