CHICAGO (AP) - A Chicago man who spent 20 years in prison for a 1995 double murder of two eighth-grade girls in a hail of gunfire is free after prosecutors announced they were dropping their case against him.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports prosecutors announced Tuesday they were dropping the case against Matthew Sopron. Sopron was released from Stateville Prison Tuesday afternoon.
During the trial, prosecutors argued that a 15-year-old opened fire on a van on Chicago’s South Side as part of a gang battle on the orders of the then 22-year-old Sopron and his co-defendant, killing Carrie Hovel and Helena Martin.
But during the recent hearing the gunman testified that he barely knew Sopron and that nobody told him to shoot at the van.
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