SURVIVOR STORIES
Ray CHARLES FERGerSON
Ray Charles Ferguson
Innocent, but wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for life
The frameup and conviction of Ray Charles Fergerson for the murder of Willie Bibbs was engineered by the same corrupt police officers that also framed and convicted Nathsan Fields, in a notorious case that ultimately resulted in his exoneration and a jury award of $22 million to Fields. Fergerson, however, remains in prison after 37 years.
Willie Bibbs was shot and killed outside a tavern at 43rd and Indiana in Chicago on June 14, 1981. Earl Hawkins was charged with that murder and stood trial in 1982. After a short bench trial, Hawkins was found not guilty and the investigation into Bibbs’ murder went cold. Hawkins and Fields were later sentenced to death for the double murders of Talman Hickman and Jerome Smith. The double murders of Dee Egger Vaughn and Joseph White were used in aggravation for sentencing. While on death row Hawkins wrote to Chicago Police Detective Kenneth Brannigan from Death Row at Menard Correctional Center and offered to cooperate with the police in several crimes of which he claimed to have knowledge if the police could help him get out of prison. Brannigan had been involved in the original investigation of the Bibbs case.
Brannigan visited him at Menard and made the deal for his cooperation. Hawkins selected to cooperate on the Willie Bibbs murder case as the first on which he’d cooperate. In a deposition he later gave in Fields’ civil rights case, he said he picked the Bibbs case because Brannigan told him that to really cooperate he had to admit to something. Hawkins thought he couldn’t be charged again with the Bibbs murder, having been once acquitted, and so he admitted involvement in that murder even though he had not been.
Hawkins quickly implicated Ray Charles Fergerson in the murder of Bibbs. But he is innocent. No physical evidence ties him to this crime, and he was convicted based solely upon information provided by Hawkins and Anthony Sumner, another El Rukn gang member who made his own deal with prosecutors. Notably, neither of the two non-gang member witnesses to the Bibbs murder, who testified at Fergerson’s trial, identified Fergerson as a perpetrator.
Newly discovered evidence establishes that Fergerson was not present at the scene of this murder and that the two former gang members testified falsely at the trial in return for leniency. In addition, the Cook County State’s Attorney learned of the many lies at Fergerson’s trial shortly after the trial (and years prior to Fergerson being given a second stage post-conviction hearing) and never disclosed that information to Fergerson and his counsel. Documents that would have brought to light the lies by those former gang member witnesses at the trial were withheld in secret.
The lead detectives in the Bibbs murder were Chicago Police Detectives John Murphy, Kenneth Brannigan and David O’Callaghan. The detectives sought charges against Fergerson and other members of the El Rukn street gang based on the statements of Hawkins and Sumner, both former El Rukn gang members. These two former gang member witnesses purportedly told detectives that Fergerson was engaged in the planning of the Bibbs shooting and carried a gun at the scene while another gang member (Derrick Kees) shot and killed Bibbs.
The prosecutors argued that Fergerson, Jeff Fort, Derrick Kees, and William Doyle, were members of the “El Rukn” street gang, and that the gang wanted to expand its territory onto 43rd Street. They argued that the gang had a grudge against another gang called the Titanic Stones because they did not like the name “Stones” being used. Therefore, the four planned to shoot up a bar on 43rd Street on Chicago’s south side frequented by the Titanic Stones. Bibbs was killed in the melee.
Two years prior to the Bibbs case Fergerson had been convicted as an accomplice in another so-called El Rukn murder, the beating death of Maurice Coleman. Sumner was a key witness in that case as well. Fergerson has completed his sentence for that, but there is substantial evidence of his innocence in that case as well. Assistant U. S. Attorney William Hogan admitted under oath in proceedings during Nathson Fields’ civil rights suit, that he knew about Sumner’s lies in both of Fergerson’s earlier trials and provided that information to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO). However, that information was never given to Fergerson or his attorney. Fergerson plans to file a post-conviction innocence petition in that case as well but has prioritized the Bibbs case and getting out of prison.
