SURVIVOR STORIES
ANTONIO BLANCHARD
Antionio Blanchard was arrested February 7, 2008 for armed robbery. He was charged with robbing at gunpoint two white men, Michael Malakowski and Robert Hochstein, on Wood Street near North Ave. in Chicago on the early morning of February 7, 2008. The two separate robberies occurred about two minutes and about a block from each other.
Malakowski and Hochstein both called 911, and police responded quickly. Police found Malakowski’s wallet with no cash in it on the windowsill of a house behind a 6 foot wrought iron fence. Hochstein’s wallet was never recovered. A short time later they apprehended Blanchard on Blackhawk Street near Ashland, five blocks away. They said they found a credit/debit card belonging to Malakowski in his pocket, but no gun and no money.
Blanchard was convicted two years later and sentenced to 40 years in prison for armed robbery.
Antonio Blanchard came to Chicago on December 1, 2007 from Washington, DC for fresh start. He was 32 and after 13 years in Big Sandy U. S. Penitentiary in Kentucky, paroled to Chicago with seven years remaining on his 20 years sentence. He had been convicted of armed robbery in DC. After a short time in the Salvation Army Federal Halfway House on Ashland Ave. at Monroe St. he was released on the recommendation of its Director, and moved to a friend’s house at 98th and Yates on the South Side. He and his parole agent were both determined to keep him out of trouble again. His parole agent got him into the North Lawndale Employment Project for exoffenders and attended his graduation on Feb. 1, 2008.
Six days later, on February 7th, 2008, at 6:25 a.m. he left a friend’s home on the West Side and took CTA buses to meet a friend who lived on Clybourn Ave. on the North Side. When the bus system announced “Ashland and Division” he got off and walked into a store in the shopping plaza at Milwaukee and Ashland. While in the store his friend, Anthony Brown, called asking where he was and what was delaying him? He replied that he had gotten off the bus at Division. Brown told him he’d gotten off too soon and needed to walk about a mile up Ashland to Clybourn.
The entire time he was in the store he was on the phone with Brown. Still talking to Brown, he came out of the store and walked north on Paulina. His head was down talking on the phone.
At that point Blanchard heard someone yell, “M*****F***ER! YOU MOVE I'M GOING TO BLOW YOUR F***ING BRAINS OUT!” He looked up and saw two Hispanic males dressed in all black. They had nothing identifying them as police officers amd they never announced that they were. Blanchard put up his hands, They moved closer to him, still shouting they were going to shoot him. He ran, in fear for his life - south on Paulina, then east on Blackhawk behind the shopping plaza, crossing Ashland. He tripped on a pile of shoveled snow and was accosted by two other men. They had nothing identifying themselves as police and did not announce themselves as police.
He was face down on the ground, and they handcuffed him. They searched him and found his Illinois State ID. “Where’s that gun?” they demanded. Blanchard said didn’t have a gun. He was pushed back down onto his stomach and a tall white officer kicked his face. They put him in a paddy wagon and choked and beat him some more. (2) Once I was put in the paddy wagon the beating started. I was choked and beaten more.
Blanchard was on federal parole. He didn't know the City well yet. He was navigating by cell phone. Yet police say he was out in a strange neighborhood at 8 in the morning robbing people, that he ran away and was able to get rid of a gun, two wallets, and all the money, yet kept one credit card.
Even a casual observer would think the cops found the credit card in the wallet on that windowsill and then said they found it in Blanchard’s pocket to cover up the beating bogus charge against him.
While they had Blanchard down on the street they brought Hochstein by to try to ID him as the robber. This kind of “show-up” was condemned by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1967.iii At the 14th District Police Station they put him in a lineup, with cuts and bruises still prominently visible on his face, and asked Malakowski and Hochstein if they could ID him. Hochstein had already seen Blanchard in the illegal “show-up” on the street, so he already knew who to pick from the lineup.
In their description of the robber to police Malakowski and Hochstein had said the robber was 6 feet 3 inches and was clean shaven with no hat. They said the robber was wearing a gray coat with a fur-lined hood. One of them said that the robber was wearing a skull cap. Blanchard is 5 feet 7 inches and had a mustache when he was arrested. Blanchard was wearing an almost new jet-black coat with a fur-lined hood, and no skull cap.
At his trial Malakowski testified that the sun was up so he could see clearly when he saw the robber 100 yards away across the street. He said that the robber got within two arm-lengths of him and pulled out a gun, put it in his face, holding it palm down, “gangster style”.
Half of the index finger on Blanchard’s right hand is gone. He lost it in lawnmower working in his father’s landscaping business in Washington, making it impossible for him to have held a gun in the manner described by Malakowski.
Anthony Brown, Blanchard’s friend, could have testified that he was on the phone with him until the cops accosted him. The phone records could have verified this conversation. However, his public defender did not call Brown to testify and she did not subpoena the phone records. She told Blanchard that Brown’s testimony and the records would not be relevant because Brown was not actually with him at the time. Brown was killed in a gang shooting a few years later.
After his conviction Blanchard filed a post-conviction petition demanding that that the credit/debit card he was alleged to have had in his pocket be tested for his DNA. The card had been presented as evidence at his trial in a sealed plastic envelope. The police had sent the card to the Illinois State Police Crime lab, which had swabbed the credit card and tested the resulting sample. Their report was withheld from Blanchard’s defense.
After Blanchard got all the police reports on his case he asked Dr. Karl Reich of Independent Forensics DNA Testing and Technologies, to review the Illinois State Police Forensic Science Center Laboratory Reports on the credit/debit card. In an exhaustive ten page review of their findings, Reich concluded that “At the very least, the laboratory cannot claim to identify Mr. Blanchard and he is more likely than not to be excluded as a contributor to exhibit 1, swab of credit card.”
Antonio Blanchard waits in prison for the tortuous legal process in has case to unfold. The dismissal of his post-conviction petition is currently on appeal and he is being represented by the State Appellate Defender.
People familiar with policing in Chicago may well conclude that Blanchard was simply the most convenient Black man they could find at that early hour in that neighborhood, on whom to pin the robberies.
The Cook County State’s Attorney could stop opposing his appeal, vacate his conviction, and dismiss the charges. Governor J. B. Pritzker could grant Antonio Blanchard a full pardon based on innocence and allow him to return to his family in the nation’s capital.
Blanchard is housed at Dixon Correctional Center and can receive mail there. His IDOC ID number is M03227. He can be emailed through https://web.connectnetwork.com/. And his Instagram account is @_antonioblanchard.