“Justice is finally here,” say John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell, who sued officers who framed them for a 2003 murder.
CHICAGO – John Fulton was only 18, and Anthony Mitchell only 17, when they were wrongfully arrested for the gruesome murder of Christopher Collazo, whose body was found bound and partially burnt in an alley on the South Side of the city. They each spent more than 16 years in jail, before having their convictions vacated in 2019.
Yesterday, after four weeks of emotional testimony—and exactly 22 years from the day Collazo’s body was found and their ordeal began—Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell’s long quest for justice came to an end. A federal jury in their civil lawsuit against the City of Chicago found in their favor and awarded them each $60 million in damages.
These are the largest awards for wrongful conviction plaintiffs in U.S. history.
As attorneys for the plaintiffs argued, officers of the Chicago police department, in conspiracy with members of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, fabricated a case against the two men despite knowing they were innocent. There was no forensic evidence linking the two men to the crime, and in fact Mr. Fulton had a rock-solid alibi for the time of the murder, verified by video. However, police coerced false statements from witnesses implicating Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell, and then subjected both men to prolonged intimidation and physical abuse, over a period of several days, until managing to coerce false confessions from them.
Mr. Fulton’s and Mr. Mitchell’s convictions were vacated in 2019, based on new evidence of their innocence and in recognition of constitutional violations that had tainted their convictions. All charges against them were dropped, and they were released from prison after having spent more than 16 years in prison.
Jon Loevy, one of the two men’s attorneys, says detectives never had any evidence linking his clients to the murder of Chris Collazo, but the Chicago P.D. has been doubling-down on that original mistake for decades.
“The State never wants to admit when it screwed up, and they never want to acknowledge that their cops did anything wrong,” says Loevy. “Even throughout the trial—twenty years later, after they’ve had their convictions thrown out—the police were still insisting these two men were guilty. But juries aren’t fooled, and people everywhere are sick of seeing police departments put the wrong people away because they care more about making cases than finding the truth.”
Yesterday, the jury found for Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell, determining that detectives had fabricated evidence against them and coerced their false confessions. In addition to the $120 million in compensatory damages, the jury also awarded a total of $50,000 in punitive damages against three of the individual detectives.
In addition to Mr. Loevy, Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell are represented by attorneys Russell Ainsworth, Julia Rickert, Isaac Green, and Fatima Ladha of Loevy + Loevy, and Andrea Lyon of Lyon & Kerr.
“John and Anthony were teenagers just living their lives,” says attorney Julia Rickert. “They were surrounded by loved ones and had everything ahead of them. But to these detectives, John and Anthony’s only value was as a means to close a case without having to conduct a real investigation. The jury saw clearly that police and prosecutors had railroaded them.”
Loevy + Loevy has secured a number of high-profile, high-dollar-value victories for its clients in recent years. Yesterday’s verdicts, in fact, break a record for individual wrongful conviction plaintiffs that was only set this past September, when a Chicago jury awarded Marcel Brown $50 million for his similar case of wrongful conviction and forced confession.
Attorney Russell Ainsworth says, however, that Loevy + Loevy would be happy to see business dry up.
“Put us out of business, City of Chicago,” Ainsworth challenged, at a press conference following the verdict. “The City allows this misconduct to happen, and the City has the ability to stop this misconduct. So please, change the City’s practices, save taxpayers money, and make the system of justice a true system of justice.”
For Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Fulton, this verdict is a major victory in the fight for accountability, but they also know they are not alone.
“This is what the face of justice looks like,” Mr. Fulton said, at the press conference. “Justice is finally here. And we got a lot of work to do. We got a lot of people who are just like me that are wrongfully incarcerated in the justice system, and they need to be brought home too. So the day of celebration will be when all the wrongfully incarcerated individuals can step in the free world.”
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