After more than thirty years, the truth is slowly coming out. A witness from the scene of the crime, a man who went by the street name of “Duke,” has come forward and provided an affidavit as to what really happened on the night of June 14, 1981, the night Duke’s good friend Willie Bibbs was killed. Although Duke did not socialize with Fergerson, Duke knew Fergerson from the neighborhood. Duke unequivocally states under oath that the shooters were not wearing masks and that Fergerson was not at the scene. In addition, the credibility of Hawkins and Sumner, who testified against Fergerson, has been destroyed by the evidence uncovered in the Nathson Fields federal lawsuit.
Finally, there is other new evidence that has now come to light, including exculpatory documents that were never tendered to Fergerson at his trial. These documents came to light in the federal civil rights case of Fields v City of Chicago. These cases are inextricably interwoven owing to the detectives and witnesses involved. The documents obtained in the Fields litigation confirm that the testimony against Fergerson by Hawkins and Sumner was false and that the same detectives that framed Fields were instrumental in framing Fergerson. Had those documents been available prior to Fergerson’s trial he would never have been convicted.
The documents and testimony did not come to light until after Nathson Fields’s conviction for a double murder (described below) was vacated and Fields filed and won a federal civil rights lawsuit. This newly discovered evidence proves that Ray Charles Fergerson is innocent of the murder of Willie Bibbs.
The interplay between Fields and Fergerson’s cases
The same detectives who investigated the murders for which Fields was convicted, Joseph Murphy, Daniel Brannigan and David O’Callaghan, also investigated the case for which Fergerson was convicted. Fields’ civil trial established that detectives Murphy and O’Callaghan framed Fields, resulting in a $22 million settlement with the City of Chicago. Hawkins and Sumner were also exposed as lying critical witnesses in both cases.
Although Sumner had died by the time of Fields second criminal case his lies were coming to light shortly before his death. Furthermore, former Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Sexton, who was the prosecutor in Fergerson’s post trial hearing, was also the ASA who prosecuted Fields’s second criminal trial. As the U. S. District Court found in Fields’ civil rights case, ASA Sexton conspired with O’Callaghan, Brannigan, AUSA Hogan and Hawkins to devise the actual deal that got Hawkins out of prison following Hawkins’s many years of “help.” AUSA Hogan admitted in Fields’ federal trial that he learned that Anthony Sumner was not a reliable witness and had lied before several grand juries and at Fergerson’s trial.
AUSA Hogan had notified the CCSAO in late 1991 that Sumner had lied in both of Fergerson’s trials. The CCSAO took a statement from Sumner confirming some of his lies in early 1992. However, they failed to notify Fergerson or his attorneys of the perjured testimony by Sumner in both of Fergerson’s trials.
Fergerson now has proof that these same individuals likewise framed him. In sum, Anthony Sumner lied repeatedly from the time of his arrest until his untimely death and his lies were intentionally withheld from Fergerson by prosecutors and the CPD. In addition, Earl Hawkins was a bought and paid for witness for the prosecution who sought a quid pro quo starting on the day Detective Brannigan went to Menard Correctional Center to meet with him in early 1987.
Hawkins’s cooperation thus had begun prior to Fergerson’s trial in October of 1988 and Hawkins’s testimony in the Fields litigation confirms his lies. Hawkins committed perjury when he testified at Fergerson’s trial that there was no deal with the police or prosecution in return for his inculpatory testimony against Fergerson. Hawkins’s cooperation was never disclosed to Fergerson or his attorneys. Hawkins’s lies have kept Fergerson in prison for more than 35 years, and his conspiracy with the same detectives and prosecutors as in Fields’s case shows conclusively that Chicago police framed Fergerson for a murder he had nothing to do with based on the false testimony of Hawkins and Sumner, who testified falsely in exchange for benefits to themselves.
Fergerson’s health is in steep decline. He is nearly blind from maltreated glaucoma, has a degenerated disk and a spinal column deformity which makes it extremely painful and difficult to walk, an untreated prostate and urinary tract problem that has not been fully examined by prison medical staff, and a double hernia which has been unsuccessfully operated on three times and still causes substantial pain. He has been in prison for more than 37 years. Fergerson has maintained his innocence consistently and unflaggingly since his arrest.
In his pending post-conviction petition Fergerson is asking the Court to vacate his conviction and order a new trial.
The information in this Fact Sheet is taken from the Motion To File Successive Petition For Post-Conviction Relief Based On New Evidence Of Actual Innocence submitted by his attorney, H. Candace Gorman.