ILLINOIS: Without Apology

Pale and uneasy in an ill-fitting brown prison-made suit, skinny Teddy Marcin-kiewicz sat in a Chicago court last week and listened as a judge read a dry summary of the events of 17 years.

On Dec. 9, 1932, two hoodlums shot and killed a Chicago cop in the speakeasy of Vera Walush, in Chicago’s heavily Polish neighborhood, Back of the Yards. Two neighborhood boys were picked up and accused of the crime. Vera Walush at first could not identify them, but after subsequent interviews with police, decided that she was sure they were the gunmen. They were Joe Majczek, who had a minor police record, and Teddy Marcinkiewicz. Convicted of murder, they were sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Best for Her Business. Millions of moviegoers know the story of Joe Majczek: how, in 1944, Chicago Times Reporter James McGuire got wind of the story, dug out the record and proved to a pardon board’s satisfaction that Joe was innocent (TIME, Aug. 27, 1945 et seq.). Joe went free, and his case was made into the movie Call Northside 777. But what of Teddy Marcinkiewicz?

Though the Chicago Crime Commission shrugged its way indifferently through an investigation, Teddy remained in the state penitentiary, buried under official apathy and legal red tape. He might have stayed there until death if the U.S. Supreme Court had not forced Illinois to speed up its judicial procedures. Teddy finally got his case before a judge.

Once again Vera Walush was hauled out and put on the stand, a bizarre figure in a fur coat, blue dress with sequins, platform shoes. Her neighbor, Bessie Baron, who used to supply her with bootleg alcohol, testified Vera had told her that she had had to put the finger on Joe and Teddy or the cops would have “run me out of business.” Blowzy Vera squirmed and twisted through her story, insisted sullenly: “I know dey was da killers.”

No Good That Way. For nine weeks Chief Justice Thomas Lynch of Cook County Criminal Court went back over the record. Last week Judge Lynch finished reading his summary and made his decision: Marcinkiewicz should also go free. Shaking his finger, the judge warned: “You know what 99 years is, don’t you? Well, now stay out of trouble.”

With no apology from the state of Illinois for having kept him in prison, Teddy went home with his stepmother and four sisters and sundry other relatives to the Marcinkiewicz house back of the stockyards. To celebrate, the Marcinkiewiczes had a bottle of whisky with ginger-ale and strawberry soda, but after 17 years on the wagon, Teddy abstained. “I still feel bitter,” he said, “but I got to dissipate it. It isn’t any good that way.” In a tawdry North LaSalle Street walkup, Vera Walush thumbed through a deck of cards and observed: “I got nothin’ to say.”