By Rummana Hussain
Chicago Sun Times
CHICAGO — As his mom stood by with tears in her eyes, Thaddeus Jimenez -- perhaps the youngest person in U.S. history to be wrongly convicted and exonerated -- was formally cleared in court Wednesday in a 1993 murder.
Cook County Criminal Court Presiding Judge Paul Biebel signed Jimenez’s “certificate of innocence,” noting “justice has been served.”
The certificate clears the way for Jimenez, 30, to receive state compensation for the 16 years, 2 months and 27 days he was wrongfully imprisoned. At 13, he was arrested in the gang-related slaying of Eric Morro, 19.
“I feel like I was robbed. Nothing’s ever going to make that right. But as far as the courts go, he [Biebel] did the only thing he can do,” said Jimenez, who has gone to a few Cubs games, Grant Park and the Sears Tower since his May 1 release from state prison. “I’m a free man and I have a new start. . . . Let bygones be bygones.”
“My heart was flat-lining, now it’s got every beat,” said his mother, Victoria Jimenez, describing how she felt as Biebel signed the papers.
Jimenez was freed after witnesses recanted and investigators analyzed a recording of a man admitting to the shooting. Juan Carlos Torres, 30, of Indiana has been charged in the murder.
Copyright 2009 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.