Justice Minus Joy

It has always been tough to picture him as a murderer, this tiny boy with the bright, quick smile and dimples the size of gumdrops. As he romps across the floor of his home on Chicago's South Side, he looks like one of Barney's little friends. Too early, though, this nine-year-old fully understands that when you're poor and black and accused, real friends can't be found in a purple dinosaur or anywhere else in TV land. Indeed, for the past year his best friend has been the stately gentleman sitting quietly in the living room wearing a starched white shirt, gray suit and cowboy boots. He is lawyer R. Eugene Pincham, 73. The kid, overwhelmed of late with so many new names and faces to remember, refers to his pal and counsel simply as the black Power Ranger.

Last week, as the boy ran into the living room, Pincham scooped him up and held him facedown across his knees. "Have you been good in school? Have you been obeying your teachers? Have you been nice to your parents?" Each question was punctuated with a tickle, so the boy's "Yes!" responses were sung in breathless hysteria. It was a lighthearted moment in a year that has been heavy with pain and injustice. As the boy dashed out of the living room, the adults quickly turned sober again. Rosetta Crawford, the boy's grandmother and family matriarch, took a drag on her cigarette and said softly, "We were a quiet family. But somehow we became the most hated people in the world."

Last August, Crawford's grandson and another boy, one year younger, were charged with the murder of an 11-year-old girl, Ryan Harris, in a case that gained national attention as much for the youth of the suspects as for the crime's sickening details. Harris' body was discovered in the weeds of a vacant lot, her head smashed with a rock, panties stuffed in her mouth and leaves in her nostrils. A month later, after semen was discovered in her underwear, the charges against the boys were dropped, and DNA tests linked the crime to a convicted sex offender who faces three other charges of sexual assault committed within blocks of where Harris' body was found. Still, it wasn't until last week that Cook County prosecutors charged Floyd Durr, 30, with Harris' murder.

Meanwhile, both of the wrongly accused boys are still reeling from the trauma of the past nine months, from what family members describe as police "interrogation," to the murder charges filed in a hostile courtroom, to their returning home under house arrest--and the mobs of journalists camped outside their homes for weeks. Even today nightmares haunt the boys, according to their friends and relatives, and school days have become a dreaded ritual of taunting, fights and confrontation with youths who tease them about the murder. The younger boy, who once wore his hair in tightly braided corn-rows, cut them off after seeing a sketch of himself on the TV news. "These boys were deliberately framed for this crime," says Pincham. "Sure, it's been acknowledged that they had nothing to do with it, but they are still catching hell."

Pincham has filed a lawsuit against the city seeking $100 million in damages for the wrongful arrest of his client. Prosecutors blame the botched investigation on procedural slips and dismiss any suggestion of intentional wrongdoing by detectives handling the case. Even if Pincham prevails in court, it's clear his client will have a hard time recapturing even a faint reminder of his previous life. Once an A student, family members say the boy, now a third-grader, brings home grades that range from failing to barely passing. He has been so tormented by his peers that rather than fight, the boy has withdrawn socially, preferring to spend his time after school in the house. "Everything has changed," says Crawford. "He doesn't want to go outside."

Crawford is worried that her efforts to get her grandson back on track could be hampered if the state calls him as a witness against Durr. And she is disappointed at the chill that remains between her family and that of Ryan Harris'. "It doesn't make any sense," Crawford says. "When this case is over, both of us will be right back here in the ghetto."