Frank Burrell spent about 20 years in prison for a 1999 murder conviction that was later overturned. On Thursday, a Cook County judge rejected his bid to be declared innocent of the crime, ruling that the evidence presented during a Certificate of Innocence proceeding did not undermine her confidence in the original conviction or the 32-year sentence he received.
“I am not at all of the position that anything presented in this C of I has undermined my confidence in the earlier rulings,” Judge Tyria Walton said. “I don’t think that, for me, the earlier findings were improper.”
Still, Burrell will remain a free man and the murder conviction, overturned by an appellate court, will be off his record.
Walton’s ruling comes as the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office faces criticism from some quarters for opposing more Certificate of Innocence petitions under State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke than it did under her predecessor, Kim Foxx.
Under Foxx, the office objected to only 25% of CoI matters, Injustice Watch reported, while Burke is opposing 80%. But, as CWB Chicago reported earlier this year, Foxx’s administration failed to object to CoIs even in some cases in which Foxx herself believed the exonerated men were guilty of “heinous” acts of murder.
Burrell was featured in the Injustice Watch report, part of its “Denying Innocence” series, which argued CoIs help the exonerated obtain jobs and housing, and accused Burke of “making them harder to get.” But the certificates can do far more than make it easier to get a job and an apartment. A new Illinois law provides $50,000 for each year of incarceration to people who receive a CoI after being imprisoned for murder. Their attorneys can also receive payments, and CoIs can bolster claims for potentially massive civil settlements against the city and county.
Burrell would have been eligible for up to $1 million in compensation had the state’s attorney’s office not contested his petition, possibly making him the first person to receive a seven-figure payout from Illinois taxpayers under the new law. Instead, Walton concluded there was “sufficient evidence to support those convictions and the sentence.”
Burrell was convicted of the July 7, 1999, murder of Renee Battle, who was killed in Hyde Park when someone tried to shoot her boyfriend, Marc Davis, but missed and hit her instead. An appellate court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial in 2019 after finding that Burrell’s trial counsel had been ineffective, largely because his attorneys failed to introduce a work timecard that may have shown Burrell could not have committed the crime.
But the case was never retried. Davis refused to testify in the new proceedings, telling the court he feared for his life and did not want to relive the shooting that killed his fiancée or force his now-adult son, who was in the car, to relive it. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the case rather than proceed without his testimony.
While that did not mean a court had found Burrell innocent, some media coverage reported otherwise. Burrell appeared on CNN in 2024, where host Laura Coates said he had “spent 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit” and told him, “you were innocent, not — on a technicality, you were innocent.” No court had made that finding.
Walton, like the judge who initially convicted Burrell in a bench trial, was a career public defender before taking the bench. She took over the case nearly three years ago upon the retirement of Judge Vincent Gaughan, reviewing evidence from Burrell’s original trial, his appeals and post-conviction proceedings, as well as new testimony and evidence presented during a three-day trial in July.
On Thursday, she rejected the petition. She noted that the standard of proof for a CoI is preponderance of the evidence, much lower than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard used at a criminal trial. Even under that lower standard, Walton said, Burrell fell short.
“And I want to be clear: Even if this Court was to leave out and discredit the testimony of Marc Davis, the Court finds that there has been sufficient evidence in these proceedings collectively to support the convictions — even though they were vacated, sufficient evidence to support those convictions and the sentence,” Walton said.
Davis initially told Chicago police that he did not know who had fired the shot. About a month later, he identified Burrell as the shooter and also identified two men who were in Burrell’s car at the time of the shooting, according to the evidence reviewed by Walton. He testified during the original trial that he had known the men for years and recognized them when the shooting happened, but he initially withheld that information from police because he was concerned about his family’s safety and had not yet decided “what route [he] wanted to take.”
Burrell was well known in the neighborhood. According to his own testimony in July, he was “a general” in the Black P. Stone’s street gang responsible for the Hyde Park neighborhood, although he claims he quit the gang about a year before the murder.
The men who were with Burrell also identified him as the shooter. They told police and later testified that they had been riding around with Burrell, drinking and smoking marijuana from about 3 p.m. until Burrell pulled alongside Davis’ car and fired twice. One of those witnesses, Darryl Morton, never retracted his account before dying. The other, Willie Hatcher, changed portions of his testimony, but Walton called his adjustments “somewhat of a change-up, but not really.”
She also noted that Hatcher, Morton, and Davis all knew Burrell, undercutting a central part of Burrell’s CoI defense – expert testimony about the reliability of identifying strangers.
