Lawyers will be gathering in a Cook County courtroom this morning to debate a decades-old murder case. At its heart is a secret kept 26 years—the man serving life in prison for the murder likely didn't do it. It was just over two months ago that the defense attorneys who kept the secret first spoke about it publicly. The case raises questions of legal ethics, as well as questions about what happens now, including who's responsible for getting to the bottom of what went wrong.

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The story begins here, at this McDonald's at Halsted and 114th Street on Chicago's South Side. On a winter evening in 1982, two men walked into this restaurant to rob the place. One of them shot a security guard to death with a sawed off shotgun. A man named Alton Logan got life in prison for that murder. And for most people, that was the end of the story.

Until this past January. That's when retired public defenders Jamie Kunz and Dale Coventry came forward to say Alton Logan is innocent.

Kunz says their client, Andrew Wilson, told them within weeks of the shooting that he'd done it.

KUNZ: So when we put the question to Wilson a month he had been arrested, as to whether or not he'd been the trigger man in the McDonald's case, and he said 'yes', it freaked us out.

The two lawyers felt bound by ethical rules to keep that confession secret. But they agonized over what to do. What they decided to do was unusual. They prepared an affidavit, signed and notarized. It did not say Wilson committed the McDonld's murder, only that they had privileged information Alton Logan did not. They locked that document away. And, Kunz says, they tried to move on.

KUNZ: We were taking enough of a chance as it was, we were playing ethical strip tease here. Well, when you say we have the information from privileged sources that's got to be attorney client privilege. Neither one of us is a priest.

To understand why they took that chance, you have to know a bit about where Andrew Wilson and Alton Logan fit in the tenor of the times in Chicago.

Just a month after the 1982 McDonald's shooting, Coventry and Kunz were assigned to defend Wilson, who was charged with killing two Chicago police officers.

Dale Coventry says police and prosecutors…

COVENTRY: …had what they thought was an absolute airtight case against Andrew Wilson for the killing of the two police officers.

But the shotgun used in the McDonald's murder was found where Wilson had been staying.

The state's attorneys who prosecuted the McDonald's case against Alton Logan declined to be interviewed for this story, but it is certain that they knew of the link between Wilson and the shotgun.

Dropping charges against Logan, however, would have raised questions about the credibility of two eyewitnesses who'd picked him out of a lineup, and those same witnesses were needed to convict the second shooter at McDonald's.

So the trial proceeded against Logan. The state asked for the death penalty. At that point, Dale Coventry says he pondered violating attorney client privilege.

COVENTRY: When I went to court on the day that Alton Logan was being dealt with on the death penalty phase, I was in a quandary, and I know Jamie was too. We didn't know where we would go if he had actually been sentenced to death. Something would have happened, because legally I don't think there was any other way we could go.

Coventry and Kunz stood by. Logan did not get the death penalty, but got life in prison instead. But the lawyers say Wilson gave them permission to tell the story in the event of his death. When Wilson died last fall, Coventry and Kunz stepped into the spotlight. Kunz admits he didn't anticipate the public outrage.

KUNZ: A friend of mine called me when he picked up his Tribune in the driveway, and he was just laughing and he said, 'Jamie, I hope you have a gun because there are going to be a lot of people out here who are mad at you.' I feel a little silly for not seeing that coming.

Letter writers and bloggers have suggested that the two attorneys be immediately disbarred, that they pay reparations to Logan, that they be charged with obstruction of justice. One suggested they be put behind bars for 26 years so they would know what life has been like for Logan.

KUNZ: The criticism that is coming our way doesn't bother me because it's such a relief after all these years to tell what I believe, to tell what happened. It's been eating away at me and Dale, too, all these years. That feeling of release is so powerful that I can live with the brickbats.

SMITH: Most lawyers would have done exactly what those defenders did-not reveal because if the client says don't, don't until I die, I work for my client, and there is this rule of professional conduct.

Abbe Smith is a law professor at Georgetown University, a practicing attorney, and the the co-author of Understanding Lawyers' Ethics. Smith says the thinking behind the rule is that people are more likely to be candid in a trusting relationship. Without that bedrock principle, Smith says,

SMITH: Why would Andrew Wilson, who apparently was somewhat sophisticated, he had been around the system, why would he tell a lawyer if he didn't think that information was protected?

Smith argues that Logan is better off today because lawyers follow the ethical rules.

SMITH: He is better off because, the information could have died with Wilson, never to surface.

The question of the admissibility of lawyers' testimony will be the subject of argument in court this morning. It's one of several issues before the judge, who must decide whether to reopen Logan's case or leave it alone.

Asked its current position on the case, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's office declined to comment. I asked Dale Coventry what advice he'd offer Madigan's prosecutors.

COVENTRY: I think they would look better in the eyes of the public. I think it would make the criminal justice system seem as if it can come to terms with mistakes, that they should have some form of hearing, bringing in all the evidence that links Wilson to his case and they should come to the conclusion that there is not sufficient evidence that Logan did it, and that Andrew Wilson did it, and he should be released.
CONROY: And if you were a betting man would you bet that will happen? COVENTRY: I have no idea. I wouldn't want to take that bet.

Alton Logan, now 55, is imprisoned at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.

For Chicago Public Radio, I'm John Conroy.