INNOCENT PERSONS CONVICTED Part 4                                               

The first time I knew of an innocent person having been accused of a murder he didn’t commit was in 1969.  I learned that the man was also sentenced to die in the electric chair. The day before he was to be executed, the detective confessed on his death bead that he framed the condemned man. The man was set free and the New York State compensated him with $2000. In 2019, that amount would be$13,775.

In Canada, a man spent 24 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. When the police discovered who really committed the murder, the innocent man was set free and awarded ten million dollars in compensation.

Cleve Heidelberg has been in prison for 47 years. He was convicted of killing a police officer in the early morning hours of May 26, 1970 in Peoria, Illinois. He was sentenced to 99 to 175 years of incarceration. When he was 72 years old, the injustice of Heidelberg’s conviction was finally coming to light. And Chicago Lawyer Andrew Hale was on a mission to free the innocent man.

There was an attempted robbery at a drive-in movie theater in Belleville, Illinois right outside of Peoria. A man showed up at the movie theater. He tied up the projectionist. He took the office manager hostage. He tried to collect money out of the concession stand and little did he know that the projectionist had untied himself and called the police. When the police car pulled up the man pulled out a gun and shot the Peoria County sheriff’s deputy in the head, killing him. The man got into the car and sped back to Peoria in a high speed chase.

Thirty minutes after all this happened, Cleve Heidelberg was arrested when while he was walking down the street to get to his car. Now here’s the twist, Cleve Heidelberg lent his car to another man named Lester Mason that night. Lester Mason then lent the car to another msn named James Clark. who was  the man that went to the drive-in and tried to commit  the armed robbery.

Cleve Heidelberg got a call from a man about 1:30 in the morning saying “Your car got left at the intersection of Blaine and Butler in Peoria.” AS he went to retrieve his car, completely unaware of what had just happened, the police close in on him thinking that  he was the cop killer.

Lawyer Andrew Hale later said, “They go grab him and he gets arrested. Then they beat the crap out of him. I mean literally like six, seven, eight officers standing over him kicking and punching him.

A black guy and his wife come out of their house, because this is in their back yard and break it up. He tells the cops, “Hey, knock it off.” Heidelberg goes to the hospital to get stitches over his eye. He’s beat up. They take him back up to the police station and they put him in a lineup, even though he’s all beat up, which the police shouldn’t do. It’s a suggestive lineup and the people from the movie theater identify him as the offender and he gets charged with the crime.  He never confessed. He always denies it.” unquote

Cleve Heidelberg had his trial in 1970. This was at the height of the Black Panther party activities which was at the end of the turbulent 1960s. He didn’t have a chance of proving his innocence.  He was convicted. Despite his innocence, no one really cared. Obviously the establishment wanted someone to pay for murdering a cop so it didn’t matter who paid for that crime just as long as the suspect was black.

But there were questions raised about his innocence early on. “After he was convicted, another man came forward to explain about the car. His name was James Clark. He said that it was  he who actually used the car. In essence, he confessed. He was interviewed by the Peoria Journal Star newspaper and told the whole story. He gave  a detailed affidavit. Alas, it go anywhere. The Courts, weren’t interested,  Heidelberg was desined to stay in prison where he’s been for 47 years.

The courts could have corrected the problem a long time ago but they were apathetic to justice being served. After all, Heidelberg  was identified by the projectionist. Now we all know of the many cases where eyewitnesses made mistakes in identifying the wrong people.

it is pretty clear that Cleve Heidelberg was innocent and James Clark committed the murder. During Heidelberg’s lawyer, Andrew Hale’s investigation into the case,  he’ found many inconsistencies, outright lies and things being covered up in the case.

“There’s all kinds of things that were wrong with the investigation.” Hale says. “It was a suggestive line up, witnesses were manipulated. The police eavesdropped on Heidelberg when he was meeting with his lawyers. There was an FBI fingerprint report that was suppressed. The police radio log shows that after the car crashed, the police were chasing the driver running north and he ran about four blocks north and they lost him and that’s consistent with the James Clark affidavit talking about where he ran. Heidelberg was arrested a half hour later when he went back to get his car about a block down the street.”

All Cleve Heidelberg was found guilty s a result of  loaning his car to another man who loaned it to the  actuall murderer. He had no complicity in the crime whatever. But due to his color it was a foregone conclusion that he was guilty of shooting the cop dead in 1970s Peoria, Illinois.

“There’s no way in my mind that this is the same guy who bailed out of the car and ran north a half hour earlier.” said Hale, who has revisited the scene of the crime and drive and walked the routes. “That guy would not have circled back to the crime scene and just been walking down the street. So there’s a bunch of issues. I think it was a botched investigation. I think the police felt like since it was Heidelberg’s car, which it was, they thought ”Hey. We’ve got our guy.”

There are a great many cases in which law enforcement officials do make mistakes and sometimes these mistakes are outright injustices that have affected the lives of people like Cleve Heidelberg and stolen their lives away. There is no way all of that can be given back but the state of Illinois needed to right this wrong and let Cleve out as soon as possible.

When Cleve Heidelberg woke up in his jail cell on the morning, of May 22, 2017, he didn’t know he’d be stepping outside of his prison  just hours later in civilian clothing. In fact, Heidelberg was notified just minutes before that he’d be released, after having served 47 years in prison for a murder  he didn’t commit.

Twenty minutes was all it took for a Peoria County Judge to vacate this man’s 47-year-old murder conviction.

Matthew Clark was the brother of James Clark, who confessed to the murder after Heidelberg was convicted. He said that his brother James Clark died in 2014. This means that the real murderer didn’t pay for his crime. That debt was paid by an innocent man.

Sometime in the future, I will give you more examples of innocent persons being sent to prison.