Two men’s lives were torn apart by police lies. It took decades to get justice

By Omar Jimenez, CNN

Chicago (CNN) — “I was mad at him for a long time,” James Gibson said.

“I didn’t want to talk to him,” Keith Smith said.

Both in their 50s now, they grew up on the same block in Chicago — “across the street, three houses,” Smith said, pointing and counting, on a recent visit.

What drove them apart happened in December 1989, where they were both accused of the murder of two men in their neighborhood.

Police picked up Gibson for the crime, even though he told them he was running an errand on the other side of the neighborhood at the time of the killing.

At the precinct, the officers handcuffed him to a chair. He was kept for days, where he was punched, slapped and kicked. He blacked out at least once while in custody, he told CNN.

Police were interrogating Smith at the same time. He was also getting severely beaten — until finally he made a decision to get himself out of there.

“I’m gonna lie, so they could probably let me go,” Smith said he decided. Police told both men that the other had ratted them out, so he took the opportunity.

To end his captivity, Smith signed a statement that he didn’t write. In it, he claimed he acted as a lookout while Gibson committed the murders.

This statement didn’t end up helping him in the long run, when he was charged with the crime.

Gibson, meanwhile, stuck to his denials. And yet, when he was charged with the crime as well, police told the court that he admitted to being at the scene — and that he said Smith was there too.

What Gibson and Smith didn’t know for years is that the group of officers who tortured them into talking had done so to many others. It just took a long time for the truth to be exposed.

“Gibson and me was just a pawn in their pursuit of trying to solve cases,” Smith said.

A police commander named Jon Burge presided over the group of detectives who abused Smith and Gibson. He was fired a few years later over allegations of brutalizing a suspect in custody. As of 2025, at least 130 people are known to have been tortured by Burge and his detectives.

The arrest

After they were interrogated, Gibson was sent home, where his family tried to hug him but saw him wincing in pain. His sister immediately called the police to file a complaint.

The next day the police came.

“There were like 10 or 15 officers and they were right in the front yard,” Gibson said. That was when they arrested him and charged him with murder.

“My family being in the house, I didn’t want to cause no disturbance, I just got up and they said, ‘Man, you under arrest’ and they took me up out of there,” Gibson said. That would be the last time he’d see his home for almost 30 years.

That October — this was 1990 — Gibson went before a judge in a bench trial. “That’s where I fucked up at,” he said.

He now wishes he’d insisted on a jury trial. But at the time, he said, “I was never worried about anything. I was never scared about anything, ‘cause I ain’t do nothing,” he said. “How do you fight a case that don’t exist?”

The extorted statements, plus testimony from Smith’s sisters (who would later say they were lying) and another man supposedly in the area at the time of the shooting, who was in jail on a pending armed-robbery charge, was more than enough for the judge.

Gibson was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Smith was also convicted of murder, and also sentenced to life.

That’s how Gibson and Smith both ended up in prison, each furious under the impression that the other had put them there.

A legal education

Inside, motivated by an episode of Perry Mason, Gibson turned himself into a jailhouse lawyer, investigating every bit of recourse he could find. His mother was his inspiration. “She told me I was coming home and I believed that,” Gibson said. “And I’m still mad too, but she told me I’ve gotta get some things out my heart,” he said, meaning the rage he had been feeling. “I’m still working on that,” he added.

She wouldn’t live to see it happen. Gibson’s mom died in April, 2002, 12 years into his sentence. But he did listen.

Smith’s parents also died while he was serving his sentence. And Smith said he started getting letters from Gibson, he estimated he’d get a few a year.

“I would never respond, due to me being mad,” Smith said. “You would feel like that too, if you feel like somebody done did you like that.”

What changed? He talked to an “old school cat” in his prison who “understood the law.” This inmate told him: “Man, they fucked both of y’all,” he said. And: “’Y’all both can go home from this shit.” So finally, after 16 years, Smith answered Gibson’s letters.

In 2006, Smith filed what they call a “successive postconviction petition,” based on new evidence from a special state’s attorney report that laid out in intense, horrifying detail how Burge’s torture operation worked.

That report backed up Smith’s claims that his confession was the product of coercion by the “Midnight Crew,” as they were called.

