USA - Illinois. Nathson Fields, 55, black, was acquitted today of a double homicide for which he spent eleven and a half years on death row

Nathson Fields, 55, black, was acquitted today of a double homicide for which he spent eleven and a half years on death row.  Fields and a co-defendant, Earl Hawkins, were convicted and sentenced to death in 1985, but the convictions were thrown out when judge's corruption was uncovered. The judge at the trial, Thomas J. Maloney, a tough former boxer with a reputation as a law-and-order advocate during 13 years in Criminal Court, pocketed a $10,000 bribe to acquit Fields and the co-defendant. But during the trial, Maloney sensed authorities were onto the fix and handed the bribe money back to a corrupt lawyer at a side door to his courtroom, federal prosecutors contended. The judge then convicted Fields and co-defendant Earl Hawkins of both murders and sentenced them to death. Maloney was convicted and served more than a dozen years in prison for fixing three murder trials in all, but he died at 83 last October a few months after his release from prison, still defiant in his claims of innocence. His 1993 guilty verdict grew out of a federal sting code-named Operation Greylord that led to the conviction of 15 corrupt judges. The two murder victims—Jerome "Fuddy" Smith and Talman Hickman, both reputed members of the Black Gangster Disciples' Goon Squad—were gunned down in 1984. After Maloney's conviction, Fields was granted a new trial in 1998, but he remained incarcerated until another former Death Row inmate, Aaron Patterson, bailed him out in 2003. Hawkins pled guilty to a charge of armed violence in exchange for his testimony against Fields in the retrial.