Hi, I'm Hermene Hartman with N'digo Studio.

This episode brings you a conversation confronting the injustice of justice.

I'm going to guide you to a powerful conversation that sheds light on a wrongful conviction.

We're going to tell you the story of Johnny Savory.

He spent 30 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

Joining the conversation is Steve Driessen.

He's from the Center on Wrongful Conviction from Northwestern University.

This is a conversation that's painful but necessary because the justice system is not always right.

Prepare yourself.

Compelling conversation.

The challenge is the status quo.

It's time for us to look at the truth and advocate for those who have been wrongly convicted.

-Cozy conversations drop the knowledge that's for real.

For more information on this show, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Funding for this program was provided by Illinois Students assitance commission.

The Chicago Community Trust.

Sin City Studios.

Lamborghini Chicago.

Gold Coast and Downers Grove.

Commonwealth Edison City Colleges of Chicago.

Broadway in Chicago.

And Governors State University.

Welcome, Johnny.

Welcomed N'digo Studio.

Steve.

Welcome to N'digo Studio.

Johnny, tell your story.

Tell me what happened.

You were 14 years old and you were accused of murder.

Tell me what happened.

I went to school like any other normal day while at school, I didn't see my friend.

And usually he's here and I didn't see him that day.

I left school.

I went to, you know, his home.

On the way there, I made a stop to.

And as I was walking down the street, approaching his home, I seen all these police cars.

And when I approached it, -You were alone no friends were with you?

-No,know one was with me after I got off the bus.

But what I'm saying is When I approached it I did not understand what had something had happened, but just didn't understand what had happened.

I stood around like in the crowd with everybody else.

Oh, I think at least hour and a half, Two hours it might of been I'd caught the last bus from that side of town back to my side of town.

- What town was this in?

- Peoria Illinois.

Peoria?

Yes.

- And I still didn't understand or knew what happened yet until the nightly news came on.

And they announced that they had been murdered.

Connie had been murdered.

- So you saw this on the news?

- Yes.

- Not realizing while you were there exactly what had happened.

You just going to a friend's house?

- Yes.

- Once I found out, it just like seemed like my whole life changed because I couldn't understand why I couldn't understand who.

Just an understanding of that.

So maybe about a I want to say almost a week later after that had taken place, I went to school and while in class the principal came and took me from class to see some Peoria police officers want to talk to me.

And so he took me to the teacher's lounge, and there I met two officers and they said that, you know, you did you see when the last time you seen James and Connie?

was on the day of the January 17, 1977, they were murdered on January 18th, 1977.

And they say, you know, is this something you can help us?

What did you hear?

What did you see was on that premise that but... initially I tell them I don't want to talk to you because I didn't I didn't the police officers when I was growing up, we don't like to talk about it, but we have a lot of it here, especially be an all white town.

So we had a few black police officers.

And, you know, to me, they they were some of the worst.

And... -When they took you in to question you, was the principal there?

Was your parent the?

- Principal turned me over.

He shouldn't have done it, but your principal allowed them to take me from school.

- Then what happened?

- It still wasn't an interrogation.

And I lose.

I didn't understand.

It was interrogation.

It was always on the principal that you might have heard something.

saw something that night.

Thet could have helped us.

It went from one extreme to another.

I think the thing... that what sealed of my faith that a lot of people didn't understand about the case is, After those two white detectives after they finished talking to m They said, well we gonna have another detective to talk to you.

And when we stepped out to the room, interrogation room, I saw who they were talking about.

that was coming.

My way.

And I made the mistake of saying to them, I don't want to talk to that nigger!

And from that moment on, my life changed completely.

-Where is.

Your parents?

-My parents?

My mother passed away when I was six months old and my dad passed away on my 26th birthday.

- So you're alone?

-Yes.

What happens?

The person that I told them That I did not want to talk to.

They made me talk to them anyway.

So they started.

She started showing me photos and different things.

And I really, you know, understand really what he was, what they were doing.

But it didn't stop there.. interrogation.

Continue from there.

They took me to a polygraph examination office office, and from there I ended up juvenile about 12 midnight was started from 3 to 12.

- They were keeping you in jail.

And it was jail, wasn't it?

- Yeah, I was in I was in the police station.

- Police station.

- Then they turned me over to juvenile detention.

They had some kind of hearing.

