Wrongful Convictions

WRONGFUL CONVICTION CASES

Loevy & Loevy has had enormous success in litigating wrongful conviction cases, a highly specialized area of the law, and one full of traps for attorneys who do not regularly litigate this kind of case. Before making any decision on a lawyer for a wrongful conviction case, be sure to make inquiries about prior wrongful conviction cases the firm has won in the past. To succeed, you are best served by selecting a firm with a proven track record for winning wrongful conviction actions, and a firm with substantial resources to devote to pursuing your claim. Loevy & Loevy offers both.

Contact us to learn how our lawyers can help you with your wrongful conviction, whether stemming from an illegal arrest, an unlawful search and seizure, fabricated evidence, or other wrongful basis.

Some examples of our successful work include:

Alejandro Dominguez: In October 2006, we won a $9 million jury verdict in the Northern District of Illinois for a Mexican immigrant who was wrongfully imprisoned for four years at age 18 for a rape he did not commit. After the Northwestern Center on Wrongful Convictions proved his innocence, he was referred to our firm to pursue a civil case against the police who had used a highly improper and suggestive identification procedure to secure his wrongful conviction. Utilizing the top expert witness in the field of eyewitness identifications, plus a psychiatrist and psychologist to bolster our damage claim, we won a very difficult case that other lawyers had turned down.

Steve Manning: In 2005, we won a $6.5 million jury verdict against the FBI for framing a former Chicago police officer, the first such verdict of its kind. We alleged that Mr. Manning was railroaded by two FBI agents who secured his conviction based on a supposed confession that allegedly occurred on tape during a conversation with an informant wearing a wire. The problem, however, is that there is no confession on the tape, a reality which the FBI tried to explain away by claiming that the purported "confession" occurred during a "two-second gap" where the tape malfunctioned. Loevy & Loevy won a Seventh Circuit appeal rejecting the defendants' qualified immunity defense, a watershed case which shaped the developing law of post-Newsome due process claims. Manning v. Miller, 355 F3d 1028 (7th Cir. 2004). Then, at a jury trial before Judge Kennelly in 2005 defended by the United States’ Attorneys’ Office, we proved that Mr. Manning (the first former Chicago police officer ever sent to death row) had been framed by the FBI for not just one, but two crimes he did not commit. After five weeks of testimony, the jury awarded more than $6.5 million in damages against the federal government for more than a decade of wrongful time in prison.

Eric Kittler: In 2006, we obtained a $2 million settlement from the City of Chicago in a wrongful conviction case involving a teenager who was falsely accused of murder at age 15 and imprisoned for five years. After his conviction was reversed, we brought suit, alleging that the Chicago Police Department had fabricated evidence and hid documents pointing at the true suspect.

Scott Sornberger: Last year, we obtained a $1 million settlement against the City of Galesburg, Illinois, among other defendants, for framing our client and wife in a bank robbery they did not commit. The defendant detectives managed to coerce Ms. Sornberger into implicating herself and her husband by threatening to take away her children. After four months in jail, the real culprit was identified.

Evan Zimmerman: We represent another former police officer who was wrongfully imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, resulting in four years of wrongful imprisonment. After Mr. Zimmerman was exonerated by the Wisconsin Innocence Project, he was referred to our firm to pursue his civil case. We are proud that our reputation has led organizations of this nature to recommend our firm to clients looking to secure justice for the wrongfully convicted. The case is presently on appeal, and we are hopeful Mr. Zimmerman will get a trial this year.

Chris Parish: We were recently retained to represent an Indiana man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 10 years for a murder he did not commit. After winning his freedom, Mr. Parish sued the Elkhart, Indiana, police department for utilizing a highly suggestive lineup identification procedure.

Tim Finwall: We represent Mr. Finwall, a former marine, who was falsely accused by the police of a sexual offense against a child. The police fabricated the case against him in retaliation for a prior incident with a drunken off-duty police officer. During his interrogation, Mr. Finwall was locked in an interrogation room so long that he was forced to urinate in a corner. The case is pending.

Michael Evans: In collaboration with Northwestern Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions and the University of Chicago's McArthur Center for Justice, Loevy & Loevy also represents Michael Evans, who was framed by the Chicago Police for a rape and murder with which he had nothing to do. As a result of this police misconduct, Mr. Evans was wrongfully convicted and spent more than 27 years in prison until he was exonerated based on DNA evidence. Arrested and imprisoned while still in high school, Mr. Evans was robbed of the years of his life between 17 and 44 and is believed to have been the longest serving prisoner in Illinois ever exonerated by DNA. A copy of the complaint describing his story is available here: The case is presently on appeal, and we hope to win Mr. Evans a new trial.

Madison Hobley and Stanley Howard: On January 10, 2003, Illinois' then-Governor George Ryan commuted the death sentence of all of the inmates on Illinois' Death Row. In the same action, Governor Ryan also granted four lucky inmates full pardons on the basis of actual innocence -- not only commuting their sentences, but vacating their convictions altogether on the grounds that they did not commit the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death. All four of those pardon recipients (Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard, Aaron Patterson, and Leroy Orange) have since filed civil lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department, alleging that they were tortured during interrogations and were otherwise framed for murders they did not commit. Loevy & Loevy represents and has filed suit on behalf of two of the four Ryan pardon recipients: Madison Hobley and Stanley Howard.

Both Hobley and Howard were tortured during their interrogations by Area 2 Chicago police officers under the command of the now-infamous Jon Burge. As Judge Milton I. Shadur recently noted: "It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions. Both internal police accounts and numerous lawsuits and appeals brought by suspects alleging such abuse substantiate that those beatings and other means of torture occurred as an established practice, not just on an isolated basis." Maxwell v. Gillmore, 37 F.Supp.2d. 1078 (N.D. Ill. 1999). Area 2 torture was the subject of an investigation by a Special Prosecutor who spent the past several years investigating the crimes committed by Burge and his cohorts.

The story of what happened to Mr. Hobley and Mr. Howard is almost too incredible to be believed. They were both framed for murders they did not commit, resulting in more than a decade of wrongful incarceration on Death Row due to the misconduct of rogue police officers, who now must defend their actions in a court of law.

In December 2006, the City of Chicago agreed to pay a $14.8 million settlement in the Hobley and Howard cases (as well to as a third man, Leroy Orange), but the City subsequently backed out of the deal. The motion to enforce the settlement is pending.

Loevy & Loevy also presently has numerous other wrongful conviction/imprisonment clients pursuing civil law actions against various municipalities. Examples include Kyle Irvin v. Chicago, Case No. 07 C 1207; Jose Lopez v. City of Chicago, Case No. 06 C 6252; Donny McGee v. Chicago, Case No. 04 C 6352; Clayborn Smith v. Det. Kenneth Boudreau, Case No. 03 L 11581; and Kevin Johnson v. Riverdale, Case No. 02 C 231.

Contact us today for aggressive protection of your rights.