Chicago man wrongfully convicted for rape to be released

Marlon Pendleton serving 20-Year prison sentence due to incompetent forensic "science"

A Cook County judge agreed Thursday to release a man serving a 20-year-prison sentence for a 1992 rape that DNA tests showed he didn't commit. "That's not justice," Circuit Judge Stanley Sacks said of Marlon Pendleton's imprisonment. "It's an injustice." Sacks vacated Pendleton's sentence and ordered him released on a personal recognizance bond for a separate sexual assault for which he's already served his full prison term, setting in motion a release from prison that might come as early as Thursday.

Pendleton appeared stunned by the judge's ruling, dropping his head and covering his face with his hands -- the moment, his attorney said, when it hit him he was going to get out of prison.

"He's been in prison for over a dozen years," said attorney Karen Daniel. "He's lost a huge chunk of his life, he's lost his family. He doesn't have any money, he doesn't have a job. It's not a happy day for Marlon Pendleton."

Sacks set another hearing for Dec. 8, at which time the Cook County State's Attorney's Office will likely drop the case, spokesman John Gorman said. Pendleton, 49, still must return to Dixon Correctional Center to process paperwork, but, Sacks promised, "It's your last trip back and forth."

The judge's ruling follows an announcement last week that DNA tests ruled out Pendleton as the source of genetic evidence left by the person who attacked and robbed a woman on Chicago's South Side in 1992. Pendleton had claimed from the outset that he was innocent of the attack. But he was convicted after a Chicago police crime lab analyst, whose work has been linked to several wrongful convictions, said there was not enough evidence for DNA testing.

But a forensic serologist chosen to analyze evidence by prosecutors and Pendleton's attorneys found that, even after the crime analyst used some of the evidence in her testing, he still had enough material to develop a profile.

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