CHICAGO, IL – Lawsuits in general are complex in nature, and often times messy as well.
But one would be hard pressed to find lawsuits more sordid than those that stem from alleged wrongful convictions. Yet, two individuals who were once convicted of a brutal murder from 1994 were issued a “certificate of innocence” and became free men.
And predictably, these two men are now suing the city of Chicago and several former police officers, alleging their confessions obtained decades earlier were coerced.
Foxx’s attempt to shut down questioning of ex-top deputies in wrongful conviction case ‘untenable’: Court filing https://t.co/6pCyBNh36Z. #FireKimFoxx
— sara albrecht (@sarawynne) October 20, 2020
But the defendants in the lawsuit are saying certain steps were missed along the way regarding the process of these two men being granted their freedom, and they want to depose certain individuals who can shed light as to why certain steps in the process were seemingly skipped.
But these individuals the defendants want to depose happen to be two of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s former top deputy prosecutors – and Foxx’s office filed a motion to quash them from being deposed.
Now the defendants, namely the city of Chicago and the former officers, are pushing back and saying that there’s no merit to deny these depositions.
As mentioned earlier – messy & complex – but here’s the simplest breakdown on the background.
Darryl Fulton and Nevest Coleman were both convicted in 1997 for the murder of Antwinica Bridgeman, who went missing on April 11th, 1994 and whose body was later discovered on April 28th that same year inside of the basement of Nevest Coleman’s family’s home.
Bridgeman’s murder was grotesque in nature, as she was said to have suffocated by way of having a piece of concrete stuffed into her mouth and she was vaginally penetrated with a metal pipe.
Now, Coleman had reportedly been the one to discover the body. Apparently, witnesses had said that Bridgeman was last seen with Coleman at some sort of a party which was on the day that she went missing.
After an interrogation with police, Coleman was said to have offered a verbal confession to detectives and also implicated to other persons involved, who he identified as Fulton and someone named Eddie Taylor.
Police then arrested Fulton and he was said to have administered a handwritten confession.
By May of 1997, both Fulton and Coleman were convicted of murder.
But then, while incarcerated, both Fulton and Coleman proclaimed that their confessions were gained by coercion.
By 2016, the entity known as the Conviction Integrity Unit decided to re-open the case based upon these claims and ordered new DNA testing from the semen that was found on the victim’s undergarments when her body was discovered.
And when that semen was tested, it was found to belong to neither party incarcerated – but to another individual who records indicated had a history of sexual assaults that post-dated Bridgeman’s murder.
Now, despite this positive match, the CIU still underwent an 18-month investigation where they interviewed numerous witnesses and even Fulton and Coleman.
Prosecutors agree to new trial, freedom for 2 inmates after DNA testing in 1994 Englewood murder https://t.co/pPoJDnOzcA Nevest Coleman and Darryl Fulton will be free on Monday. Only a matter of time till exoneration.
— Steven A Drizin (@SDrizin) November 17, 2017
After all this investigating, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office had decided that the convictions for Fulton and Coleman needed to be tossed and that a new trial needed to commence per an announcement on November 17th, 2017 by then-CCSAO First Assistant Attorney Eric Sussman.
But on December 1st, 2017, Sussman decided that there wasn’t going to be a new trial because “after reviewing the DNA evidence, the State’s Attorney’s Office concluded that we would be unable to meet our burden of proof on a retrial.”
2,133rd and 2,134th Exons: On Friday, Nevest Coleman and Darryl Fulton were exonerated of murder and rape in Chicago by DNA tests. They are the 4th and 5th men in a month who were exonerated after falsely confessing to Chicago detectives. https://t.co/RxFqbyJAkk pic.twitter.com/SUsocze8Uq
— Exoneration Registry (@exonerationlist) December 4, 2017
So, Coleman and Fulton petitioned for what is known as a “Certificate of Innocence”, or COI for short.
By March 9th, 2018, the CCSAO had entered into a negotiated “Agreed Order” with Coleman and Fulton which essentially said that they’ll be given these certificates, but the CCSAO won’t say they’re proof that the office “engaged in misconduct with respect to Petitioner’s conviction.”
Well, once these two got their hands on these certificates, they decided to use them as fodder for a lawsuit against the officers involved in their case, as well as the city of Chicago.
Again, a hardly shocking development after over 20 years in prison.
Considering that numerous former police officers and the city of Chicago are named in the lawsuit, they want to have an opportunity to depose a couple of key individuals that were involved in these two men getting their COIs.
The first being former First Assistant Attorney Eric Sussman and another individual named Mark Rotert, a man who used to be in charge of the Conviction Integrity Unit that led the investigation that wound up running that DNA testing in 2016.
Apparently, aside from the retrial being set aside for just an outright COI for the two men, the application for those very COIs requires petitioners to “prove their innocence by a preponderance of the evidence,” which that portion of the process was allegedly skipped.
The desire to depose these two persons also makes perfect sense since their efforts were instrumental in the overturned convictions and Sussman somehow first diverting for a retrial in 2017 , only to change his mind about it two weeks later.
But Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is trying to keep these two individuals from testifying via a court motion.
Now, whatever the genuine motivations are for this motion is unclear, but Foxx is trying to proclaim some sort of privileged information sort of clause that would keep them off the stand.
There’s no word yet on how the judge presiding over the suit will deal with the motion stemming from Foxx’s office – but honestly, the depositions of these two seem rather material in this particular civil suit.
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