DNA voids murder confession 
Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.; Jan 5, 2002; Kirsten Scharnberg and
Page 1

Steve Mills, Tribune staff reporters;

Abstract:
[ Corethian Bell] had been due back in court at the end of the month
but [H erschella Conyers] got a call Friday morning. Additional DNA
tests had fa iled to link Bell to the murder. Conyers was told that
the state was set  to drop the charges.

Full Text:
(Copyright 2002 by the Chicago Tribune)

In the first case of a videotaped murder confessio n unraveling in
Cook County, a man who was recorded saying he stabbed his mother was
freed on Friday after DNA tests linked another man to the cri me.

Corethian Bell, 25, walked out of Cook County Jail, where he had been
held for 17 months, after prosecutors dropped murder charges ag ainst
him in a brief hearing before Circuit Court Judge Daniel P. Darcy.

"I feel OK," Bell said as he left in a car with attorney Hersche lla
Conyers.

Bell's case was detailed in the Tribune series, "Co ps and
Confessions," an investigation of how Chicago police and other Coo k
County law enforcement agencies obtain murder confessions. The series,
 which examined thousands of murder cases filed since 1991, found
that pol ice, particularly Chicago detectives, repeatedly close
murder investigati ons with dubious confessions.

Bell said he confessed falsely onl y after detectives yelled at him,
told him he failed a lie-detector test  and roughed him up. He had
been held for more than two days.

One of the other cases investigated by the Tribune--that of Daniel
Taylor, w ho was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison
in spite of re cords showing he was in a police lockup when two
victims were slain--is b eing re-investigated by the Cook County
state's attorney's office, a spok esman said Friday.

Regarding Bell, prosecutors are investigating "all aspects of the
case," including how the initial investigation was c onducted by the
detectives, said John Gorman, spokesman for State's Atty. Richard
Devine.

Gorman said prosecutors also are continuing the ir investigation into
the man to whom the DNA matched. That man is in jai l on charges he
stabbed and sexually assaulted another woman in December  2000, six
months after Bell's mother was slain and approximately five blo cks
from where that crime occurred.

In an interview with the Tri bune recently, Devine said he would
support a pilot program to videotape  interrogations as well as
confessions. Videotaping of confessions gained  wider acceptance
after the false confessions of two young boys in the rap e and murder
of 11- year-old Ryan Harris in 1998.

"Videotaped co nfessions are a valuable tool," said Gorman, "but
nothing is foolproof wh en human beings are involved. This case is
very rare. I do not believe we 've ever dropped charges where there
is a videotape of the person confess ing to the crime."

Detectives stand pat

David Bayless,  a Police Department spokesman, said prosecutors "did
the right thing" in  light of the new DNA evidence in the
investigation.

But that fee ling was not shared in the precinct where the detectives
who interrogated Bell work. In the Calumet District, Sgt. Stan
Salabura said that he and  others still believed Bell was involved.

"He gave us a statement ," Salabura said Friday. "I believe that it
is factual."

Bell te lephoned police in July 2000 to report that he had found his
mother, Nett a, dead in her apartment on South King Drive. He said
she had been shot.  In fact, an autopsy showed that she had been
stabbed to death.

A fter police arrived at the apartment, they took Bell, a panhandler
who wa shed windshields and sold incense and the newspaper StreetWise
around Hyd e Park, into custody.

He confessed after 50 hours.

Sala bura said that the time Bell spent in custody was not especially
long. "F ifty hours is long if you're sitting in a room," he said.
"But it's not l ong for a criminal investigation."

Mental illness ignored

 Bell, who is mildly mentally retarded and has a lengthy history of
men tal illness, said in court papers that he repeatedly told police
he was i nnocent but that detectives on the investigation refused to
believe him.

At one point, he said, detectives hit him so hard that he fell o ff a
chair in the interrogation room. He said that he finally agreed to m
ake the videotaped confession because he believed that later he could
tel l a judge the truth and be released. Instead, Bell was indicted,
arraigne d and sent to the County Jail to await trial.

DNA tests over the past year showed that semen found on Netta Bell
and blood spatters on th e walls of her apartment matched those of
the man in jail for the Decembe r 2000 attempted murder and sexual
assault.

Corethian Bell had b een due back in court at the end of the month
but Conyers got a call Frid ay morning. Additional DNA tests had
failed to link Bell to the murder. C onyers was told that the state
was set to drop the charges.

"It' s to the state's attorney's credit that they motioned to bring
him in ear ly to get him out of jail as soon as possible," Conyers
said. "They could have waited another couple weeks until the
prescheduled date."

 When Bell left the jail Friday afternoon, he carried a plastic bag
with e verything he owned: a shirt, a pair of jeans, a trial-size
stick of deodo rant, toothpaste and a toothbrush. At Conyers' law
offices, Bell was join ed by three of his biggest supporters.

Cosmos Boekell, 27, Ferna ndo Rochaix, 25, and Bethany Pickens, 39,
know Bell from the Hyde Park ne ighborhood. All of them had believed
from the beginning that Bell was inn ocent.

"We never believed that he was capable of anything like t his,"
Pickens said. "Never."

Unanswered question

"Justi ce," Conyers said, "cannot depend on luck. And there's every
likelihood t hat without all the people who fought for Corethian Bell
he'd not only be sitting over at the Cook County Jail today, he'd be
in prison somewhere  like Pontiac or Stateville.

"How is it that an innocent man make s this kind of statement to the
police? That's the unasked and unanswered question for our Police
Department."

Bell just sat at the end o f the long, polished-wood conference
table, smiling. He said he didn't un derstand the legal system when
he confessed and he doesn't understand it  now. He called it a "crazy
thing."

But he knows about friendship , and he said he is thankful to the
people who created the Bell Defense F und, which has raised $3,000 to
help him get on his feet.

"I fee l so good," he said, looking around the room.

"Let's go," Bell s aid. "I'm hungry."
[Illustration]
PHOTO; Caption : PHOTO (color): Corethian Bell leaves Cook County
Jail Friday with a soc ial worker after DNA tests linked another man
to the murder of Bell's mot her. Bell had been in custody for 17
months. Tribune photo by Heather Sto ne.
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Sub Title:  [North Final Editio n]
Start Page:  1
ISSN:  1 0856706