Since 1986, when they were arrested for the murders of an elderly couple, Eric Caine and Aaron Patterson often have been paired.
They both insisted they were innocent. Both claimed Chicago police detectives at Area 2 had tortured them to confess as they were being questioned in adjacent interrogation rooms.
Both were convicted.
But Caine was given a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, while Patterson was sentenced to death.
Caine, as it turned out, may have been the unlucky one.
Last January, in one of his final acts as governor, George Ryan pardoned and freed Patterson, saying that he was innocent. Briefly, Caine’s hopes rose that he, too, would be set free. But Caine went nowhere.
“I’m the forgotten innocent,” Caine, 38, said in a recent interview at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center Downstate.
State law says a governor cannot pardon a prisoner or commute his sentence without a formal request, and Caine’s attorneys in the Cook County public defender’s office never filed papers with the state.
Caine’s story shows how various factors can play a role in a case’s outcome, from whether an inmate is on Death Row to how effective an advocate he, or his attorney, can be.
Caine’s attorneys, for instance, have pursued a quieter, less aggressive tack than Patterson’s lawyers, who have been vocal about the case’s ties to Jon Burge, the former Chicago police commander fired after the police board found that he had tortured another suspect.
Caine sorely lacks the blunt persistence and charisma that helped Patterson draw supporters, although he has made a case for innocence equally as powerful as Patterson’s.
According to medical records, Caine was treated for a ruptured eardrum after his interrogation, an injury he said he suffered when a detective hit him in the side of the head when he refused to confess.
The confession Caine ultimately made is questionable too. It offers the same version of events as the confession the police said they got from Patterson, which the governor’s office concluded was not reliable.
Police and prosecutors declined to comment for this story, but in the past they have defended the investigations and prosecutions that led to Caine and Patterson’s convictions.
When Ryan made international news with the Jan. 10 pardons and, the next day, the Death Row commutations, Caine was never mentioned, despite lobbying on his behalf.
Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess, who met with the governor and his staff on behalf of Patterson, said he also presented evidence of Caine’s innocence to them.
But the attorneys who represent Caine said it never occurred to them to petition the governor for a pardon. Like many lawyers, they believed Ryan was focused solely on capital cases.
Nearly a year ago, Caine sat in his cell and watched on television as Ryan announced Patterson’s release, and as Patterson later walked into the arms of his mother and a throng of supporters. He was happy for Patterson but has grown ever-more despondent about his own chances for release.
“I’m just a byproduct of Aaron Patterson,” Caine said in the prison interview.
“That’s how it’s always been,” he added, bitterness rising in his voice. “It’s never been about me. It’s always been about him. I’m just along for the ride. I’m just roadkill.”
The cases against Caine and Patterson were, for the most part, made in two small interrogation rooms on the second floor of Area 2’s headquarters, a low-slung building on the Far South Side.
There, Caine and Patterson were interrogated separately by police detectives who worked under the command of Burge, the veteran officer at the center of torture charges that a special prosecutor has been investigating for nearly two years.
There, police and prosecutors said, the two voluntarily confessed to a double murder in the South Chicago neighborhood.
At the time, Caine and Patterson were familiar to police. Caine, who dropped out of high school after his freshman year, had been arrested several times, though he had only one conviction, for robbery, according to court records.
Caine was raised by a drug addict mother who according to court records poured hot water on him when he was 13, burning him over 25 percent of his body. He began to drink alcohol before he reached his teens, according to a court report, and he smoked marijuana.
At the time of his arrest, he was a member of the Vice Lords street gang, the sort who made decisions for a small and seemingly ragtag group.
“All I wanted to do was get high and fight,” he said. “That was the epitome of my existence.”
He was a friend of Patterson, the leader of the Apache Rangers street gang. The Apache Rangers and Vice Lords in that area were members of a loose confederation of gangs.
After their arrests, Caine and Patterson were questioned about the stabbing deaths of Vincent Sanchez, 73, and his wife, Rafaela, 62.
Police described the interrogations as almost genial. Detective Raymond Madigan testified at the 1989 trials that the first question he asked Caine was if he was hungry. When Caine said he was, Madigan said he went to McDonald’s to get him breakfast.
Madigan testified that Caine initially denied a role in the murders, saying he did not know about them until his grandmother told him.
Madigan, a veteran detective, told Caine he would have to talk with Caine’s grandmother to verify Caine’s account. That, Madigan testified, was all it took to break the young gang member.
“Mr. Caine told me it would not be necessary to speak to his grandmother, that he was going to tell me the truth,” Madigan testified.
A short time later, Madigan brought in a prosecutor and a court reporter. Caine made a 14-page confession, initialing each page at the bottom and, at the end of the statement, signing his name in what appears to be a careful cursive, with small circles dotting the i’s.
According to the confession, Caine needed guns, and he and Patterson agreed to go on a “mission.” Patterson, prosecutors contended, viewed the Sanchezes as easy targets. The couple were known in the South Chicago neighborhood for buying stolen goods.
