It was the first time in years that the 38-year-old identical twin brothers had seen each other. 
 
 Their mother wept as she looked on. 
 
 But this was no typical family reunion. 
 
 Karl Smith was on the witness stand Thursday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, making an admission seemingly ripped from a made-for-TV movie. 
 
 Smith confessed to a murder that his brother, Kevin Dugar, has been in custody for since 2003. 
 
 "I'm here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of," Smith testified moments after taking the witness stand. 
 
 His mother, Judy Dugar, cried as she listened from the courtroom gallery, while his brother, sitting at a table with his lawyer, wiped tears from his eyes. 
 
 But Cook County prosecutors questioned the stunning admission, telling a judge that Smith came forward only after an appeals court upheld his own conviction for attempted murder. He is serving a 99-year prison sentence for taking part in a home invasion and armed robbery in which a 6-year-old boy was shot in the head in 2008. 
 
 Karl Smith confessed to a murder Thursday that his identical twin brother had been in custody for since 2003. Here’s a look at a few other sibling switch-ups in criminal cases. Sept. 23, 2016. Karl Smith confessed to a murder Thursday that his identical twin brother had been in custody for since 2003. Here’s a look at a few other sibling switch-ups in criminal cases. Sept. 23, 2016. SEE MORE VIDEOS 
 
 "He's got nothing to lose" by taking the blame for his brother's murder rap, said Assistant State's Attorney Carol Rogala. 
 
 She also told Judge Vincent Gaughan that Smith's confession didn't "fit the independent eyewitness accounts of what happened." 
 
 It is unclear when Gaughan will decide if Dugar should be given a new trial. 
 
 Dugar's lawyer, Karen Daniel, a Northwestern University law school professor who directs its Center on Wrongful Convictions, said the evidence against Dugar was razor-thin — no confession or physical evidence but the testimony of two eyewitnesses, including one who recanted at trial. 
 
 The two brothers, who dressed alike until eighth grade and impersonated each other for years afterward, still looked identical Thursday with their shaved heads and close-cropped beards. Only their clashing prison clothes set them apart. Smith is doing his time at Menard Correctional Center; Dugar at Stateville Correctional Center. 
 
 Growing up, the twins were closer than brothers — they were "one person" who shared socks, shoes and even sandwiches, according to their mother and Smith. 
 
 Even their parents couldn't always tell the brothers apart, and on Thursday, Smith struggled to identify himself when shown a photo of the two of them. 
 
 Their mother, whose maiden name Smith later adopted, spent much of the day in tears, happy to be in the same room as both of her sons for the first time in years, even if it was a courtroom. She doesn't drive and hasn't visited them in state prison. 
 
 But she said she was hurt that prosecutors doubted her son's story that he was the real killer. 
 
 "He wouldn't lie about that," she said. 
 
 Veteran lawyers at Cook County's main criminal courthouse could not recall another case quite like this one — a scenario some said seemed more out of a law school exercise. 
 
 But Michael Winston was released from prison in 2012 after six years behind bars for a South Side murder after his older brother, Robert, who looked similar, confessed that he was the actual killer, said Winston's attorney, Jeffrey Urdangen. 
 
 And in New Mexico, shortly after Joseph Montoya was convicted of second-degree murder in 2000, his identical brother, Jeremy, came forward to claim he was the actual killer. But the trial judge and appeals courts rejected the claim, finding the twins had "colluded," according to court records. 
 
 In the slaying at issue in Thursday's hearing, a gunman dressed in black shot into a group of three people near Sheridan Road and Argyle Street in March 2003, killing Antwan Carter and wounding Ronnie Bolden. 
 
 Bolden, who was shot three times, later identified the gunman as "Twin," the street name used by Smith and Dugar, who frequently impersonated each other. 
 
 "We was acting as one," testified Smith, who admitted he and his brother were gang members who dealt drugs. "Where I was, he was, acting like each other. He pretended to be me, and I pretended to be him." 
 
 Smith told the judge he was stopped by police not long after the killing but identified himself as his brother and was allowed to leave. 
 
 At trial, Bolden admitted that he didn't identify Dugar as the gunman for more than a month after the shooting because he planned to settle the matter "on the street," according to Dugar's petition for the post-conviction hearing. Bolden was a member of Black P Stones, a gang then feuding with the twins' gang, the Conservative Vice Lords. 
 
 Bolden identified Dugar in a photo lineup that did not include Smith, according to the petition. The other eyewitness, Monique Boykins, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, recanted at trial and testified Bolden told her to identify Dugar as the gunman to police. 
 
 A jury convicted Dugar of first-degree murder in 2005, and Judge Gaughan sentenced him to 54 years in prison. 
 
 Daniel maintains that Smith's confession is newly discovered evidence that Dugar's trial attorney could not have uncovered. 
 
 Dugar had asked his brother if he had been the gunman before the trial, Smith testified Thursday, but he said he denied it at the time. 
 
 Smith said he never told anyone he committed the homicide until he wrote his brother a letter three years ago. 
 
 "I have to get it off my chest before it kills me," Smith wrote in tiny handwriting to fit as much as he could on each page. "So I'll just come clean and pray you can forgive me. … I'm the one who and shot and killed those two Black Stones on Sheridan that night." 
 
 When Smith didn't hear back from his brother, he wrote him again a few weeks later in October 2013, confessing to the murder again and asking for his brother's forgiveness. 
 
 "The reason I didn't say (expletive) at the time was because I didn't and couldn't find the strength to do so at the time," Smith said in the letter, admitted into evidence. 
 
 This time, Dugar wrote back and asked Smith to contact his lawyers. Smith signed a sworn statement confessing to the murder in 2014. 
 
