Alibi Frees Teen After 2 Years in Jail

A teenager who was in class when a teacher was shot and killed more than a mile away sat in jail for two years because his airtight alibi went unchecked for months.

Don Olmetti, 19, was released Thursday in another in a string of cases that have stirred anger over Chicago police methods in murder investigations. Critics say police have beaten or otherwise bullied suspects to get confessions.

In still another case Thursday, charges were dropped against Lanard Guider in a 1997 murder. Prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence. Guider, 19, claims his confession was coerced by a police beating.

Olmetti was arrested in April 1997 in the shooting of 43-year-old teacher Sonia Hernandez after police got an anonymous telephone tip with no details.

Jack Carey, Olmetti’s public defender, said the slightly built teen, who has a mild learning disability, confessed but reported police had hit him during an 18-hour interrogation.

Olmetti had an alibi for Hernandez’s killing: He claimed that he was sitting in his second-period high school class when it happened. Police considered the alibi but dismissed it because he had confessed.

Carey said he spent months trying to discredit that confession and prove the alibi with telephone and school records.

But justice moved slowly. Carey is one of 25 trial attorneys in the homicide unit and is defending 25 cases, including a dozen in which prosecutors are asking for the death penalty. He shares one investigator with five other attorneys who have similar caseloads.

“Everyone would like to have seen it go faster, including me,” he said.

Ultimately, school attendance records helped persuade prosecutors to drop the murder charge.

Olmetti declined to discuss his case as he left the Cook County Jail with his parents. “I want to go back to school and get my life back together,” he said.

On Monday, charges were dropped against a man who had been on death row for a 1985 murder and rape. DNA evidence cleared Ronald Jones, who became the 12th death row inmate to be freed since capital punishment was reinstated in Illinois in 1977. The state has executed 12 people in that time.

And in April, a judge acquitted a 16-year-old boy who spent more than a year behind bars awaiting trial on murder charges. The teenager had confessed to stabbing a woman who, it turns out, was never stabbed at all. The judge suggested that the zeal of police and prosecutors clouded their judgment.

Police have denied beating suspects. But Cook County state’s Atty. Richard Devine and Chicago police Supt. Terry Hillard recently announced that murder suspects will be allowed to make videotaped statements after they are questioned. Youngsters will be allowed to have their parents with them during questioning.

Devine is also reviewing about 90 Chicago death row cases, some of them resulting from investigations by homicide Cmdr. Jon Burge, who was fired in 1993 after being accused of torturing suspects.