Hadiya Pendleton shooting: The Illinois Supreme Court has granted a new trial in the slaying of a Chicago teenager.

CHICAGO (WLS) — The alleged shooter in the death of Chicago teenager Hadiya Pendleton has been granted a new trial.

In 2018, Michael Ward was sentenced to 84 years in prison for the murder of a 15-year-old honor student. Its the criminal record was removed in 2023 The Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the decision.

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The Illinois Supreme Court, which was evenly split with one judge recusing himself, rejected an appeal of a ruling that overturned Ward’s conviction, clearing the way for a new trial in the Pendleton murder.

Attorney Steven L. Richards represented Ward in state high court after Ward, 30, had his conviction overturned in 2023 when a lower court ruled his confession was improperly obtained by police.

“That appeal was a long one, an appeal to the Supreme Court, and it’s good that the Supreme Court ultimately turned it down,” Richards said. “They are not allowed to torture him or persecute him. That’s what happened in this case. They kept coming back and coming back and eventually he made a statement, but it violated his rights.”

Pendleton’s 2013 Kenwood Park shooting made international headlines because days earlier the 15-year-old girl had performed as a cheerleader with her high school marching band at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in Washington, DC.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office released a statement Thursday evening saying, “The CCSAO supports the prosecution in this case and disagrees with the appeals court’s decision. We are reviewing all legal options and will ultimately be driven by the pursuit of justice for Hadiya Pendleton, her friends who suffered that day, and her family and loved ones who mourn her today.”

Ward, who is currently serving a decade in prison, could be retried next year.

“If Mr. Ward does not testify, the application will not be filed. She will not be accepted,” Richards said.

Ward was one of two men convicted of Pendleton’s 2013 murder.

So did Ward’s attorneys said in 2023 that the judge erred in barring them from providing expert testimony regarding false confessions and “coercive” interrogation techniques used by the detectives who interrogated Ward, and noted that details of Ward’s confession appeared to indicate that Ward had identified the scene of the shooting as several blocks from another, smaller park where Pendleton was killed.

Arguing that the evidence against Ward was strong enough to merit a second trial even without his confession, the judge at the time noted that witnesses who identified Ward in court five years after the shooting were more equivocal in their initial statements to police. One witness, who vaguely identified Ward in the days immediately following the shooting, took the stand five years later and said he was “100 percent guaranteed” that Ward was the killer.

Without the confession, the state’s case relied on witness identifications and the testimony of two friends of Ward and Williams, who told police the pair picked them up in a getaway car shortly after the shooting and gave incriminating statements, ABC7 experts told in 2023. No murder weapon or other physical evidence linked Ward to the shooting, the report said.

The lead prosecutor in the case, Brian Holmes, resigned, as did Judge Nicholas Ford, who often clashed with Ward’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Julie Koehler.

After leaving the King College Prep campus on an unseasonably warm day in 2013, Pendleton and half a dozen classmates huddled under cover in Harsh Park in North Kenwood when a gunman opened fire from a nearby alley. The teenagers ran, and Pendleton was hit in the back as she ran, falling into the arms of her friend, Clyn Jones.

After the shooting, police quickly turned their attention to members of a faction of Suva’s street gangs who were feuding with the 46 Terror gang, which claimed Harsh Park as their territory. One of the detectives who questioned Ward was John Halloran, who was named by numerous defendants in wrongful conviction cases. Halloran was accused of mistreating suspects, and in at least six cases he obtained confessions from suspects that were later corroborated by DNA or other evidence. Halloran denies abusing the suspects.

The park itself was less than a mile from the Obamas’ home in Chicago, and Michelle Obama attended Hadiya’s funeral. A few weeks later, Pendleton’s parents, mother Cleo Cowley-Pendleton and father Nathaniel Pendleton, sat next to the first lady during the State of the Nation address.

After the teenager’s death, the Pendleton family waited four years for a trial. They attended every court hearing and shared their relief at the convictions and sentences.

It has not yet been announced when Ward’s new trial will take place.