Ford Heights Four exonerated but not free from past

April 11--On a recent morning, Willie Raines clomped around his nearly 12 acres in northwest Indiana, a cigarette in one hand, a tumbler of his favorite Don Pedro brandy in the other, looking every bit a gentleman rancher. Scattered across his property and packed into assorted outbuildings are cars, motorcycles, bicycles, even a black Cadillac limousine -- the products of a seemingly never-ending spending spree Raines has supported with his share of a $36 million legal settlement from one of Cook County's most notorious wrongful convictions.

Not far from Raines' ranch, Verneal Jimerson sits at the dining room table of his brother's tidy south suburban home, explaining how medical bills, mortgages, cars and even drugs have left him almost destitute. At one time his share of that same legal settlement provided him $8,000 a month, but now he said he struggles to get by on about $700 a month in government disability payments.

At his spacious house in nearby Ford Heights, Kenneth Adams lives a comfortable life with his wife of close to two decades. He still enjoys sports, though he plays less basketball since an injury. Like the others, talking about prison makes him uneasy and angry.

And then there was Dennis Williams, who died of a heart attack seven years after walking out of prison and, by all accounts, still trapped by it. He hid out in his heavily secured home, often tormented by his two decades on death row and all the people asking for gifts and loans from his share of the lawsuit's settlement. Everybody, Williams often said, wanted a piece of him.

Together, they became known as the Ford Heights Four. Convicted of the 1978 rape and double murder of a young, newly engaged couple in the south suburbs, they came to embody much of what was wrong with Cook County's criminal justice system.

Today, nearly two decades after their 1996 release, the three survivors are graying men whose lives illustrate how the pain of prison can haunt an inmate for years. They show, too, how big-money settlements can bring comforts never before imagined but also their share of trouble.

"I thought I was going to be happy," Raines told the Tribune. "But you want to know the truth? It's not easy."

'Cannot be made whole'

Tall and lithe, Raines, 56, sometimes pulls his long hair back in a ponytail. He is friendly and funny, thoughtful, too, with an easy smile that belies the trouble he readily acknowledges. He often describes himself as a "bona fide, certified, functioning alcoholic." In 2001 he held police at bay for seven hours, an incident authorities said was touched off when Raines found his wife with a male friend. Raines now calls it a "misunderstanding."

He isn't easy to live with, admits Raines, who changed his name from Rainge. He can lose his temper and say "negative things." He used to be on medication to help manage his mood swings but said he quit taking it.

Raines spends much of his time on his property, a former horse farm set well off the road that is a refuge for him. Among his getaways at home are an RV dubbed the Man Cave, where he watches TV and smokes, and a clubhouse over the barn equipped with a bar, pool table and DJ booth that he calls the Honeycomb Hideout.

His years in prison have never left him, Raines said, but he tries to keep them in check. When he thinks of the police and prosecutors who won his conviction, he pushes the thoughts away or he knows he'll become angry. At times, he said, he finds his eyes watering for reasons he doesn't understand, but he knows to focus on other things at those moments. He said he used to have nightmares about prison but doesn't anymore -- but credits his drinking for that.

"Nobody emerges from an experience like this whole," said Rob Warden, the executive director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions and the first journalist to question whether the Ford Heights Four case was a miscarriage of justice. "And they cannot be made whole no matter what. It doesn't matter how much money they get. It just cannot be corrected what has happened to them."

Lawrence Marshall, one of Raines' attorneys who went on to help found the wrongful convictions center, said that he takes particular pride in persuading Raines to put his share of the settlement into an annuity and a trust. Now, 15 years later, Raines said he still receives direct deposits of thousands of dollars each month.

"The norm is to say, 'Hey, I've won the lottery and I'm responsible and I can be trusted with all this money,'" said Marshall, now a professor at Stanford University Law School. "But they're not prepared for it. People come out of the woodwork trying to take advantage of you."

When arrested in the late 1970s, the Ford Heights Four were young men, high school graduates with no criminal records except for a minor arrest in Williams' past. But their futures seemed limited -- only Jimerson had a job, at a carwash.

The case against them was shocking for its brutality. Larry Lionberg was working the overnight shift at a Homewood gas station when he and fiance Carol Schmal were abducted. She was raped and then both were shot in the back of the head, authorities charged.

The four were released after nearly two decades in prison when DNA evidence and an investigation by a Northwestern University journalism professor, his students and a private detective cleared them and led to the arrests and convictions of three other men who remain in prison.