 On Thursday, Smith testified that he threw a party the night of the murder but decided to leave with a close friend to buy marijuana. 
 
 After parking at Sheridan and Argyle, Smith was crossing the street when a truck pulled up and he was confronted by Bolden and Carter, he testified. 
 
 Smith said he opened fire with a .38-caliber handgun, saw Carter fall to the ground and then pulled out his .32-caliber pistol and fired at Bolden as he backed up, Smith testified. He said he then ran back to the friend's car. 
 
 "I took a deep breath and told him to … just drive and go to the liquor store," Smith said. 
 
 They then returned to the party, where Smith changed clothes and later went clubbing with his brother, he said. ||||| A MAN has made a stunning confession — insisting he committed a 2003 murder that his identical twin brother was jailed for. 
 
 “I’m here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of,” Karl Smith, 38, told a Chicago judge last week, as his identical twin, Kevin Dugar, dabbed tears from his eyes from his heavily guarded seat in the courtroom, The New York Post reports. 
 
 But could these two brothers — so identical that for years they impersonated each other for fun — simply be pulling a fast one on authorities? 
 
 Smith was recently denied an appeal for his 99-year prison sentence as one of four participants in a 2008 home-invasion robbery, in which two people, including a six-year-old boy, were shot but survived. 
 
 So in confessing to his brother’s crime, Smith is risking nothing — while offering a glimmer of hope for Dugar, a brother so close to him that they were essentially “one person,” his mum told the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 “He’s got nothing to lose,” a sceptical Assistant State’s Attorney Carol Rogala told a judge on Thursday, as the two brothers sat in court, identical in appearance but for their differently coloured prison uniforms. 
 
 Judge Vincent Gaughan has not said when he will decide if Smith is just taking an easy fall for his twin. 
 
 But if the judge decides in the twins’ favour, Dugar would be given a new trial in the 2003 murder, in which a man died and a woman was injured after a gunman fired into a small crowd of gangsters on a North Side Chicago intersection. 
 
 The twins’ mother, Judy Dugar, is certain that Smith is telling the truth. 
 
 “He wouldn’t lie about that,” she told the Tribune. 
 
 This story originally appeared in The New York Post. 
 
 Originally published as Identical twin’s murder bombshell ||||| Karl Smith made a shocking confession on the witness stand in Chicago on Thursday - he admitted to a crime that his brother has served 13 years for, according to the Chicago Tribune. 
 
 "I'm here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of," Smith told the stunned court. 
 
 His 38-year-old identical twin, Kevin Dugar, has been in custody since 2003 over the killing of Antwan Carter. 
 
 The men have different names as Smith changed his name to his mother's maiden name, but when they were growing up, they acted as "one person", and became active gang members. 
 
 Even now the men cannot be distinguished easily other than by their prison clothes. 
 
 Smith is already serving a 99-year sentence for an armed robbery which ended in a six-year-old boy being shot in 2008, and has "nothing to lose" by confessing, Assistant State's Attorney said. 
 
 Smith only confessed to his brother in a letter three years ago, and then went on to sign a sworn confession in 2014, according to the Tribune. 
 
 Many are unsure as to whether the confession is real, but if a judge decides Smith's story is credible, his brother would be given a new trial for the killing. ||||| Home Daily News Identical twin testifies he committed murder… 
 
 Criminal Justice 
 
 Identical twin testifies he committed murder and brother was wrongly convicted 
 
 A prosecutor in Chicago on Thursday questioned the claim of an identical twin who testified he committed a murder and his brother was wrongly convicted of the crime in 2005. 
 
 Karl Smith first made the claim in a letter he sent to his brother in the fall of 2013, the Chicago Tribune reports. In Cook County, Illinois, court on Thursday, Smith said he and his brother were both gang members who sold drugs, but he was the man who fired a gun into a group of people, killing one man and wounding another. 
 
 The shooting victim who survived had identified Smith’s twin, Kevin Dugar, in a photo lineup that did not include Smith. (Smith has a different last name than his brother because he uses his mother’s maiden name.) 
 
 Assistant State’s Attorney Carol Rogala said in court that Smith has nothing to lose by taking the rap. He is serving a 99-year sentence for attempted murder in a different case, and he came forward only after an appeals court upheld the conviction. 
 
 According to the Tribune, the brothers had impersonated one another for years and they still looked identical in the court appearance Thursday.
– Karl Smith took the witness stand last week in Illinois and dropped a bomb on a Cook County courtroom as the twin brother he hadn't seen in years looked on: "I'm here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of," Smith said. The part of the story that makes it especially dicey, reports the Chicago Tribune, is that Smith's identical twin, Kevin Dugar, has been jailed for the murder of a rival gang member since 2003. (The brothers have different last names because Smith adopted his mother's maiden name.) Authorities are skeptical, however. They say Smith is falsely confessing because he has exhausted his own appeal of a 99-year sentence for a 2008 home invasion and figures he may as well take the fall for his bother. Smith's "got nothing to lose," an assistant state's attorney says, adding that the confession doesn't mesh with eyewitness accounts. Smith, though, says he let his brother sit in prison because "I didn't have the strength to come forward" and because "I thought it was the job of the police to catch me." He contends that he decided to come forward after a religious conversion. A judge will decide if Dugar will get a new trial. Says Smith's mother: "He wouldn't lie about that." The bizarre nature of the case is drawing widespread attention, with coverage in the American Bar Association's ABA Journal and oversesa outlets including ITV News ("shocking") Australia's Perth Now ("stunning"). (In France, authorities struggled to figure out which twin was a rapist.)