(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- After 28 years in prison, including five on death row, all for a crime she did not commit, a woman is taking her fight against the Chicago Police Department to court.
Marilyn Mulero is the first and only woman to be exonerated from death row in Illinois.
“There were times when you’re in there, you kind of give up,” she told reporters Tuesday. “You’re like, ‘For what?’ The system doesn’t have any faith in you.”
Now, Mulero has filed a civil lawsuit against Chicago police, detectives Reynaldo Guevara and Ernest Halvorsen and others, who attorneys say forced her into falsely confessing to a 1992 shooting in Humboldt Park that left two men dead.
Attorneys say a man admitted to the gang-related shooting, but Guevara and Halvorsen insisted on pinning the crime on Mulero.
“They threatened me with my children. They use your weakness.
That was my ultimate pressure point, when I finally said ‘The hell with it, I have to sign this paper.’”
Attorney Antonio Romanucci is among the attorneys now representing Mulero.
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