In 1995, 17-year-old Troshawn McCoy was arrested for a double murder he did not commit. Now, he's explained why he confessed to it.
Troshawn was a senior, just going about his day in high school in Chicago when he was sent to the principal's office and told that there were some detectives who wanted to talk to him.
He was told somebody had been shot the night before, and asked if he knew anything about it.
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"I'm like, No, I don't know anything," Troshawn recalled to UNILAD. "[I don't] know about anybody getting shot, or heard of anything like that."
Troshawn had been at his girlfriend's the night before, in a 'house full of people' who could vouch for him, but that didn't matter to the police. They interrogated him and told him they 'knew' he was guilty - so eventually, Troshawn confessed.
Along with three other teenagers, who eventually became known as the 'Marquette Park 4', Troshawn was found guilty of double murder and robbery and sentenced to 55 years in prison. He was taken away from his home, his family and his life, and thrown behind bars, where he spent more than 20 years.
It wasn't until 2017 that Troshawn, then in his late 30s, was exonerated of the crime due to new fingerprint evidence which proved that he and the other three teens were not the killers.
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Following his release, Troshawn has now spoken with UNILAD about why he confessed to the brutal crimes despite having an alibi.
Recalling the moment he sat down with officers, he said: "Detectives arrived to the school, and the first thing they told me was, 'Don't try to run, we know you did it. Somebody told us you did it. You killed those people on Western last night.'
"I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about."
In spite of his lack of knowledge, officers took Troshawn to the police station and began again with their questions.
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"They started again, 'we know you know something about this. We know you did it.' I'm like, 'I don't know what you guys are talking about'."
Troshawn remembers police playing 'good cop, bad cop' as they attempted to get to the truth - or what they deemed to be the truth - recalling: "[They were] telling me, 'just tell us what happened and you can go home'."
This ordeal went on for seven or eight hours, by which time Troshawn was desperate to go home.
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"I just gave in," he said, "and I cooperated with him because I thought, you know, if I finally just made something up and told him that I did it, I would go home. And that's when they took my court reported confession and charged me and my co defendants with double first degree murder and armed robbery."
Having since had decades to reflect back on the reason he gave the confession, Troshawn continued: "At that time, I was just so traumatized and so mentally beaten, I really couldn't process what I had done or the words that were on that paper. I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to go home. I was a 17-year-old kid.
"It just didn't carry the weight that it would with me being a 46-year-old man now. It wasn't the same. I just was in a situation, a sticky situation, that I wanted to get out of, and the words on that paper really didn't have any meaning to me at that time. I thought I was going home."
Needless to say, Troshawn wasn't going home.
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He remained in the county jail for three years as he awaited trial, and he remembers one day a couple of months before his trial began when he was visited by his public defender and had the chance to read the confession that his exhausted, 17-year-old self had given.
"He showed it to me, and I just read over the confession, and I knew - the confession was just so damning that I knew I wouldn't be going home. I was going to the penitentiary.
"I didn't know for how long, but there was no way that I was gonna beat the case because the confession was just too powerful, and we didn't have anything to offset it, no other evidence in my favor.
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"So I knew at that point that I was going to the penitentiary... After me reading that confession again, knowing I was about to go to trial and lose, I didn't cry then, but I cried later on that night, because I knew I wasn't coming home."
Thankfully, the new evidence which came to light did finally send Troshawn home, but it was decades too late. Now, he's trying to raise awareness about wrongful convictions and failures in the criminal justice system, noting: "A lot of people on the outside don't realize there are so many innocent people in prison accused some of the most horrific crimes. It's crazy."
Emily Brown