After Five Years in Jail, Set Free Without an Apology

For Jerry Hobbs, the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' didn't exactly apply.

The Illinois man spent five long years in an Illinois jail awaiting trial for allegedly killing his daughter and another young girl. Earlier this week, DNA testing proved his innocence, but prosecutors didn't apologize as they opened the jail doors to free him.

All they said was that the state didn't have the evidence to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So he was kept incarcerated — for five years — as law enforcement tried in vain to build a case against him, all while ignoring clues that pointed in other directions.

How did an innocent man get stuck in jail for five years? The saga began when Hobbs was arrested for the double murder after he apparently signed a confession following long interrogations over a 24-hour period. He quickly recanted, and a year after his arrest, DNA tests on semen from one victim's body pointed to another unknown man.

Yet despite this evidence, prosecutors kept Hobbs in jail, claiming they would try him eventually. In fact, his case never made it to trial — instead he spent five years waiting for the news he received this week to arrive. It wasn't until the DNA was found to match another man in June that momentum finally built to secure Hobbs' release.

The case is a textbook example of an overzealous prosecutor who was unwilling to admit a mistake. We write frequently here on Change.org about wrongful convictions overturned through DNA tests after decades. Hobbs is a testimonial to the fact that wrongful arrests — even those caught before conviction — can likewise cause unimaginable disruption and harm for years.

Take the similar case of Kevin Fox, who falsely confessed to killing his daughter in Illinois in 2004. Fox was arrested and held in jail for eight months, until DNA tests pointed to another man and Fox was set free. Eight months is a long time to spend behind bars, but it's also a somewhat reasonable period in which to conduct an investigation and forensic tests. Once the results ruled out Fox, he was freed. Though prosecutors had DNA results almost as quickly in Hobbs' case, they decided to wait four more years to act. (An excellent Chicago Tribune piece laid the cases side by side last month.)

False confessions are all too common. More than a quarter of the 258 people exonerated through DNA testing to date offered false confessions or admissions. To prevent these occurrences, it's critical that we electronically record all interrogations.

But misguided and negligent prosecutions like those Jerry Hobbs launched are another matter. Yes, prosecutors have a difficult and important job, and it isn't easy to decide when to release a murder suspect and when to press charges. It is clear, however, that leads in the Hobbs case were left to sit idle for far too long. DNA evidence of another man's involvement sat in the hands of police and prosecutors for four years while Jerry Hobbs sat in jail. Would that have been the case if a celebrity or a millionaire had instead been in Hobbs' shoes? Or would the media and the public have pressed prosecutors to put him on trial or drop the charges?

The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial." Instead, Jerry Hobbs was considered guilty until proven innocent while he sat in jail for five years. And the truth is, if it hadn't been for a DNA database hit that identified another man, he could still be facing the death penalty today.

Full disclosure: Although I work at the Innocence Project when I'm not blogging here, views expressed here are mine alone. The Innocence Project was not involved in Hobbs' case.

Photo Credit: Zion (Ill.) Police Department