News

DNA testing sought to clear man convicted of killing 2

Posted January 18, 2008 10:00 pm

Adriana Colindres

More than a year after his release from prison, convicted double-murderer Johnnie Lee Savory wants to stop being described that way.

"The wounds are still open. I don't want to be labeled no murderer," he said in a phone interview Friday.

Savory, now 45, spent almost three decades behind bars because he was convicted of a 1977 double murder, a crime the Peoria native insists he did not commit. The Illinois Prisoner Review Board paroled him in December 2006, and he got out of prison.

About 200 of Savory's supporters have signed a letter asking Gov. Rod Blagojevich to order DNA testing that, they say, would prove Savory's innocence in the stabbing deaths of Connie Cooper and James Robinson.

"He is still considered guilty and has the double murder on his record," one of the supporters, former federal prosecutor Thomas P. Sullivan, said Friday. "Now, the man just wants to clear his name."

Sullivan said that DNA tests on evidence - hair found in the victims' hands and skin cells under their fingernails - would clear Savory and perhaps identify the real culprit.

"It's so simple," the Chicago attorney added. "We just want to take the samples, send them to a lab or down to the state lab. We'll pay for it."

Savory, Sullivan and others discussed their request to the governor during a news conference Thursday at Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions in Chicago.

Sullivan criticized Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons for not cooperating with the effort to obtain DNA testing.

Lyons could not be reached for comment Friday. But he was quoted in Friday's Chicago Tribune as saying: "Even if we were to order that the things they want tested, and even if they came back to belong to someone other than their client, it still isn't something that would cause a different result in this case."

Sullivan said those comments prompted him to drafted a follow-up letter to the governor, which he plans to send next week.

Part of the new letter says: "... showing that another suspect's hairs were clutched in both victims' hands and that the same suspect's skin cells were under the victims' fingernails would be highly relevant to Mr. Savory's claim of actual innocence."

"The one thing that all human beings want is the truth. That's it," Savory said Friday. "We want to get the testing over with. Let the chips fall where they may."

Messages left Friday with Blagojevich's press office were not returned.

Adriana Colindres can be reached at (217) 782-6292

Article Categories
News