{"id":354770,"date":"2018-04-01T08:09:06","date_gmt":"2018-04-01T07:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ice-arrests-wrongly-convicted-chicago-man-released-after-20-years-in-prison\/"},"modified":"2018-04-01T08:09:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T07:09:06","slug":"ice-arrests-wrongly-convicted-chicago-man-released-after-20-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ice-arrests-wrongly-convicted-chicago-man-released-after-20-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE arrests wrongly convicted Chicago man released after 20 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>ICE arrests wrongly convicted Chicago man released after 20 years in prison<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Meenakshi Jagadeesan<br \/>\n    <br \/>31 March 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>Last Wednesday, Ricardo Rodriguez\u2014a Chicago man wrongfully convicted for the 1995 murder of a homeless man\u2014was finally freed after 20 years behind bars, only to be immediately taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).<\/p>\n<p>Rodriguez, who had been a legal permanent resident of the United States, had lost his residency status at the time of the conviction. Now, despite the fact that the Cook County state\u2019s attorney had finally dropped the charges against him, ICE has taken him into custody as an \u201cundocumented immigrant.\u201d Rodriguez now faces possible deportation.<\/p>\n<p>But for the tragedy it has visited on the life of Rodriguez and his family, this travesty of justice is absurd enough to be ludicrous. Rodriguez was arrested for the murder of a homeless man, Rodney Kemppainen, who did odd-jobs for people in exchange for sleeping in garages. Kemppainen was killed in a drive-by shooting in Chicago\u2019s Humboldt Park neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>There was no physical link connecting Rodriguez to the crime, nothing in his background that would have established motive and he never confessed to the killing. Rodriguez was, however, still arrested by Chicago police Detective Reynaldo Guevara, who claimed to have received an anonymous tip, and was eventually convicted on the basis of questionable testimony from two eye-witnesses. On Tuesday, Cook County Judge James Obbish finally threw out Rodriguez\u2019s case at the request of the state prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p> The <em>Chicago<\/em> <em>Sun-<\/em> <em>Times<\/em>, which initially reported the story, pointed out that even prior to this case, Cook County has had a rather dubious distinction. According to data compiled by the National Registry of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/03\/31\/chic-m31.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 ICE arrests wrongly convicted Chicago man released after 20 years in prison By Meenakshi Jagadeesan 31 March 2018 Last Wednesday, Ricardo Rodriguez\u2014a Chicago man wrongfully convicted for the 1995 murder of a homeless man\u2014was finally freed after 20 years behind bars, only to be immediately taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-354770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}