Brandon Johnson was convicted in 1995 of first degree murder and related charges for the shooting outside the E&J liquor store on July 31, 1994, that killed seven-year-old Bernard Harris and wounded William Thurman. Johnson was sentenced to 60 years for murder and 30 years on the remaining counts, to run concurrently. His conviction rested entirely on eyewitness testimony — no physical evidence tied him to the shooting.
In March 2023, Johnson, represented by The Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, moved for leave to file a successive postconviction petition in Cook County Circuit Court. The petition attached an affidavit from Darryl Johnson — no relation — who stated that trial witness Ronnie Smith told him Smith had been coerced by detectives into identifying Brandon Johnson to avoid being charged with murder, and that another witness, Robert Gladney, told him he saw Kenyatta Cursey — himself a trial witness — running and shooting toward Thurman's car the night of the incident. The petition also submitted the appellate record from People v. Anderson, 2023 IL App (1st) 200462, documenting that Detectives John Halloran, James O'Brien, and Kenny Boudreau — all involved in Johnson's investigation — faced coercion allegations from more than 30 individuals each, with O'Brien named in approximately 50 such allegations. A Cook County circuit court order entered in People v. Smith, No. 92-CR-2559601, had already collaterally estopped the State from contesting that Halloran and Boudreau engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct in similar cases between 1990 and 2001.
The circuit court denied leave to file on July 12, 2023. The Illinois Appellate Court, First District, reversed in part. Writing for the panel, Justice Cobbs — joined by Presiding Justice Fitzgerald Smith and Justice Howse — held that the combined effect of Darryl Johnson's affidavit and the voluminous misconduct evidence, taken as true, raises the probability that no reasonable juror would have convicted Johnson in light of the new evidence. The court emphasized that Johnson's conviction was based wholly on eyewitness testimony, that the identifications by Smith, Cursey, and Johnny Harris were each subject to doubt at trial, and that the detectives' credibility would be severely undermined by evidence that all three invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned about misconduct allegations in other proceedings.
On the cause-and-prejudice test, the court held that Johnson established cause because the collective evidence of the detectives' misconduct was not available when he filed his initial postconviction petition in 1999, relying on People v. Blalock, 2022 IL 126682, and People v. Brandon, 2021 IL App (1st) 172411. The court held that Johnson also satisfied the prejudice prong for his general due process claim — that the State used manipulated identifications — finding sufficient similarity between the detectives' documented methods in other cases and the circumstances of Smith's and Cursey's identifications, including Cursey's trial testimony that he was held at the station for what felt like weeks and was not permitted to leave until he testified before the grand jury.
The Brady claim fared differently. The court held it was foreclosed by People v. Orange, 195 Ill. 2d 437 (2001), which bars Brady liability for the State's failure to disclose evidence of abusive practices known only to individual officers in unrelated cases where the nexus to the defendant's case was not known until years after trial. The court acknowledged Johnson's argument that Orange was wrongly decided but held it was bound by the Illinois Supreme Court's precedent.
The case returns to Cook County Circuit Court for second-stage proceedings on the actual innocence claim and the general due process claim only.