When the Ford Heights Four were set free, they had lost much of their youth. They filed a lawsuit against Cook County alleging that sheriff's investigators essentially manufactured a case against them. On the eve of trial, the county agreed to the $36 million settlement. A special prosecutor appointed later to investigate the case concluded in 2003, after a four-year inquiry, that a "perfect storm" of errors by authorities led to the wrongful convictions but that the police and prosecutors had committed no crimes in their handling of the investigation and prosecution.

Raines bristles at the notion.

"We were framed," he said bluntly.

The money cannot give him back the years he lost, he said.

"Ain't enough money in the world to get back what they took from me," Raines said. "Money ain't nothing next to having your freedom."

Prison never far away

There are more than a few stories of exonerated former inmates struggling to adapt to a changed world, splurging on pricey cars, buying drugs, handing out money to friends and family, and ending up broke.

That is what happened to Jimerson.

Now 61, Jimerson was the oldest of the Ford Heights Four. On his release he went back to work for a time, but when the money began to come in -- first, more than $100,000 from a state fund to compensate the wrongly imprisoned, then $8.8 million for his share of the settlement -- he began to spend.

He bought a nail salon for his second wife. He gave money to his three daughters. He bought houses for his three sisters as well as for himself and invested in stocks.

Then he started to buy crack cocaine to help "ease his mind," he said. He was warned that his money could run out, he said, but he continued to spend.

Medical bills contributed to his financial woes. He underwent triple bypass surgery in 1999 and had part of his stomach removed last year. He said he did not have health insurance to help cover the mounting bills.

Jimerson has a small, serious face and a mustache that turns down at the ends, giving him a vaguely baleful expression. But he is quiet and affable, though in conversation, while fiddling with a flip phone, he seems a bit lost. Prison, he said, is never far away. Jimerson said he can still hear the metal sounds of the prison doors and inmates yelling.

"You think that you're free, but in my mind I'm not," he said. "I'm still trying to adjust. ... It's harder than you think."

Sometimes, Jimerson said, he wakes up in a cold sweat. His older brother, Henry, said Jimerson does not like to leave the room he stays in at his home and watches a lot of TV.

He went back to prison for about two months after a drug conviction. It "brought back a whole lot of memories," he said.

He has been free of drugs for five years, he said. He works to maintain relationships with his daughters, who are scattered around the country.

Nothing has been easy.

"I will always be the Ford Heights Four," he said.

Financial stability

Adams may be the one who has managed best to put his wrongful imprisonment behind him, so that it no longer defines his life. For a time he was an active public speaker and ardent death penalty foe. For him, speaking out was a form of therapy. But after a few years he decided to stop, telling his lawyer, Flint Taylor, that he believed it was time for a new generation of exonerated people to carry the message.

Now 56, he declined to speak for this article, saying it would bring back memories that would upset him, according to Taylor.

Taylor and others often point to Adams as a former inmate who successfully made the transition to the outside world. He seemed to possess an inner strength that allowed him to survive prison emotionally intact, they said. At Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois, he learned to rely only on himself after seeing another inmate stabbed and noticing that no one cared.

"He had a deep belief in himself, a confidence in himself," Taylor said. "I think that made it easier for him than it is for some other guys."

Before his arrest, Adams was an avid athlete and hoped to play pro baseball. Now he works out frequently, Taylor said. He married after his release and appears to have managed his money wisely. His home is large but not ostentatious.

"Having financial stability helps," said Taylor, noting that Adams has not had to work since settling the civil rights lawsuit. "It doesn't get you back those years. And if you can't get beyond that, well, it's going to eat you alive. But he's been able to do that."

Deeply troubled man

Williams apparently could not. In an article he wrote a decade after Williams' death, David Protess, the journalism professor who helped exonerate the Ford Heights Four, recalled a deeply troubled man who had become paranoid. He had video cameras installed in his home for fear authorities would try to frame him. He drank to calm his nerves and ease his fears and had given up oil painting, one activity that had brought him a measure of peace.

He was troubled by flashbacks, his years on death row still haunting him, according to Protess.

Williams did not dispute that he was troubled and susceptible to paranoia. He told the Tribune in 1999 that society viewed him as "psychologically contaminated" and said he could not argue with the description. Prison was "a living hell," he said, and he struggled to put the experience behind him. With characteristic humor, he joked that he saw a therapist so often that the therapist deserved a break.

In one of his last public appearances, just a few months before his death, Williams attended a ceremony at which then-Gov. George Ryan announced that he was pardoning Paula Gray, the witness who had been coerced into implicating the Ford Heights Four. Gray was convicted of perjury after she tried to recant her testimony. In spite of her role in sending him to death row, Williams embraced Gray that day.

When Williams died, Adams delivered a eulogy at the funeral. Jimerson and Raines were there too. It was the last time they were all together.

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