I can understand the hearing either, but it was I guess it was to keep me to the next day, And so, I end up going to bed about one a clock in the morning something like that.

Came back the next day and got me around eight and umm the interrogation began again.

- You are alone.

There's no adult with you?

- They Allowed me to see my dad, but by the time I seen my dad, I guess whatever they told him or whatever they lie they shared with him or whatever they did, it made it impossible for us to communicate with each other.

And it was just like at that point I started feeling like, I don't know, I don't care.

Just wanted to stop.

But it didn't stop me... .

seeing my dad.

They took me into the washroom and they strip me all my clothes and they left plucked hairs from my body from head to toe.

Gave me some, you know, big jail jumpsuit to to get in and just continue to interrogate me all throughout the day.

When I would tell them the truth, they were telling me I was lying.

And I sincerely I think I just like, broke my will.

And and I think it took me for another polygraph, says that later that day, around about six or seven or something like that.

And while in a polygraph examination, the polygraph examiner got up in the middle of the examination and said, you a liar, you're a murderer, you just it was unreal..... All I wanted to do, they told me every time -And I broke down -You were poor?

-All I wanted to do is the told me -Stop!

when you get through doing this, you go home, you do, you take it as you go home.

And finally... uhm.

the interrogation, I mean, thit stopped.h examinati And another officer came in and I was standing in the window crying.

And then it just... Tell us what happen!

Tell us what happened?

And then she started wording me along because I didn't know what happened.

So she was suggesting that a, well, you know, it could have been this way or it could have happened this way.

And all I did was agree with her just so it could stop.

So at the end of that interrogation, I said, I did it so we can go home.

I just want to go home.

So she brought me the some papers that she wrote out and asked me to sign it.

But I refused to sign it.

So she got angry because I would have signed them that whatever she was trying to -Cause it's probably a Confession.?

- Yes and umm... after that I found myself on trial for the murder of my friend and his sister.

- And then you go to jail - To prison.

- For 29 years, -For Life!..

- They gave me 50 to 100 years.

Two terms as originally originally asked for the death penalty and all through that the preceding one, I really didn't say anything because I couldn't believe that what I was going through was actually real.

- Did you have a lawyer?

- Yes.

The women in my community was I have to give all the credit in the world to the mothers and grandmothers.

They got to give them the.

And they hired a lawyer.

The lawyer?

Unfortunately, I never had them a murder trial.

-So um.

-You had a novice lawyer.

-It didn't go too well either.

And then... they sentenced me to 50 to 100 years.

They transported me to St Charle Correctional Center and stayed there.

One day, they put me in juvenile maximum security for juveniles In Joilet.

- Your 14 years old?

- Yeah, I found myself being.

I couldn't understand it, but I found myself being falsely accused, unjustly convicted and condemned to life in prison for something I knew absolutely nothing about whatsoever.

- Steve, fast forward.

How did you get involved?

You saved Johnny's life out of jail.

What happened?

- Well, Johnny, to his credit, was his own best advocate.

He wrote everybody in the city of Chicago.

- You did your research and - Everybody and everybody.

I didn't actually get no movement.

That includes Steve when I was in juvenile court.

So I was determined to try to reach out to him and to get him involved.

But I had another attorney on my appeal and he stayed with me.

He's like my guardian angel.

His name was Ted Godfrey.

He ran the appellate defender's office in Springfield, and he was relentless.

And when I say relentless, he brought me back for a second trial.

They threw out the confession because they ruled ruled that it was interrogation in the language they used it say it was Badger coerced into the confession.

So the third District court reversed my conviction, sent me back for trial without the use of the confession.

- So Steve did you just did you respond to Johnny's letter?

- When he first reached out to m I wasn't the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

I was working in juvenile justice work, and I couldn't take his case at that time because he was represented by the law firm of Jenner and BLOCK, one of the biggest and best law firms in the city of Chicago.

A couple of years later, he wrote back and I was in a position to take his case.

And so I looked at everything that he sent me, all of the pleadings, and I came to believe that Johnny was coerced into falsely confessing to a double murder that he did not commit.

But the first step we needed to do was to get him out of prison and he had an upcoming parole hearing.

And I represented Johnny at that parole hearing, - How long had you been in prison when the parole came up.

- Well for this particular hearing?

