March 31--A man who served 25 years behind bars for two murders he didn't commit and received a $10 million settlement from the city of Chicago after being exonerated has been charged with aggravated battery in Riverside, police said.
Eric Caine, 50, was ordered held without bond Tuesday after being arrested Sunday at his home in the 400 block of North Delaplaine Road, according to a news release from Riverside police. Caine has been on probation for felony traffic cases in River Forest and North Riverside, police said.
Police responded to multiple 911 calls of a disturbance at the home and found two men battered and bleeding heavily outside the residence. The men told police Caine battered them after "words were exchanged," according to the news release.
A 42-year-old Chicago man suffered a fractured clavicle and bruises to his face, and a 49-year-old Chicago man suffered fractures in multiple bones in his face, police said. Both men were taken to MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn.
Caine was charged in 1986 with murder in the deaths of an elderly couple in Chicago, and had alleged he was tortured into a false confession by detectives serving under disgraced former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge. A Cook County judge threw out Caine's murder conviction in 2011, and Caine later received a $10 million settlement from the city.
In 2010, Burge was convicted in federal court of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about what he knew of the torture of criminal suspects. Burge received a 41/2-year sentence. He was released from prison to a Florida halfway house in late 2014, and then ended his sentence in home confinement in February 2015.
Exonerated prisoners sometimes end up back in the criminal justice system, according to Kimberly Mills, assistant director of Life After Innocence, a program with Loyola University School of Law that helps exonerated prisoners after release.
Mills said they struggle post-release to find jobs and mental health services, and to cope with the trauma they endured during wrongful imprisonment.
"It's a real everyday struggle for our exonerees," she said.
eleventis@tribpub.com
