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Calvin Ollins

State: Illinois
Incident Date: 09/17/86
 Age at Arrest: 14
 Conviction Date: 1988
 Age when Exonerated: 27
 Exonerated Date: 2001
 Time Served: 13.5 years
 Conviction: Murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault, armed robbery, aggravated kidnapping
False Confession: True
 Implicated by Another Youth: True
Details

In January 1987, three months after twenty-three-year-old Chicago medical student Lori Roscetti was kidnapped, raped, and murdered, pressure was mounting on the police to find the assailant. Calvin Ollins, just fourteen years old at the time, was brought to the police station and intensely interrogated for hours along with his cousin, Larry Ollins, in conjunction with the ongoing investigation. During this interrogation, police falsely claimed that his cousin Larry had implicated him and promised that he could go home if he confessed. Calvin finally broke down and confessed to the attack, implicating his sixteen-year-old cousin Larry and his seventeen-year-old friend Marcellus Bradford at the same time. In 1988, the two Ollins cousins and a fourth party, Omar Saunders, were convicted of the crime and charged to life without the possibility of parole; Bradford pled guilty and offered testimony against each of them in exchange for a reduced charge of only aggravated kidnapping and was sentenced to twelve years. Bradford later recanted, accusing the police involved in his investigation of coercing him into falsely confessing and implicating the others. All three were exonerated through DNA testing in 2001 after almost fifteen years of incarceration.