Frank Drew spent 24 years in prison after Evanston detectives coerced phony witness statements and brutally forced a false confession.
EVANSTON – Today, attorneys for Frank Drew filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on his behalf against the City of Evanston, eight officers of the Evanston Police Department, one Cook County prosecutor, and Cook County. The suit asks a jury to award damages and relief for Mr. Drew’s wrongful arrest and prosecution, and the near quarter century he spent in prison for a murder he had nothing to do with.
On December 12, 1996, Ronald Walker was shot to death near the intersection of Church and Dodge in Evanston. Several people witnessed the crime and described the shooter to police as a “heavy-set” or “chubby” Black man who held the gun in his left hand. One witness positively identified the shooter as a man named Gregory Boyd, who—at over 210 pounds—matched the description onlookers provided. Boyd was later identified in lineups by six other witnesses as the man who had done the shooting.
Boyd was arrested in March of 1997, but he was released from police custody, and the case went cold.
It was nearly a year after the shooting that a high-ranking member of the Vice Lords street gang, arrested on unrelated drug and weapons charges, was pressured by detectives to provide information in the unsolved Walker homicide. This man, facing decades in prison, agreed to cooperate with the detectives to get a deal, claiming Mr. Drew and another boy, Jeffrey Lurry, had told him that they killed Walker.
At the time of the shooting, Frank Drew was a 16-year-old high school student and member of his church choir, living with his parents and two younger siblings. Mr. Drew weighed about 130 pounds, he was not left-handed, and he did not match the description given by witnesses. He had nothing to do with the murder.
Nevertheless, Mr. Drew’s lawsuit contends, the police conspired with an Assistant State’s Attorney to implicate Mr. Drew for the crime. Lurry initially denied any knowledge of the crime, but detectives and the Assistant State’s Attorney arranged for him to be threatened into implicating himself and Mr. Drew in the shooting. Lurry, who was also a child at the time, did just that.
In February of 1998, Mr. Drew learned that police were looking for him and turned himself in. Police held him at the station all night, and the next morning began interrogating him about Walker’s shooting. Mr. Drew truthfully denied any involvement. Over the next 18 hours, however, the detectives—with full approval of the Assistant State’s Attorney—continued to accuse him of murder, feeding him details of the crime and breaking him down through verbal and physical abuse, striking him several times. Mr. Drew asked to call his mother, and detectives refused. Finally, after 18 hours, Mr. Drew gave in and agreed to provide a false confession. That same day, he would tell his girlfriend that the police had beaten a confession out of him, and he reported this beating to jail personnel and his public defender the following day. A few days later, a jail doctor documented injuries consistent with the beating Mr. Drew said he received.
There was never any physical evidence tying Mr. Drew to the shooting. The only “evidence” against him were the false witness statements and his own brutally coerced false confession. Based on this evidence, Mr. Drew was charged with, and convicted of, the murder of Ronald Walker. At the age of 18, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
“Evanston police knew Frank was innocent, and they didn’t care,” says attorney Alyssa Martinez of Loevy + Loevy, who represents Mr. Drew. “They just wanted to close this case. They didn’t care what lies they had to tell to do it, they didn’t care who the real killer was, and they didn’t care that they were ruining our client’s life.”
Mr. Drew, still a teenager at the time of these events, spent his twenties, his thirties, and much of his forties in prison. He suffered multiple injuries and illnesses in prison that went untreated, and both his nephew and his little brother died while he was behind bars. He relentlessly maintained his innocence, even as his post-conviction petition remained pending for decades.
During his decades in prison, the extent of the detectives’ deception became clear, as did the grievous damage it caused.
“Every wrongful conviction has multiple victims,” says attorney Rachel Brady of Loevy + Loevy. “Mr. Drew spent the prime of his life behind bars for something he didn’t do, and nothing can ever fix that. But Ronald Walker’s family deserved justice as well, and in framing our client, Evanston police let his real murderer go free. The entire community of Evanston deserved better from their police department than this miscarriage of justice.”
In May of 2022, Frank Drew’s conviction was finally vacated, pending a new trial, after attorneys for The Exoneration Project presented evidence of his innocence before the circuit court. Mr. Drew was released from prison in June, after 24 years, and in March 2024 the State dropped all charges against him.
“This thing I had nothing to do with has stolen my whole adult life,” says Mr. Drew. “I want to move on, but I also want to make sure the people who did this to me are held accountable so this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
Today’s lawsuit asks a jury to decide and award damages for twelve different counts of violations of Mr. Drew’s rights under state and federal law, including violation of due process, malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy. It names as defendants the City of Evanston, Evanston police officers Jeff Jamraz, James Hutton, Mark Kostecki, Carlos Mitchem, John Howard, Charles Wenick, R. McCarthy, and Michael Gresham; Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Steven Goebel; and Cook County.
Mr. Drew is represented by attorneys Rachel Brady, Alison Leff, and Alyssa Martinez of Loevy + Loevy.
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For a copy of the complaint in this case, click here.