He wasn’t released until 2012, when he made an Alford plea, in which he got to maintain his innocence while also admitting his guilt, which can reduce a prison sentence. For Smith at the time, it didn’t matter how. After 22 years, he was free.

Gibson, meanwhile, had applied to a newly created Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission tasked with investigating claims of torture by Burge or his detectives. If five or more members of that commission thought a claim was credible, they would send it straight to the Circuit Court for judicial review.

In 2015 Gibson got that chance. The commission agreed there was evidence he had been tortured and referred his claim back to the same court that had sent him to prison. Years passed, until finally he got a new trial.

Then in April, 2019 all charges against him were dismissed and Gibson walked free.

“I didn’t have no feelings,” Gibson said. “I’ve been fighting so long, I’m still swinging. I’ve been punch drunk.”

The next year he got a certificate of innocence.

Still, he hasn’t fully recovered. “I sweat in the middle of the night every night at three o’clock,” he said, with the thoughts of the prison conditions keeping him awake. “I had to plug my ears up and nose up with toilet paper ‘cause roaches was so deep in there. You can hear ‘em, smell ‘em,” he said.

Very different outcomes

Gibson and Smith grew up on the same block, both were tortured into prison, both lost their parents while serving their sentences, and now both were finally free.

Only recently did their stories diverge.

After Gibson got his certificate of innocence, he filed a civil lawsuit against the City of Chicago. This year, the city decided to settle his case on a rainy June Wednesday for $14.75 million.

“Every time I get a blessing, it rains. It be my mama,” Gibson said. After the city council officially ratified his settlement, he took a moment for himself outside the council chambers.

“I’m here, mama, I made it. I’m here, mama, they couldn’t break me,” he said out loud through his tears. One of the first people to comfort Gibson was Smith. They see each other around; Gibson had come to a party to celebrate Smith’s birthday a few weeks before; today, they were here for a party for Gibson.

While Gibson was now millions of dollars richer, Smith was “basically homeless,” he said. “It’s hard for me, everything.”

Smith didn’t qualify for a certificate of innocence, which would have allowed him to file a civil suit, because he took that Alford plea to get out of prison when he did.

“Once you do that, you have no remedy,” said Gibson’s attorney, Andrew M. Stroth, managing director at the Action Injury Law Group. Because Smith took that plea to get out of prison sooner, “He cannot pursue a civil case,” Stroth added.

Smith was happy to get out when he did — getting out of jail the better part of a decade before Gibson did. “My mama just died, my father just died. You think I’m thinking about some money?” Smith said. “Fuck some money, man. That’s what I did.”

“You could give him a hundred million dollars,” Smith said, but still Gibson wouldn’t be able to get the seven years back that he got.

If the shoe was on the other foot, Gibson said, he would have done the same thing.

“If my mother would’ve still been alive, I’d have took an Alford Plea too, just to spend one moment with my mother,” Gibson said. “But my mother had died the first 12 years of my false imprisonment. They ain’t had no bargaining chip when they started trying to bring me deals.”

“James Gibson could’ve walked out of prison much earlier but because he was innocent and he knew he was innocent, he was going to fight all the way,” Stroth said.

As Smith looked around, taking stock of where exactly he was and what it took to get there, he reflected on the final words he heard before his freedom was taken away decades ago.

“‘Take him into the custody of the Department of Corrections where he will serve out the remainder of his life,’” he roughly remembered the judge saying.

“Look where I’m at. Look where Gibson’s at,” Smith said. “That’s some hell of a shit that make me want to cry.”

Smith is the first to admit life is hard these days for him. “No transportation, no work consistently — what I would like is that, and to be able to have a place to go home,” he said, while we were walking his block.

But, “I got what I really want and that’s freedom,” he said, to “just get up and come outside.”

Gibson said even though he now has the money, knowing he can never get back the time weighs on him.

“It ain’t no congratulations,” Gibson said. “I had my whole life ahead of me.” He was standing outside of his old family home.

“We take so much for granted out here in the world man.” He looked out into the storm. “That’s the rain. Clearing up and washing up all this other mess,” Gibson said. “She sending me a signal, saying, ‘Now are you satisfied?’”

Smith is working on the same point of view. “I’m trying to catch up,” he said. “I can’t get back those 20 something years. I’ve gotta enjoy what’s left of this and that’s how I look at the road ahead.”

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