A twin let his brother spend 20 years in jail for murder before he finally confessed that he was actually the killer.
Kevin Dugar, 44, was convicted of a gang-related killing in 2003 and sentenced to 54 years in prison but maintained his innocence for years.
However, a decade later in 2013, his twin brother Karl Smith, wrote to him in prison to confess he had actually committed the crime that landed him there.
In Smith’s letter, he wrote: "I have to get it off my chest before it kills me. So I'll just come clean and pray you can forgive me."
Smith then signed a sworn statement confessing to the crime, and contacted his twin’s lawyers.
In 2016, three years after his confession and thirteen after his twin’s conviction, he said to a judge: "I'm here to confess to a crime I committed that he [Dugar] was wrongly accused of."
He said he did not speak out during his twin’s trial because he did not think Drugar would be convicted.
However, despite his confession, Dugar was refused a retrial because the confession came while Smith himself was serving a 99-year sentence.
He was convicted after a home invasion ended in a six-year-old child being shot in the head.
The child miraculously survived but Assistant State’s Attorney Carol Rogala told a 2018 hearing that Smith had “nothing to lose” because of his lengthy sentence.
A presiding judge deemed his confession not credible, and the retrial was refused.
Judy Drugar, the twins' mother, said Smith "wouldn't lie about that".
However, the decision to refuse a retrial was appealed by the Centre on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.
After a re-examination, Dugar was released from Cook County Jail in Chicago.
His lawyer, Ronald Safer, said: "He is overjoyed to be free but is also adjusting to a world that is quite different from the world he left 20 years ago when he was arrested for this crime he did not commit.
