![]() “There was no Santa and shit coming to the hood.” “We wanted to help my mom out,” Kevin wrote. It was a fight for survival, and the Dugars needed to eat. Their mother Judy was often left alone to raise the twins and their two sisters. The twins’ father, Isaiah, worked as a long-distance truck driver. “Our older cousins were doing everything under the sun to bring money in,” Kevin wrote to me from prison. Somehow, investigators were able to push that inconvenience aside.īoth brothers were introduced to the criminal underworld at a young age by their cousins, who were members of the Vice Lords.Īt only nine years old, Kevin recalled being fed glorified tales of violence and cold-hearted revenge. Shock, poor lighting and the time between a crime and the official identification are several factors that can degrade the accuracy of our memories.Īnd then there was Kevin, who had the most glaring complication to a case hinging on eyewitness accounts – an identical twin. Sometimes, as in Kevin’s case, they are the only evidence available.ĭespite their fallibility, they remain pretty convincing to the average juror – even though we know human memory to be unreliable, especially when tasked with recalling traumatic events. Still, eyewitnesses are routinely used as primary evidence in US courts. Almost 30% of the convictions of innocent people recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations were influenced by inaccurate eyewitness IDs. Mistaken identifications are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. In the end, what brought Kevin down was a stack of Polaroids, and a system willing to convict based on the testimony of a single eyewitness. Karl had denied everything, and Kevin believed him. He’d even asked him 10 years ago, as he sat in jail awaiting trial. But one thing never left his mind: that his twin could have been the culprit. He even declined a generous plea bargain, refusing to admit to something he did not do. Kevin had been a member of a rival gang, the Vice Lords, though he had been desperate to leave that life behind. Let me be the one to tell them.”Į ight years before he read that letter, Kevin was handed a 54-year sentence for the killing of Antwan Taylor, a member of the Blackstones street gang. ![]() ![]() “Look Kevin, please don’t tell Momma or Dad. The cops, he went on to confess, had grabbed the wrong twin. “You know the case you were found guilty on and you swore you were being set up on? I know you was telling the truth … I’m the reason your life got fucked up.” “First off, I’d like to say I’m sorry for all these years you’ve missed out of your daughter’s life and also for all the pain you’ve endured over the last decade or so.” “Look Kevin, I’m beating around the bush with you on some shit I’ve been keeping a secret for years, and I have to get it off my chest before it kills me. Oh and my daughter is about to enter high school soon.”īut the tone quickly changed, and Karl’s neat script, scrawled in black pen, began to scrunch together like he was racing to get to the end. “I’m about to start my post conviction in a minute,” his brother wrote. Karl’s letter started with updates about his life. He described prison like a dog pound, except for one difference: people care more about dog pounds. In the summer, heat got so unbearable that Kevin would revel in the air that flowed through the crack at the bottom of his cell door. When it rained, water would drip from the ceiling. By the time Kevin received the letter, he had been languishing in decrepit conditions for years.
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