US authorities have released a Chicago man who spent nearly 20 years behind bars for murder in a deadly 2003 shooting, years after his identical twin confessed to the crime.
Kevin Duggar’s attorney, Ronald Safire, told NBC News that his client appeared to be so moved and began to cry after his release from Cook County Jail last Tuesday night, and met his loved ones as a free man.
Savir added, “The judge released him pending trial under a pledge to sign and went out in the open and breathed his first breath as a free man in nearly 20 years… It was a pleasure to watch his tears roll down his cheeks and cheeks before (their tears) froze on their faces because the heat was so hot. About 7 below zero.
A gunman opened fire on three people in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood in March 2003, killing Antoine Carter and wounding Ronnie Bolden, according to NBC Chicago.
Duggar was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to 54 years in prison, however, his fate seemed to have been decided even in what the lawyer described as “stranger than fiction”, as Duggar’s twin brother, Carl Smith, confessed to the murder, in a confession first made in a letter. He sent her to Duggar in 2013, nearly a decade after his conviction.
Initially, the confession had little impact on Duggar’s case, as a judge ruled in 2018 that Smith’s confession was not credible and refused to provide a new trial for his twins, according to the “Chicago Tribune”, as at the time Smith was serving a 99-year prison sentence. Prosecutors dismissed Duggar’s appeal, with authorities saying Smith had “nothing to lose” in confessing to the murder.
Another judge reviewed the case, and an appeals court later overturned Kevin Duggar’s murder conviction after an appeal filed by the False Conviction Center at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, and he will remain in a transitional housing facility for 90 days until his final release.