Shortly after 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 22, 1991, 18-year-old Vera Brown was shot four times outside 2910 South Dearborn Street in Chicago, Illinois. Witnesses said that a lone gunman shot her in the head and after Brown fell, the gunman shot her three more times before fleeing on foot.
Brown’s mother, Lavearne Brown, told police that she suspected Dion Warr, known as “Prince” and who was a leader of the Mickey Cobras street gang, was involved because Warr previously had threatened Brown and accused her of being a spy for the Gangster Disciples, a rival gang.
Brown died of her wounds the next day. That same day, 16-year-old Melvin Jefferson, who was in custody for an unrelated offense, told police that Warr and another unknown individual were involved.
On July 2, 1991, Warr was arrested. He did not make a statement. On August 22, 1991, while responding to a report of drug dealing near the address of the shooting, police arrested 16-year-old Jerry Herrington on a charge of disorderly conduct.
Less than 24 hours later, detectives said Herrington had confessed to shooting Brown. Herrington, who was charged with murder under the name Harrington, later claimed that he never confessed. He said that he had been slapped and punched by detectives who refused to allow him to call his grandmother. In fact, no record of any confession was made. When Herrington was brought to an assistant Cook County state’s attorney ostensibly to give his confession, he asked for an attorney. The prosecutor then left the station.
Herrington and Warr were indicted by a Cook County grand jury on charges of first-degree murder based on the statement from Jefferson and the detectives’ claim that Herrington had confessed and implicated Warr.
In April 1992, at a pre-trial hearing on a motion to suppress Herrington’s alleged confession, Herrington testified that when he was first arrested, he identified himself as his 19-year-old brother in the belief that he would be released on bond on the disorderly conduct charge. But when detectives James Riley and Jerome Doroba began questioning him about Brown’s murder, Herrington said he revealed that he was 16.
Herrington said while he was handcuffed to a ring on the wall of an interrogation room, the officers slapped him repeatedly in the face and punched him in the abdomen, and told him facts about the crime. He said he asked to call his grandmother, but his requests were ignored.
Herrington said Doroba interrogated him first. “[H]e got mad because I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. At that time I was handcuffed. He started telling me about a murder, and I said, 'I don't know what you are talking about', and he got upset and started unbuckling his gun belt… he started striking me in the face and slapping me, and I said, 'I don't know what you are talking about.’”
Ultimately, a prosecutor, William Toffenetti, came into the interrogation room. Herrington asked for a lawyer and Toffenetti left without taking any statement. Herrington said he never confessed.
The detectives testified that Herrington admitted shooting Brown at the behest of Warr. Doroba and Riley denied physically abusing Herrington. They denied that he asked to call his grandmother, and denied that he gave his true age and name.
On April 28, 1992, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Earl Strayhorn denied the motion to suppress Herrington’s alleged statement.
Warr and Herrington went to trial in July 1992. They chose to have Strayhorn decide the case without a jury.
The prosecution relied primarily on Jefferson’s testimony that he saw Warr order Herrington to shoot Brown, although Jefferson gave three different locations of where he was when he claimed to have seen the shooting. The defense did not present any evidence showing where these locations were and whether Jefferson’s view was obstructed.
The detectives testified that Herrington confessed to the crime and implicated Warr. They denied that Herrington had been mistreated.
On July 8, 1992, Judge Strayhorn convicted Warr and Herrington of first-degree murder. They were each sentenced to 60 years in prison.
In December 1994, the First District Illinois Appellate Court affirmed Herrington’s conviction.
In 2001, Herrington, acting as his own lawyer, filed a post-conviction petition citing an affidavit from Woodrow Brown saying that he had seen the shooting, and that Herrington was not there. The petition was dismissed.
In 2002, Herrington filed another post-conviction petition that again contained a statement from Brown. This was dismissed as well.
In 2005, Herrington filed another post-conviction petition containing an affidavit from Lakisha Burkes, who said she saw the murder. Burkes said the gunman was Anthony “Teeth” Taylor. She also said Herrington was not present. This petition remained pending until 2008, when Herrington’s appointed lawyer filed an amended petition. However, this petition was dismissed.
On June 3, 2020, Herrington was released on parole.