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Caine and Patterson, according to the confession, went to the Sanchezes and demanded guns. But Vincent Sanchez resisted. Patterson attacked Sanchez and his wife, while Caine fled, the confession said.
Vincent Sanchez was stabbed 25 times, including three times in the neck. Rafaela Sanchez was stabbed 10 times, autopsies concluded. The murder weapon never was found.
Caine, both in court and in an interview, said police had assaulted him. He said Madigan initially treated him kindly, telling Caine that he could help him and, if Caine cooperated with police, would let him go home.
But when Caine continued to insist he was not involved in killing the Sanchezes and said he could not help the police to get Patterson, he said Madigan became furious with him.
“He had me believing that he believed me and was going to help me, that he was on my side,” Caine said. “Then he turned on me.”
Madigan, said Caine, hit him in the left ear while he sat handcuffed to a chair. He said he heard a loud pop in his head, then ringing.
Medical records show he suffered a ruptured eardrum.
“When he hit me, it was over. … I just folded,” Caine said during the interview. “Anything they wanted me to say, anything they wanted me to do, OK.”
“I signed that statement,” Caine continued, “because I was hurt. My head was hurting. My ear was hurting. I was tired.”
At one point, Caine said, detectives took him to the interrogation room where police were holding Patterson and opened the door. Caine said he saw Patterson “messed up” and barely able to speak.
Caine said that his confession was made up from information police gave him about the crime, and that he repeated it as best he could. When he made mistakes, when he forgot what they wanted him to say, or what order they wanted him to say it in, Caine said detectives grew impatient and angrily corrected him.
Madigan could not be reached for comment. But at the trial he denied he ever mistreated Caine during the questioning.
The abuse Caine said he suffered was not as severe as what Patterson has alleged–being nearly suffocated with a plastic typewriter cover, threatened with a handgun, repeatedly struck by police detectives.
But unlike Patterson, who emerged without physical injuries to corroborate his claims of abuse, Caine had medical records to support his allegations.
“With Eric, they left marks,” said Flint Taylor, who was Patterson’s attorney for 10 years while he appealed his conviction and represents him in a $30 million civil lawsuit against Chicago police.
Caine could have been out of prison by now. Before the trial, according to Caine’s lawyers, Cook County prosecutors offered him a deal: Plead guilty and testify against Patterson in exchange for a 20-year sentence.
Anita Rivkin-Carothers, one of Caine’s attorneys, said she urged him to take the deal. He refused. He told them he was innocent and had no information about Patterson for prosecutors.
“I refused simply because I didn’t know if he had anything to do with this, and I didn’t want to be responsible for him being on Death Row,” Caine said during the interview.
So Caine and Patterson went to trial together, but before separate juries. They were as different as two men could be during the various hearings and testimony–Caine quiet and subdued, Patterson frequently interrupting proceedings to loudly declare his innocence.
There also were some ill feelings between them. Each thought the other had implicated him in the crime, although telling suspects another suspect has turned on them is a frequent police tactic to divide suspects and obtain confessions.
The details of Caine’s conviction are contained for the most part in the court papers he carries in a tattered document envelope.
The thrust of the case against him was his confession. The prosecutors had other evidence against Patterson–chiefly, a teenage girl who said Patterson told her he committed the murders but who has since recanted her testimony–but they had little else against Caine.
Caine’s lawyers, at the time Vincent Wagner and Rivkin-Carothers, tried to persuade a judge to bar prosecutors from introducing Caine’s confession at trial, arguing it was a product of brutality. The judge refused, saying police lawfully obtained it.
Caine, dressed for court in a blue blazer and red tie, also testified. He denied that he voluntarily confessed. He denied that he and Patterson discussed a “mission” to get guns from the Sanchezes. He denied having any role in the double murder.
In September 1989, Caine was convicted of murder and home invasion. Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Caine, but jurors decided on a life sentence.
“He’s been left behind in the whole matter because he didn’t get the death penalty,” Rivkin-Carothers said. “If we hadn’t persuaded the jury to give him life, if we hadn’t succeeded, then maybe he’d be home.”
Speaking to a probation officer for a presentence report to the judge in his case, Caine said he was “sorry” the Sanchezes had been murdered. But he insisted he had nothing to do with the crime.
He said he would “forgive” jurors for convicting him.
Caine said the conviction and sentence left him “overwhelmed by despair.”
“I saw no way to prove my innocence,” he said. “It was very difficult to adjust to this kind of life. I couldn’t imagine me spending the rest of my life in jail for something somebody else did.”
Patterson was devastated by his conviction as well, but quickly turned his energies to fighting for his release, eventually becoming the focus of one of the most intense campaigns on behalf of a Death Row inmate anywhere.
