Charges dropped against two men in a 20-year-old murder case.

California: They stood before a Cook County judge Tuesday morning in bright yellow jumpsuits, convicted quintuple murderers in a heinous arson- related slaying more than two decades ago.
Hours later, Ronald Kitchen, 43, and Marvin Reeves, 50, strolled out of the 26th and California courthouse free men in business suits befitting Wall Street's best.
"It hasn't really hit me yet. It's surreal," Kitchen said after the Illinois attorney general's office dismissed charges in the allegedly drug-related 1988 murders of two women and their three children on the Southwest Side.
Kitchen, who said he was forced to confess by an underling of disgraced former Chicago Police Detective Cmdr. Jon Burge, was originally sentenced to death, and Reeves had been been serving five life terms without parole. The two were originally convicted based on evidence gathered by detectives under the supervision of Jon Burge. Burge has recently gained notoriety for allegedly torturing more than 200 criminal suspects between 1972 and 1991 in order to force confessions. Their case was based largely on Kitchen's confession, but he's long maintained that he was tortured into the admission. Reeves, too, had long proclaimed his innocence. Kitchen says that Burge's detectives coerced him into confessing by beating him in the head with a telephone. He also says that he was punched in the face and kicked in the groin.

Links: http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1654837,kitchen-reeves-charges-dropped-070709.article
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/07/08/crimesider/entry5144256.shtml