Table of Contents
Who Is Kevin Dugar? Why Was Kevin Dugar Arrested? Motive, All Prices & Allegations Defined!: A Chicago man who spent 20 years behind bars after being convicted of homicide has been launched from jail — 9 years after his an identical twin confessed to the crime.
On Tuesday evening, Kevin Dugar, 43, was launched from Cook dinner County Jail in Chicago after a choose granted his launch on a signature bond — pending trial, in response to his legal professional, Ron Safer, the Chicago Tribune and ABC7 report.
“Kevin’s feeling nice,” Safer informed ABC7 minutes after Dugar walked out of the jail. “He is a free man tonight. It is lengthy overdue.”
Dugar was in tears as he was reunited along with his household, Safer informed NBC Information.
“He walked out into the open air and breathed his first breaths as a free man in virtually 20 years,” Safer informed NBC Information. “It was gratifying to look at his tears roll down his cheeks and their cheeks earlier than (the tears) froze on their faces as a result of it was about 7 beneath.”
In 2005, Dugar was convicted of capturing and killing a rival gang member in 2003. He was sentenced to 54 years in jail.
However in 2013, in what Safer tells Phoosi is akin to the plot of a “Lifetime film,” his twin brother, Karl Smith, wrote Dugar a letter confessing to the homicide.
“I’ve to get it off my chest earlier than it kills me,” Smith wrote, the Day by day Information stories. “So I will simply come clear and pray you possibly can forgive me.”
Smith was serving a 99-year-sentence for a house invasion and armed theft through which a toddler was killed, the Chicago Tribune stories.
The prosecutor did not purchase the confession, saying Smith had “nothing to lose,” particularly since he’d lately been denied an enchantment on his case, the Day by day Information stories.
Desirous to make this proper, an legal professional with the Northwestern Pritzker Faculty of Regulation’s Middle on Wrongful Convictions took the case on and appealed Dugar’s conviction.
Although Dugar is out of jail, he nonetheless is not a free man since he has to return to courtroom as soon as extra to show his innocence, which he has maintained since his arrest.
“Sadly, Kevin isn’t but an exoneree,” Safer tells Phoosi.
“We’re gratified that Decide Hooks fastidiously weighed all components and launched Kevin pending trial,” he tells Phoosi.
“I’m hopeful that the State will do the proper factor and dismiss Kevin’s case,” he says. “If not, we are going to prevail at trial as a result of Kevin is harmless.”
Whereas Dugar is elated about being launched from jail, he’s additionally “adjusting to a world that’s fairly completely different from the world he left 20 years in the past when he was arrested for this crime he didn’t commit,” Safer informed the New York Submit.
“You recognize, you’ll suppose (being launched) is simply unmitigated pleasure,” he informed NBC Information, “however the adjustment, the injuries which can be inflicted by wrongful incarceration, are deep and enduring and there’s an adjustment interval that lasts a lifetime however significantly within the early days are very, very difficult.”