From his prison cell, Patterson repeatedly declared his innocence and, to help him prove it, commanded an army of supporters, orchestrating protests, sit-ins and news conferences.
His lawyers aggressively pursued his case and sought to bring attention to it, filing numerous motions with hundreds of pages of exhibits. “60 Minutes II” once covered the case when Patterson’s attorneys argued before the Illinois Supreme Court.
Caine languished, nearly anonymous and silent. His lawyers also filed appeals, often making similar arguments, yet they never garnered the same level of attention as Patterson’s legal briefs.
Even the media paid little attention to Caine. A 1998 Tribune investigation of the case focused on Patterson and made only a passing reference to Caine, and only as Patterson’s co-defendant.
“People seem to think being in prison with natural life, you’re safe, you have time,” Patterson said in an interview. “There’s not nearly the same sense of urgency as with a guy on Death Row. The clock’s ticking.”
Patterson has spent some time with a team of Protess’ students continuing to investigate the case, but he also is chiding when he speaks of Caine. He believes Caine should be working harder to prove his innocence and obtain his own release.
Caine’s best chance to be released probably came and went with Ryan, the controversial governor who granted the nation’s largest clemency ever as he left office in mid-January.
The day he set Patterson free, Ryan also pardoned three other condemned men who he said had been wrongfully convicted of their crimes. All of them had claimed detectives under Burge had tortured them.
The next day Ryan emptied Death Row, commuting 167 death sentences to life in prison or a term of years. Petitions were on file for all these inmates, mostly submitted by the prisoners or their attorneys. In some cases, where prisoners did not want clemency, public-interest lawyers or others petitioned on their behalf.
Caine watched the historic events from his cell. As Ryan spoke, Caine dared to hope that he would be set free too.
“Once Gov. Ryan said Patterson’s name,” he recalled, a small smile breaking across his face, “I just knew mine would be next.”
In the cells around him, other inmates thought so too.
“You’re going home, Shorty Caine,” they yelled, creating a din in the cell house on the bluffs over the Mississippi River. “You’re going home.”
Had he been on Death Row with Patterson, his case might have gotten the same scrutiny and ended with the same result.
Caine now is represented by Winona Agbabiaka from the Cook County public defender’s office. Agbabiaka said that she and her supervisor, Harold Winston, never discussed asking Ryan to pardon and release Caine, in large part because Ryan’s focus appeared to be elsewhere.
“Nobody had any idea what was going to happen with the clemency issue,” Agbabiaka said. “If we had, we certainly would have filed.”
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Ryan, for the most part, was deliberating on whether to grant commutations to every Death Row inmate or just some of them. Not until his last days in office did it become apparent that he was considering pardoning any of them.
Few seemed aware that he might consider the cases of prisoners who weren’t facing execution. Only one such inmate was pardoned: Franklin Thompson, a man serving 24 years for a Joliet murder. The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University had filed Thompson’s request.
Ryan pardoned Stanley Howard of the murder conviction that sent him to Death Row, but not of his other convictions, including rape, although the governor said those cases troubled him too. Howard’s lawyers sought the pardon for murder, but not for the lesser offenses.
And Ryan turned down a number of high-profile requests.
Protess, the Northwestern journalism professor who has been instrumental in freeing several Death Row prisoners, said he approached Ryan together with a central figure of the capital-punishment reform movement–Anthony Porter.
Porter, who spent some 17 years on Death Row before he was freed, also urged Ryan to examine Caine’s and Patterson’s cases, Protess recalled.
Later, he said, he met with Ryan’s staff, and he presented evidence of innocence on behalf of both Caine and Patterson.
“I mentioned the cases together,” Protess said. “The point that I was making was that they were indistinguishable.”
Dennis Culloton, Ryan’s former spokesman, said he did not recall Caine coming up much in the governor’s deliberations.
He said the focus of the clemency effort was indeed on Death Row prisoners, and the effort was a strain on the office’s limited resources and the dwindling time before Ryan left office.
“We were dealing mostly with the death penalty,” Culloton said. “We weren’t devoting resources to the other cases.”
Either way, Caine and his attorneys never filed a request. Consequently, Ryan could not have pardoned and freed Caine even if he had wanted to.
For his part, Caine said he was focused on overturning his conviction in the courts, though it is difficult for inmates to win a new trial once they have been convicted and the presumption of innocence is lost. He filed his own papers, which led to the appointment of the public defender’s office.
Barry Gross, chief deputy for the Illinois attorney general, said the office is evaluating the Area 2 cases and, in the case of Caine, waiting for his attorneys to file his latest appeal.
“Once that is filed,” he said, “we’ll sit down and talk.”
Caine’s lawyers have said they might still seek clemency from Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who has left in place the moratorium that Ryan declared. But Caine is still haunted by the thought that he might have missed his only chance for freedom.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, “the despair I feel when I go to sleep.”
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The Tribune’s extensive coverage of capital punishment can be found at chicagotribune.com/deathpenalty