An evidentiary hearing that could determine whether Johnny Plummer gets a new trial resumes Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, more than three decades after Chicago police arrested him at age 15 and, he says, beat a false murder confession out of him. Plummer signed that confession after the alleged beating, and it became the foundation of his 1991 conviction.
Plummer was taken into custody in August 1991 and has long maintained he did not commit the murder connected to his case, according to FOX 32 Chicago. Following a bench trial, he was convicted of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and aggravated battery with a firearm in the August 11, 1991 shooting of Michael Engram and shooting of D'Andre Dyson, and was sentenced to a cumulative 50 years, per FindLaw. He was 15 years old when he was arrested and, according to the same record, interrogated for 39 hours before signing a confession statement.
Plummer alleges Detective Michael Kill interrogated him at Area 3 police headquarters and beat him with his fists and a flashlight, per FOX 32 Chicago's reporting. Area 3 included a holding cell known as “the cage,” the station reports. Chicago police allegedly forced Plummer's confession, and he says he did not commit the murder tied to his conviction.
A Long-Buried Medical Record Surfaces
The case's recent turn stems from a June ruling by Cook County Circuit Judge Tyria B. Walton, who found that a Brady violation occurred after the Chicago Police Department inadvertently released 1991 juvenile detention medical intake records showing a doctor had documented Plummer's reported beatings immediately after his interrogation, according to Fight Back! News. For decades, Chicago police had maintained that no medical intake records existed from Plummer's initial detention, the outlet notes.
That finding followed years of appeals. In August 2021, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed a lower court's dismissal of Plummer's successive post-conviction petition and remanded his case for a third-stage evidentiary hearing to evaluate newly discovered torture evidence and alleged prosecutor misconduct, according to the People's Law Office. Plummer had filed that successive petition in 2016 after collecting evidence of dozens of similar abuse claims against the interrogating detectives, the group notes. During the hearing, attorneys can question witnesses under oath and present evidence, per FOX 32 Chicago.
Boudreau's Absence and a History of Alleged Misconduct
Detective Kenneth Boudreau, who worked under former Commander Jon Burge, was scheduled to testify at Plummer's previous court date on August 6 but did not appear, according to CFIST, as cited by FOX 32 Chicago. Plummer's attorneys plan to question Boudreau about alleged patterns of police misconduct and had shown him photos allegedly taken inside the Area 3 Violent Crimes building during the 1990s — including one showing what appeared to be black mannequin heads with dreadlocks hanging from fencing, and another showing two black hands in handcuffs with the words “another happy ending,” according to CFIST. Boudreau reportedly said the photos could have been “dark humor,” per the same account.
CFIST says Boudreau has been tied to 70 wrongful conviction claims, while Kill has been named in 28 cases involving allegations of police torture or wrongful conviction, the group told FOX 32 Chicago. Before his death, Kill admitted in court testimony to using racial slurs during interrogations and was named in more than 20 police abuse allegations, including the 1991 electroshock interrogation of a 13-year-old boy, according to the Chicago Tribune. Kill worked under Burge at Area 3 and defended his aggressive interrogation tactics throughout his career, the paper reported.
Mounting Financial Toll for Chicago Taxpayers
The allegations against Boudreau carry a steep price tag for the city. As of May, Chicago had settled at least seven wrongful conviction lawsuits naming Boudreau for a total of at least $81.6 million, with at least nine additional lawsuits involving him still pending, according to WTTW News. Boudreau was questioned in court regarding racist props displayed at Area 3, the station reported.
One of those settlements came in September 2023, when the Chicago City Council approved a $25 million payout for Tyrone Hood and Wayne Washington, who spent 34 combined years in prison after alleging Boudreau and other detectives beat them and fabricated evidence to secure murder confessions in 1993 — Washington said he was beaten into confessing, while Hood alleged officers fabricated witness testimony, according to CBS News Chicago's report at the time, a case Hoodline covered. Burge himself was convicted in federal court in 2010 of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about police torture, an era of misconduct that has cost Chicago taxpayers more than $130 million in civil settlements, judgments, and reparations.
A Slow-Moving System and a Push for Pardons
Plummer's case is part of a much larger backlog. The Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, created by the state legislature in 2009 to investigate police torture claims from the Burge era, has accumulated more than 540 pending cases while averaging over three years to review each individual claim, according to Injustice Watch. Plummer's own involvement in challenging the department's interrogation practices dates back over a decade — in October 2012, he and co-plaintiff Vincent Wade filed a federal class-action petition on behalf of more than 100 incarcerated men alleging systematic, racially motivated torture by Burge and his command staff, detailing tactics such as mock executions, cattle prods, and severe beatings used to extract involuntary confessions, according to Courthouse News Service.
Ahead of Wednesday's hearing, CFIST and the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression say Plummer's family and supporters plan to hold a rally and news conference at 10:30 a.m. outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. CFIST is calling on the Cook County State's Attorney's Office to move to vacate convictions involving established patterns of torture, forced confessions and wrongful convictions, and is also calling on Gov. JB Pritzker to pardon survivors of police torture and wrongful conviction. Plummer's mother, Jeanette Plummer, who advocated for her son and others who said they were tortured or wrongfully convicted, died in May; the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression said she had participated in efforts against police misconduct since at least 2012.
The financial fallout from similar cases continues to grow. In September 2024, a federal jury awarded $50 million to Marcel Brown for a false confession extracted during a daylong interrogation in 2008 — one of the largest wrongful conviction verdicts in Chicago history, as Hoodline reported at the time; Brown had served ten years in prison before his conviction was vacated in 2018. Whether Plummer's newly surfaced medical evidence will be enough to secure him a new trial now rests with the court.
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