THE LOOP — A man who was freed from prison praised Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx Thursday for acknowledging that evidence raised troubling questions about his case, saying her action provided "a measure of atonement."
Adam Gray, now 38, served 20 years of a life sentence he received after being convicted of setting a 1993 Brighton Park fire that killed two people when he was 14 years old.
Gray said police led him down a "grooved road," used "psychological tricks" and pulled "emotional levers" to make him confess to setting fire to a two-flat in the 4100 block of South Albany Avenue. Prosecutors alleged Gray set the fire on a second-floor enclosed back porch because he was angry with a girl who lived there.
The girl and her parents were able to get out of the building, but two other residents — Peter McGuiness, 54, and his 74-year-old sister, Margaret Mesa — died.
Gray said he told police 30 times during a seven-hour interrogation that he did not set the fire before admitting his involvement in an attempt to "make the suffering stop," he said Thursday at the offices of his attorney, Terri Mascherin.
"I just wanted it to stop," Gray said. "You can only take so much."
When he was arrested, Gray — an eighth-grade student — said he was a "video game nerd" who loved to ride his bicycle and hang out with his friends.
Mascherin said police lied to Gray and told him that his mother and brother refused to come to the police station, when they were in fact waiting for him.
Illinois law now requires minors to be allowed to contact their parents, Mascherin said.
Two fire investigators testified that they found charring and deep burn patterns at the scene of the fire, leading them to conclude the fire was set with an accelerant.
However, advances in fire science have called those conclusions into question, prompting many convictions to be reconsidered, including Gray's.
"It was frustrating that we had evidence, but I knew it wasn't enough," to have him declared innocent, Gray said.
Mascherin said prosecutors told her they will not retry Gray, but have not yet declared that he is innocent.
Gray, accompanied by his brother Michael and mother who cried as her sons spoke to reporters, said he never thought he would be freed, and had to "make peace with the fact that he was going to die in prison for something I didn't do."
"I spent more days believing this day would not come than I spent believing this day would come," Gray said.
Under former State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, prosecutors recommended that Gray get a new trial. However, that request was rejected by a Cook County judge, who ruled there was still enough evidence to prove Gray's guilt.
Gray appealed that ruling, and Foxx agreed to release him while that effort proceeds.
Gray said he and his attorneys had made no decision about whether to sue the city over the conduct of the police officers who he claims extracted a false confession from him.
While having dinner with his attorneys after leaving the prison in Downstate Galesburg, Gray said he was dazzled by all of the colors and lights and sounds.
"It was dizzying," Gray said, adding that he wasn't sure what he would do next.
His brother said his family would help him take it one day as a time.
"He has a bright future, a young man with a lot of living left to do," Michael Gray said.
But Adam Gray did have one concrete plan while he tries to "center himself" after a 24-year ordeal.
"I'm going to dust off my Nintendo," Gray said, laughing.