In April 2022, Illinois Innocence Project attorneys Leanne Beyer and Lauren Kaeseberg filed a 632-page post-conviction petition seeking to vacate Herrington’s conviction. The petition cited new evidence supporting Herrington’s claim of innocence.
The petition also noted that Jefferson had initially identified Taylor as the gunman, but changed his account to implicate Warr and an unknown Black youth. According to the petition, only after Herrington was arrested for disorderly conduct did police say they had received information from an unnamed source that Herrington was the gunman.
Dr. Geoffrey Loftus, an eyewitness identification expert, reviewed the case and concluded that Jefferson had fragmented and incomplete initial memories of the shooter, and had identified Herrington based on reconstructed and plausibly false memories. Dr. Loftus said that any memory Jefferson formed of the shooter would have been largely forgotten in the one-year interval between the time of the shooting and his in-court identification of Herrington.
A witness, D.M., signed an affidavit identifying Andrew “Teeth” Taylor as the only person involved in the shooting. D.M., who knew Anthony Taylor and witnessed the shooting, said he did not come forward at the time because he was afraid of Taylor and he did not trust the police.
The petition also contained another affidavit from Lakisha Burkes, identifying Taylor as the gunman. She said had been so frightened seeing the shooting that she left Illinois the following day and moved in with family in Mobile, Alabama.
L.C. said in an affidavit that she heard Taylor had committed the murder, and that he was a “maniac,” “malicious,” and “trigger happy.”
Mary Wood gave a statement saying that prior to Herrington’s trial, she and her mother had overheard Jefferson telling someone that he needed to “see who Jerry is.”
The petition cited evidence that Detective Riley had engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct and abuse in other cases that was similar to the tactics used against Herrington, including beating and threatening someone, providing him with a false narrative, and coercing him into confessing. The petition similarly claimed that Detective Doroba had interrogated a juvenile in another case without an adult or attorney present and coerced the juvenile to sign a false statement.
The petition said that the officers in the case, including Officer Matthew Brandon, and Detectives Delores Myles and Edward Winstead had filed false reports, concealed exculpatory evidence and coerced witnesses to give false statements in other cases.
In December 2023, Herrington’s attorneys filed a supplemental petition, containing an affidavit from Tashima Hayes, saying that she had seen Jefferson get arrested by police between 1 and 2 p.m. on the day of the shooting. The timing of the arrest meant that Jefferson was in police custody at the time Brown was murdered and could not have witnessed the shooting.
The petition also contained a report from the National Center for Audio and Visual Forensics (NCAVF). The company’s founder, David Notowitz, concluded after creating a simulation of the crime scene that Jefferson could not have seen the shooting based on where he had claimed he was at the time Brown was killed.
The petition said that Jefferson had been found to have given false eyewitness testimony in an unrelated homicide case. “This new evidence of Jefferson’s bias or motivation to falsely identify individuals in homicide cases is relevant…as these same motivating factors (i.e. gang involvement and police coercion) are present,” the petitions aid. “It also sheds new light on Melvin Jefferson’s credibility as a witness and provides remarkable impeachment evidence of the State’s only eyewitness.”
The petition also included an affidavit from Lynn Bagley, an investigator for Herrington’s legal team. Bagley interviewed a man, W.R., who grew up with Jefferson and had been incarcerated with him. W.R. said that sometime between 2007 and 2010, when they were both out of prison, Jefferson said he “did not see anything, but was coerced by the police into cooperating with them.”
And in January 2024, yet another supplemental petition was filed. This petition contained an affidavit from Shannton Luster saying that he had witnessed the shooting. Luster said the gunman was Taylor. “I saw Anthony ‘Teeth’ Taylor shoot Vera Brown in the face then as she fell, he stood over her and shot her again and again,” Luster said. “I could not believe that he shot her like that, like he was sending a message.” Luster said that the shooting “caused me to change my whole life.” He said he moved away, went to college, and tried to forget about the shooting. He said he had not come forward because that “would have put not only me, but my mother and brother in grave danger.” Luster also said that Warr was not present at the time of the shooting.
On March 4, 2025, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office agreed to vacate Herrington’s conviction. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alfredo Maldonado vacated the conviction and the charges were dismissed.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 05-06-2025
Last Update Date: 05-06-2025
