[Theophylact]

This was a particularly difficult case. As a lawyer, legal ethics demands that you be bound by the interests of your client, and you definitely would (and should) lose your license for betraying them. On the other hand, common decency demands that you not let an innocent man be convicted through your silence.

I suspect that if the death penalty had been invoked, the lawyer would have spilled the beans and sacrificed his own career. From an earlier story:

Quote:

At the time, the lawyers were bound by attorney ethics not to disclose Wilson's statement, but he said they could reveal it after his death. Under attorney-client privilege, conversations between a client and his lawyer are almost always confidential, unless the client agrees to disclose them. The principle has proven unassailable in court, even as prosecutors and others have sought to force lawyers to break it.

On March 17, 1982, Coventry and Kunz drew up an affidavit:

"I have obtained information through privileged sources that a man named Alton Logan who was charged with the fatal shooting of Lloyd Wickliffe at on or about 11 Jan. 82 is in fact not responsible for that shooting that in fact another person was responsible."

Each lawyer signed it, as did a witness and a notary public. Then they sealed it in a metal box.

"We were freaked out because it was really volatile and because the state was seeking the death penalty against Logan," said Coventry, who has kept the box ever since.

Kunz added that they prepared the document "so that if we were ever able to speak up, no one could say we were just making this up now."

Assistant Cook County public defender Harold Winston, who is currently representing Logan in a motion for a new trial, said that he had heard rumors for years that Kunz and Coventry had information about Wilson's involvement in the McDonald's case. After Wilson died, he reached out to Kunz.

Kunz contacted Coventry, who found the metal box and unsealed the envelope. Both were summoned to court Jan. 11, where Criminal Court Judge James Schreier ruled that they could reveal the conversation with Wilson and the contents of the affidavit. After hearing their testimony, the judge asked for legal briefs on the admissibility of Wilson's statement that he -- not Logan -- killed the McDonald's guard.

Incidentally, these guys were public defenders, doing a thankless and ill-paid job.