Kevin Jackson was released from prison last month, more than two decades after he was convicted of murder in the fatal shooting of a man at a West Englewood gas station.
Now 43, Jackson has always maintained his innocence. Police and prosecutors said several witnesses identified him as the shooter, but each recanted at Jackson’s 2003 trial while claiming threatening, intimidating and coercive efforts by the two lead Chicago police detectives assigned to the case.
One of those detectives retired from the Chicago Police Department last year amid growing scrutiny of his past casework.
But the other has continued to rise through the ranks of CPD, earning praise and promotions along the way.
John Foster, a CPD veteran of more than 30 years, is now commander of Area 5 detectives, overseeing the investigations of the most serious crimes reported across Chicago’s Northwest Side, everywhere north of Division Street and west of the Chicago River.
Jackson has yet to petition for a certificate of innocence, but Cook County prosecutors have signaled they will drop the case. That decision comes in the wake of a special prosecutors’ report into Jackson’s conviction that declared, “Action is required because the conviction that keeps Jackson in prison lacks any reliable evidentiary support, resting exclusively on now-disavowed witness statements that were obtained by police coercion and misconduct.”