Tyrone Hood was convicted of the 1993 killing of an Illinois Institute of Technology college basketball star, Marshall Morgan, Jr. Hood had nothing to do with the crime. Rather, the evidence strongly suggests that the victim’s father–Marshall Morgan, Sr.–is the killer.
Morgan, Sr. has a long and patterned history of killing loved ones under circumstances identical to those involved in his son’s death. Indeed, the evidence indicates that Morgan, Sr. has killed at least four people–including Marshall Morgan, Jr.–under stunningly similar circumstances. Just months prior to Morgan, Jr.’s death, his father reappeared in his life after seventeen years and purchased a $50,000 life insurance policy on his son. Within months of the insurance application, Morgan, Jr. was shot to death.
The police investigation turned to Hood when Hood’s fingerprint was found in a stray piece of trash at the crime scene. Instead of letting an innocent man go free, the detectives in Hood’s case doggedly pursued a wrongful conviction. Hood was eventually convicted based on the testimony of two brothers who purportedly saw Hood the day before the crime; the testimony of a witness who purportedly saw Hood driving around the crime scene but did not report this alleged sighting for three years; and an ostensibly inculpatory statement fabricated by detectives who plead the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked questions about their treatment of Hood and the witnesses interrogated in the Morgan, Jr. murder.
Tyrone Hood has steadfastly maintained his innocence. He professed his innocence when police first interviewed him in 1993 has has consistently maintained his innocence since. In 1996 at the age of thirty two, Hood was convicted and sentenced to 75 years for the Morgan, Jr. murder. He was exonerated and released from prison in 2015 when Gov. Pat Quinn decided to commute his sentence.