I had been to prison, I think about was 28, 29 years, when Steve first did it.

that I think we did come back a second time.

- Yeah, I was like 27 years, you so and we lost the first time and we won the second time.

So Johnny came home after 29 years, 29 years 11 months and a few weeks - Almost 30.

And, you know, unlike some people who come out of prison who are extremely damaged, I mean, Johnny suffered a lot of trauma.

Johnny became an ambassador for wrongful convictions, unlike anybody I had ever worked with.

I mean, he became known all around the country and indeed the world.

His case became known because Johnny kept talking about it, advocating for reforms and change that so that others would not, you know, befall the same fate.

After Johnny got out, he became part of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

And he was family.

And he was in our office two three times a week.

I mean he was.

Family.

-You traveled the country -Yes.

talking about your case, -Yes.

also is that right?

- You spent 29 years in jail.

You're proven innocent.

What compensation do you receive for lost time?

What does the state what does the government do to make you whole?

- The first thing we had to do was get the right to do a DNA test on how strange it is.

This is my case that gives everyone DNA, but it took 36 years for me to get DNA.

So I want to let people understand that people versus Savory gives DNA to all those now today who are seeking DNA testing.

But they wouldn't give it to me.

- They wouldn't.

They said that even had he gotten positive results, that that proved that someone else committed the crime.

There was still enough evidence in the record to convict him.

And so they gave the right to DNA testing to everybody else in the state.

But they denied it to Johnny because they basically said it wouldn't make a difference.

And that's one of the worst decisions in the history of Illinois, because they don't know what those results are going to show.

- Right, right, right.

- Those results could easily have identified the person who murdered and raped Connie and killed James.

- Did we find out who the murderer actually was.

- Not at this time.

Not that we know of, but what we do know is that when they did decide to do the DNA test and how ironic, we went back to Peoria and we had a wonderful judge there who truly believed in justice and granted me the DNA testing on August six, 2013.

So when we did do the testing, it came back, you know, excluding me from the crime itself and from anything in the home, because they don't have one fingerprint, one blood sample, one hair sample, nothing.

And then when they we relied on the reports from the previous time they did investigation, Both victims had hairs under their fingernails and where they fought with their attacker.

However, when they did the first stage, they said it does not match.

So it didn't match mine.

So they really wasn't looking for anybody else at that time.

-So are these just some police trying to rap up a case quick and easy .

Is that I mean that's what this sounds like.

-So what we really understand now that, you know.

what the evidence would show today is that everything they did was they fabricated and they lied about it in order to get the conviction.

And they didn't care about me as a human being.

- They didn't.

And this was what's called a heater case.

This was a huge double murder of two teenagers in Peoria, and they were desperate to solve the case.

And for some reason, they latched on to Johnny because he had been there the night before and he became the prime suspect.

And they coerced an interrogation, a false confession from him.

And years later, when we finally did the DNA testing, there were other male profiles in the DNA that was tested, not Johnny, but the profiles were not robust enough to get a match to who the true perpetrator was.

And one more thing.

The most probably probative piece of evidence that we could not test were hairs that were found in the hands of both victims that did not belong to the victims.

When we got the right to DNA testing, we looked through all of the evidence and most of it was preserved.

But in the bag that held the hairs, it was empty.

- It disappeared.

- Fast forward.

- Yes.

- You released wrongful conviction.

ahh.. is helping you, Governor Quinn.

Pardons you.. - Before he left office.

Okay.

Now you've so you've been pardoned by the government?

- Ye - So you still need an innocence What's what's the term I'm looking for to you?

- That's certificate of innocenc Okay.

So does the governor, as he pardons you, issues the certificate of innocence, or is that another process?

- He can't?

Yes.

Is he is incoming.

He can take issue the certificate also.

Is was it based on House Bill 230, also to the city where you came from?

You can file this two entities that you can use, the city where you came from or the governor's office.

- Now, can you sue the city?

- You can sue the city, but you cannot sue the state.

- Yeah.

So you.

Can serve the.

City.

You can file a federal civil rights lawsuit.

- And you've done that.

- He has he has a federal civil rights lawsuit.

I didn't do it, but his other attorney said.

- So, what's that lawsuit say?

You can file the city, but you can not file the state.

- You can sue the.

City, but you can not sue the state of Illinois.. -So ok now you have a suit in - Yes we sued the city of peoria..police Dept.

