Abdul “Malik” Muhammad sat in Menard Correctional Center in disbelief. It was 2006 and he was facing nearly 50 years in prison for a murder he alleges he didn’t commit. Muhammad said he was in Washington state — not Chicago — at the time of the shooting. But his trial lawyer requested incorrect flight records from the airline to place him there. Jailhouse lawyers, incarcerated people who help others with legal filings, tipped him off to one option for contesting his imprisonment: a post-conviction petition.
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Every year, hundreds of people in Cook County file these petitions, compiling evidence of police misconduct, violations of constitutional rights or claims of actual innocence. It’s a vital tool for those alleging injustice to get a new trial or be resentenced —
Chicago has some of the highest numbers of wrongful convictions in the nation . Incarcerated people typically file on their own, as they don’t have the right to an attorney provided by the state for these petitions. But at the time, Muhammad barely knew how to read or write. As he learned those skills, the task of filing became more daunting. He’d have panic attacks as he read through his trial transcriptions to try to piece together violations. Legal jargon was incomprehensible. He ended up paying a jailhouse lawyer $200 to file his petition in 2006, unsuccessfully. Nearly 20 years later, with his third post-conviction petition working its way through the court system, he’s at last seen change: In March, it advanced to an evidentiary hearing. The next step is a status hearing in June. Muhammad’s case is emblematic of the struggles people encounter filing post-conviction petitions in a bid to secure their freedom. His case highlights the initial burden many face, filing without legal assistance, as well as the great lengths of time it takes for a case to move forward. “The barrier to just getting a lawyer is so high,” said Douglas Hoff, deputy defender of the First District Office of the State Appellate Defender. “... Makes it hard to escape the idea that the system is almost designed to fail the people it’s supposed to serve.” Even if petitioners make it past the initial filing, the chances of any success — meaning any difference in the initial outcome of the case — are incredibly slim. Fewer than 5% of cases are successful, estimates James Jacobs, a Cook County public defender who handles post-conviction petitions. “I feel like the [system] takes its time to correct itself,” Muhammad wrote to WTTW News. “But it does not take its time manufacturing guilt and passing it off as justice.”
The Process
For many post-conviction petitioners, time is not on their side. There are “egregious delays” in some cases, Hoff said. There are cases where so much time has passed that witnesses have died, their memories have failed them, or they’ve disappeared, Hoff said. He’s seen cases take a decade. “Cases do not get better with age,” said Enrique Abraham, who oversees the post-conviction litigation unit for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. Although judges must respond to a first post-conviction petition within 90 days, there is no time limit for successive petitions. Judges can sit on a case for a long time without an attorney assigned, Jacobs said. “People in custody write the office and say, ‘What’s going on with my petition? I filed this a year ago and nothing’s happened,’” Jacobs said. There is no limit to how many post-conviction petitions a person can file, but after one petition is filed and denied, there’s a larger hurdle to file a successive petition. The next petition has to demonstrate cause and prejudice: an explanation that an issue wasn’t available during trial and that if a constitutional error had not occurred, that person would not have been convicted. But before that waiting period, the first step in the post-conviction petition process is the most fraught for those filing. Like in Muhammad’s case, it’s typical for incarcerated people to file without a lawyer. They’ll try to piece together a petition that could include allegations of substantial constitutional rights being denied, ineffective assistance of counsel or new evidence or witnesses. “As you can imagine, it’s tough for somebody in the Department of Corrections to do,” Hoff said. “It’s not like they can go out and investigate their case themselves.” Hoff argues that everyone should be appointed a lawyer for their first post-conviction petition to better prepare a case — “Any system that relies on pro-se pleading at any stage is really just sort of fundamentally broken because the law is complicated; this is why we have a lawyer.” Once petitioners file, a judge will decide if a case is frivolous or is patently without merit. But that denial from a judge has “taken on a life of its own,” Hoff said. Judges have set the bar too high at the first stage, he argued, looking at the ultimate success of the initial filing rather than whether it could be given to an attorney for improvement. When asked about this review process, the Cook County Chief Judge’s Office responded that under Illinois Supreme Court ethics rules, judges cannot comment on pending or impending cases. Getting a full sense of the filing-to-denial ratio is difficult. It’s “impossible” to get the exact number of post-conviction petitions filed each year, Hoff said. There are two issues at play. As filings are done largely by incarcerated people — not lawyers — petitions may be filed incorrectly and not as post-conviction petitions, Hoff said. Circuit clerks — also not typically lawyers — might mislabel cases as well. “This takes some legal analysis to actually look at a handwritten petition and determine what process the person is trying to get going,” Hoff said. WTTW News requested the number of petitions filed and denials issued in 2024 from the Circuit Court Clerk of Cook County. The office originally reported that last year, there were 10,123 petitions filed, 246 denied. Those numbers are significantly higher than the workload reported by the Cook County Public Defender’s Office, which works on the bulk of post-conviction petitions. As of February, they were actively working on 606 petitions. The clerk then provided revised numbers to WTTW News after removing duplicates, reflecting that 606 post-conviction petitions were filed last year, 242 denied. These numbers are more realistic, but not exact, Hoff said. If a petition is denied, Hoff said petitioners can appeal and work with an attorney from the Office of the State Appellate Defender. This step is sometimes people’s first contact with an attorney in this process. The office will then work with the petitioner to try to advance a case to the second stage of the process. Last year, the Office of the State Appellate Defender was appointed to appeal the denial of 218 petitions in Cook County, according to the office. If a judge does find merit in the initial finding, an attorney can be appointed to represent the client at the second stage. The petitioner is assigned a public defender, who will read the petition, consult with the client and investigate the case. At this point, the State’s Attorney’s Office can file a response to the petition — either an answer to the petition or a motion to dismiss. If a judge agrees with prosecutors’ arguments for dismissal, the case could end right there. This is a point where the process can be drawn out, Abraham said. An investigation is undertaken to find evidence, affidavits and documents. “These are old cases, these are lengthy cases, these are mostly murders and it takes a while for an investigation to be conducted,” Abraham said. A judge then decides whether the petition should advance to the third stage: an evidentiary hearing. Few make it to this stage, Abraham said. At this point, the petitioner has a chance to call on witnesses they believe should have been called at trial. The state also has a chance to offer evidence to contest what the petitioner is arguing. “It can be a very long process to even get to a hearing, at which point the client even has a chance to prove his claim,” Hoff said. Then, the judge makes a decision on whether to grant the petition. If the petitioner prevails, they will generally get a new trial. If their claims are related to their sentence, they can get a new sentencing hearing where they have a chance to obtain a lower sentence. “A new trial is the gold standard for winning a post-conviction petition,” Jacobs said.
Muhammad’s Case
Muhammad has been waiting three years to hear about his third petition, challenging a conviction that occurred nearly 25 years ago. In 2001, he was convicted of the murder of Damome Mims, who was killed in a 1999 drive-by shooting in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Muhammad maintains his innocence, claiming he was in Washington state at the time of the murder. He also alleges it would be physically impossible for him to commit the murder because of injuries he suffered days prior to the shooting. Muhammad attempted to appeal his conviction, filed a post-conviction petition in 2006 and a habeas corpus petition in 2010, all of which were dismissed. He’s
currently in the midst of an Illinois Supreme Court battle involving claims he was tortured by detectives. But his third post-conviction petition, filed in 2022 alongside an attorney, has advanced where few make it: the third stage, or an evidentiary hearing. In March, Judge Nicholas Kantas advanced Muhammad’s claims of actual innocence due to newly discovered evidence, as well as claims of constitutional violations. Those hinge on an allegation that material and favorable evidence to the defense were not disclosed during trial. Muhammad also claims there was ineffective assistance of counsel, Miranda violations and cumulative error, but Kantas dismissed those claims. “What is clear is that almost every key piece of trial evidence, of which there were few, has been undercut by new evidence,” a filing from Muhammad’s lawyer states. This advancement came after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office failed to dismiss Muhammad’s petition, arguing in part that the information he presented is not new and that the claims of constitutional violations over evidence Muhammad claimed the state failed to disclose are “meritless.” Since filing his first post-conviction petition, Muhammad learned how to read and write by finding hip-hop songs he had memorized in rap magazines. Elders, incarcerated for years, built up personal libraries and would lend books to Muhammad. In 2023, he was among the first group of incarcerated men to receive a bachelor’s degree from a top 10 university when he was awarded a diploma from Northwestern University. Now, as he waits for his hearing to be scheduled, he says he sits in “mental anguish.” “My entire life has [consisted] of me waiting. It feels like my life has been shattered into a million pieces of waiting,” Muhammad wrote to WTTW News. “It hurts to wait for justice, to wait on something you can not afford to give up on with the hope it will arrive soon!”
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