Activist moms hope UN takes action on behalf of police torture victims in Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) -- After more than 23 years in prison for a crime he has always maintained he didn't commit, Kevin Jackson stepped out of Western Illinois Correctional Center late Tuesday morning as a free man.

Jackson was greeted by his Chicago family and attorneys, who made the drive to Mount Sterling to pick him up. This came a day after a Cook County judge ordered his release after a decision by the First District Illinois Appellate Court.

Jackson's case involved an alleged conflict of interest with the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and allegations that a now-retired Chicago Police detective named Brian Forberg coerced and manipulated witnesses into lying in his case.

Jackson is one of about 20 incarcerated or formerly incarcerated men who make the same claims against Forberg. One of those men was in court Tuesday as he also fights for his release.

When it comes to the bigger picture of wrongful conviction cases in Chicago, an unlikely group of moms recently got the attention of the United Nations to try to push local leaders to do more.

One of those moms is Bertha Escamilla. She is not a researcher, an investigator, or a lawyer by any means—but she would fool anyone with the thousands of pages of grassroots research she has compiled over the years.

"I compare different cases," she said.

Escamilla is trying to identify what she considers a pattern and practice of police coercion and torture in alleged cases of wrongful conviction in Chicago. She said her son, Nick, was the victim of just such coercion and torture.

"They kept on telling him to cooperate into making a confession," Escamilla said.

Nick Escamilla was arrested, tortured for 18 hours into a confession, convicted, and sentenced to 29 years in prison for the 1993 murder 18-year-odl Hector Olague outside Curie Metropolitan High School in Chicago.

"They kept on punching him in the back, and the head, and the face," said Bertha Escamilla. "I could see his face was swollen, and of course, I started crying—and started listening to what my son was saying."

As more evidence of the pattern of torture surfaced, Nick Escamilla was released from prison in 2008. Last year, the Cook County State's Attorney's office vacated his conviction altogether.

Even after her son was freed, Bertha Escamilla continued researching and connecting with other moms with eerily similar stories.

Denise Spencer, the mother of Michael Carter, said her son has been wrongfully imprisoned for a murder he did not commit since 1999—and was tortured.

"The thing about that—is I was there," Carter said. "I came in on them beating him up. I walked into a police station, and I can hear from the first floor."

For years, Carter and other members of the group Mothers of the Kidnapped—which is part of a larger group known as the MAMAS Collective, reached out to city, state, and even federal leaders. But they felt like not enough was being done to fight police torture that led to false confessions.

So the group went a step further and reached out to the United Nations.

"We have nothing to lose," said Bertha Escamilla.

Four years later, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Racial Discrimination looked into it, and agreed that local efforts to address Chicago Police torture have been "piecemeal and far too slow in implementation."

An alert from the UN to local officials in Chicago became public this summer. Now, Bertha Escamilla and the other mothers hope it leads to change.

"It's a blessing more because nobody else would do this, I mean, you know, and we weren't going to give up," said Bertha Escamilla.

Even though the alert from the UN was published in July, when CBS News Chicago recently checked in with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker's office and the Cook County State's Attorney's office, they both said they hadn't received it.

When CBS News Chicago asked for comment on the recommendations in the alert, Pritzker's office defended the current clemency process, and said the Governor's office takes criminal justice reform very seriously:

"Gov. Pritzker is a lifelong advocate for criminal justice reform and that commitment is why he has championed legislative efforts that make our criminal justice system fairer and more equitable. The clemency process involves a very careful review of the individual facts of each petition and the recommendation of the Prisoner Review Board. The Governor takes this responsibility very seriously and will continue his efforts to ensure that the state's criminal justice system lives up to the principles of justice and pursuit of truth."

The Cook County State's Attorney's Office originally responded to CBS News Chicago's recent request for comment, but then did not provide any sort of response—and stopped responding to CBS News Chicago altogether.