LEGAL REPRESENTATION
In the fall of 1988, Brian Beals was a 22-year-old law enforcement major at Southern Illinois University, where he played college football. On November 16, 1988, Brian was visiting his home in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood when a local drug supplier approached him and began making threats. As Brian drove away to escape these threats, bullets rang out in his direction—bullets that struck and killed an unrelated six-year-old child who happened to be walking down the street.
At Brian’s trial, three eyewitnesses all independently described seeing an offender emerge from a nearby alleyway and fire at Brian’s vehicle as he fled, hitting the child in the process. Nonetheless, Brian was convicted primarily based on the testimony of a single individual who never was shown any line-ups but who claimed at trial—14 months after the fact—that Brian might have fired the shots.
After learning about Brian’s case, AJFA attorneys agreed to reinvestigate the murder in partnership with the Illinois Innocence Project. That investigation produced five other witnesses who came forward to corroborate that Brian was the intended target, not the perpetrator. Newly available digital enhancement techniques also revealed that photographs of Brian’s vehicle, taken by police hours after the shooting, showed bullet holes on his car’s rear bumper. Even further, the legal team also linked the lead detective in Brian’s case to nine other proven wrongful convictions. Based on this new evidence, prosecutors agreed to exonerate Brian. After 35 years in prison, Brian Beals walked out into the arms of his family and went home – a free and exonerated man.
Relief, happiness, it was just amazing to walk out of there.
I’m ready to begin life again.
Exoneree Brian Beals, who served 35 years for a crime he did not commit
AJFA attorneys represent people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit and others who have experienced extreme injustice.
Representing the mother of a Minnesota murder victim who gradually came to forgive the man who shot her son and, after that man demonstrated extraordinary leadership and rehabilitation during his 28 years of incarceration, advocated successfully for his release, in partnership with the Ohio Justice & Policy Center.
Securing the exoneration of a New York man who spent 29 years in prison after being forced to falsely confess to a murder he did not commit by the same now-disgraced detective who coerced the Central Park Five, in partnership with Rutgers Law School.
Submitting an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of law enforcement leaders who oppose the use of “Mr. Big” interrogation techniques, in which police pose as phony mobsters and threaten defendants with mob reprisal if they do not confess to serious crimes, in partnership with Russell & Woofter and Harvard Law faculty.