CHICAGO — A Chicago man convicted of murder was released after spending nearly two decades in prison on Tuesday, years after his twin brother confessed to committing the crime.
Kevin Dugar was released from the Cook County Jail at about 9:30 p.m. CST, WLS-TV reported. According to Cook County Circuit Court documents, he will live in a residential transitional facility and will not be allowed to leave the facility for 90 days, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Dugar was found guilty of gunning down a gang rival on Chicago’s North Side in 2003 and wounding another, the newspaper reported. However, his twin brother, Karl Smith, admitted to the murder while testifying in 2016, the Tribune reported. Smith is already serving a 99-year sentence for a violent home invasion in 2008, in which a 6-year-old child was shot in the head, according to the newspaper.
“I’m here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of,” Smith testified at the time.
Three years earlier, Smith wrote a letter to Dugar, confessing to the slaying.
“I have to get it off my chest before it kills me,” Smith wrote. “So I’ll just come clean and pray you can forgive me.”
In 2018, a judge said Smith’s confession was not credible, WLS reported. The judge also denied Dugar a new trial.
Dugar’s attorney, Ron Safer, said he hopes Dugar’s case will not be retried.
“This case is in a very different situation than it was 20 years ago,” Safer told the Tribune. “Everybody knows much more about it.”
Dugar’s conviction was reversed by the Court of Appeals, according to the newspaper.