As well as I believe the Illinois state police.

State laboratory.

So you got about 26 defendants.

The case would of probably been over by now, But when the pandemic hit, my case was just filed in 2017 the pandemic hit in 2019 The judge initially dismissed my lawsuit, but the Seventh Circuit reinstated it.

The first time it was three unanimously, three zero to reinstated.

And that he did show that it is a case of merit and he does have the right to sue.

So they chose to appeal again.

This time it went before that.

Unbunk in the seven circuit, nine justices ruled in my favor Then sent it back to the district court to be heard.

That didn't satisfy them.

So they took it, tried to take it to the United States Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court refused to hear it.

So now we are at the last stages of it.

All depositions have been done in the case.

And so we have a couple of days coming up.

When they ask me when my deposition, they said, well, -What does the civil lawsuit say -It alleges that they violated my civil constitutional rights Through interrogation through the false And fabricated evidence Through perjured testimonies Anything you can think of dealing with prosicutal evidence When they ask me when my deposition They say well... how do you describe your damages?

I describe my damages to him like this.

You my loudest voices will come from the grave, meaning my dad.

My grandmother passed away when I was on trial.

My dad when I was 26.

Both of my sisters had passed away as well as you denied me the right to grow up and go to high school or college.

You took all of my teens, twenties, thirties, - Your youth - and half the forties.

So... you... their ain't no amount That can be compensated for that.

I cannot get justice because they said, well, you know, this is about justice.

And now because the justice is a preventive measure to keep injustice from taking place, once you inflict wounds upon me or anyone else I've been through, this here is no way you can heal the scars that you placed in their life.

Now I wanted people to understand that is only holding them accountable for what they've done to me.

So should they go to prison?

Of course!

- You think this is.

Is this a racial case Steve?

- I do think it's a racial case.

- Based on racism?

- I do think that there was racism pervasive in the Peoria Police Department and I do think African-Americans in Peoria were very much like African-Americans in Chicago.

They were caught up in a lot of cases.

And arrested disproportionately.

- Well, will new laws come out of this?

Perhaps - A new law has already come out of it.

- And what is that?

- So because of Johnny's false confession and because of countless other false confessions in Chicago and around the state, we have looked at the causes of false confessions.

And one of the causes is when police officers lie to suspects about the evidence, they claim that they have evidence that they don't have or they claim that the evidence they have is stronger than it actually is.

And that causes suspects to become hopeless, break down and confess.

Police officers won't be able to do that anymore.

- The sad thing is that when we cases like mine and those who are waiting in the balance, you come home, you don't have anything.

And I think we still have like 12 other states don't have any compensation whatsoever.

You're just... you're free now, so go.

So that should insult everyone in this nation that you... ONE!

You did this to an innocent human being.

Two you.

You're not even trying to apologize or rectify the situation that you put them in.

- Johnny, thank you for being with us today.

Thank you for sharing your story.

- Yes, - Your case is probably to change the rules, the laws of what has happened.

Steve, thank you for the wonderful work that you do.

- And I want to say the shows like yours and what you do in the media, it would truly help tremendously if we had more of it.

But it's going to take all of us and it's no longer just a racial this is a societal problem.

So we should handle it together as one race operating.

the same way we do the war.

When we go to war, everybody will have no problem standing up.

Well, let's do that in peace times, too.

And ahh.. so these situations wouldn't happen.

- I want to say one last thing.

There was one blessing, one that came out of this ordeal that Johnny's had to go through.

And that is his beautiful baby daughter.

She's not a baby anymore.

She's 7 years old - She's 7 year and smart as can be.

- And whatever money that Johnny gets and I hope he gets a lot, you know, it's all going to be for the benefit of her.

Johnny is an amazing father.

And that's remarkable given that he spent 29 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

- Thank you for being with us.

Thank you for sharing your story.

I'm Hermene Hartman with N'digo Studio.

And thanks for listening.

And we got to bring light to these cases.

This is a case of injustice and innocence.

Not guilty.

For more information on this show, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Funding for this program was provided by Illinois State Representative LaShawn Ford the Chicago Community Trust Cine City Studios, Lamborghini, Chicago, Gold Coast and Downers Grove.

Commonwealth Edison City Colleges of Chicago.

City Colleges of Chicago.

Broadway In Chicago And Governors State University.

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