15 years into life sentence, prosecutors drop charges against man convicted of murder

James Fletcher Jr. walked out of prison a free man Wednesday after serving 15 years of a life sentence for a murder he has long maintained he didn’t commit.

Cook County prosecutors dropped all charges against Fletcher at a brief hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. His short afro flecked with white, the 56-year-old turned to wave at his mother, father and other relatives standing in the aisle of the courtroom. He was released from Stateville prison in Joliet on Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s kinda hard. It’s something I’ve been waiting for, but now that it’s happened, joy,” Fletcher’s 88-year-old father told reporters in the courthouse lobby, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

Fletcher was found guilty of the murder of Willie Sorrell during a shootout that occurred in 1990, a crime Fletcher was charged with 12 years later, after detectives showed photo arrays to witnesses who had been at the shooting scene more than a decade earlier. Fletcher, who had been serving time already on a robbery conviction, maintained his innocence over repeated appeals to state court before he was granted a new trial by federal judge last year, his attorney, Jennifer Blagg said.

In the years since his conviction for Sorrell’s murder, allegations had surfaced that the detective that built the case against him coerced witnesses into making identifications. One of the witnesses told Blagg that Detective Jerome Bogucki pointed to Fletcher’s picture in photo arrays, according to his motion for a new trial.

Federal Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer noted the fact that Bogucki had been found to have used similar tactics in the case of Thaddeus Jimenez — whose conviction was overturned, and later received a $25 million settlement from the city — as a “significant development” in her October order reversing Fletcher’s conviction.