Burrell’s alibi: He said he was working as a janitor at a South Loop film studio operated by a family friend. The alibi was built on a timecard that had been an issue throughout Burrell’s appeals. His original trial attorney, William P. Murphy, testified in July about his decision not to introduce the timecard at the original trial. Murphy, who had been practicing criminal defense for 31 years by 1999, said the card did not actually place Burrell at work at the time of the shooting, which occurred at about 10:15 p.m.
Because of that, Murphy believed the card did not establish an alibi and could potentially hurt Burrell.
“[T]he alibi had the wrong times and it was suspect as far as nobody had seen him [at work], it wasn’t verified, wasn’t stamped, if I recall,” Murphy testified.
The original timecard was dated for the week of July 3, 1999, but did not contain an entry specifically dated July 7, the day Battle was killed, according to court transcripts. During questioning by Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph DiBella, Burrell acknowledged that.
“You will agree that … the timecard with the only date on it being July 3, 1999, does not have a signature, correct?” DiBella asked.
“That is correct,” Burrell replied.
“And you would also agree that there are no initials, correct?”
“That is correct.”
“You would also agree that the date of July 7th, 1999, is not on there whatsoever? Is that correct also?”
“That is correct.”
Burrell’s current attorney, David Owens, took a different view, arguing that the timecard showed Burrell could not have been riding around with Morton and Hatcher for hours before the shooting as they claimed. By the time of the CoI hearing, Burrell’s attorneys had located a second timecard, dated July 17, 1999, which they argued supported his account of his work schedule. Walton was not convinced.
“It’s different. It’s a different font,” Walton said of the second timecard. “And, also, like an old typewriter, you can tell when the type is from the same machine … and it’s not the same…”
“The fact that the 7/17 one is the only other one that was presented in these — all of these hearings from the date of trial all the way until today, they are a little concerning for me to wrap my head around in terms of establishing an alibi,” Walton said.
She ultimately concluded that Burrell had not met his burden and that nothing presented during the CoI proceeding had persuaded her that the original conviction was wrong.
“Your petition, Mr. Burrell, is respectfully denied.”
“Good luck to you,” Walton said Thursday. “The conviction and sentence has been vacated, and you should still be able to function in your life because you don’t have those convictions on your record. Good luck at whatever your next steps are.”
Burrell continues to pursue a federal lawsuit against the city of Chicago, Cook County, retired Chicago police officers who investigated the case, and recently retired Cook County Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesel, who was the prosecutor who obtained a written witness statement in the case. That lawsuit continues even though, under questioning during the CoI proceedings, Burrell acknowledged that he had no personal knowledge of wrongdoing by Kuriakos Ciesel or the Chicago police officers involved in his case.
During his opening arguments in July, DiBella argued that Burrell’s pursuit of a CoI was part of a money grab by him and his lawyers rather than an effort to right a wrong from 1999.
“It’s about destroying anyone in their way to get that money, including fantastic judges who have never had a discipline mark on their record in some, what, 30 years,” DiBella said. “All of a sudden she’s a crook too. Anyone. Step on anyone to get that money.”
Burrell’s lead attorney during the CoI effort, David Owens of Loevy & Loevy, did not respond to an email seeking input for this story.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office provided the following statement: “The CCSAO carefully evaluates each Certificate of Innocence petition on the totality of the evidence on an individual basis. There is no blanket policy that informs our decisions in these matters. We believe our approach is consistent with Illinois Certificate of Innocence statute (735 ILCS 5/2-702), which requires petitioners to prove a claim of actual innocence by a preponderance of evidence.”
A footnote: During Burrell’s 2024 appearance on CNN, host Laura Coates dramatically stated that he was convicted of the 1999 murder and “he didn’t even get a jury trial,” adding that it was “despite his desire for a jury trial.” Owens, Burrell’s attorney, clarified that Burrell’s original trial attorney recommended a bench trial based on the judge’s background as a public defender and the lawyer’s knowledge of the court system.
“And when you’re young and you’re, you know, a teenager in your 20s, you’re really reliant upon the things that the attorney said and their advice because they’re the ones who opt into the system,” Owens said.
Earlier this year, at the age of 50, facing armed robbery, aggravated battery, and illegal firearm possession charges in connection with an incident last year aboard a CTA bus, Burrell once again rejected a jury in favor of a bench trial, court records show. This time, the judge, Ursula Walowski, had served as a career prosecutor, not a defense attorney, before taking the bench. She found him not guilty of all charges.
