Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has asked a federal judge to block questioning of her former top deputy prosecutor by lawyers representing Chicago cops and a former county prosecutor who are being sued by two men who claimed they were wrongfully convicted of a brutal sexual assault and murder.
On Oct. 9, Foxx filed a motion to quash a subpoena issued to her office, seeking the chance to question former Cook County First Assistant State’s Attorney Eric Sussman under oath, concerning why Foxx and her team did not contest the move to toss out the convictions and sentences of Derrell Fulton and Nevest Coleman.
Both men had been convicted of sexual assault and homicide and sentenced to life in prison in connection with the 1994 murder of Antwinica Bridgeman.
Eric Sussman
| Reed Smith LLP
According to court documents, Bridgeman’s body was discovered in the basement of a building in the 900 block of W. 55th Street, in Chicago’s West Elsdon Neighborhood, on the city’s South Side. According to documents, she died from suffocation, after a piece of concrete was forced down her throat. She had also been sexually violated with a six-inch pipe, court documents said.
Both Fulton and Coleman confessed to playing a role in the crime. However, they later steadfastly denied involvement in the death, saying investigating officers abused them into signing confessions. After the men served 20 years in prison, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s unit dedicated to investigating potentially wrongful convictions reopened the case in June 2016.
Foxx defeated former Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez in November 2016.
Another analysis of DNA evidence from the murder scene allegedly did not match either Coleman’s or Fulton’s DNA. In 2017, attorneys for the two men then asked the court to vacate the convictions and grant them new trials.
Foxx’s office did not object to the motions to vacate the sentences, however, and the court issued Fulton and Coleman certificates of innocence.
Fulton and Coleman then filed civil rights lawsuits against the officers who had investigated the case. Defendants named in the action include Chicago Police officers Michael Clancy, John Halloran, Kenneth Boudreau, James O’Brien, Gerald Carroll, William Moser, Albert Graf, Stanley Turner, Thomas Benoit and Thomas Kelly, as well as William Foley, deceased.
Cook County prosecutor Harold Garfinkle has also been named as a defendant, along with Cook County and the city of Chicago.
The defendants have contested the lawsuits in court. In public, their representatives with the Fraternal Order of Police have also urged a review of the facts of the case in court, to allow the officers the chance to defend themselves against the assertions that they were at fault in this case. According to the FOP, for instance, Coleman was allegedly the last person seen with Bridgeman before her murder, and Bridgeman’s body was allegedly found in Coleman’s basement.
As part of their defense, the officers issued the subpoena to Foxx’s office, seeking to question Sussman.
According to Foxx’s motion to block the subpoena, she said the officers’ lawyers have indicated in conversations with the State’s Attorney’s Office that they intend to question Sussman about what he knew of the deliberations within Foxx’s office that led to the decision to not object to the vacating of Coleman’s and Fulton’s sentences.
Sussman, a former federal prosecutor, served as Foxx’s No. 1 deputy from the moment she took office, until his sudden departure in 2018. Sussman is now a partner at the Chicago office of the firm of Reed Smith LLP, where he works as a member of Reed Smith’s team focused on “white collar defense, securities enforcement matters, internal investigations and complex commercial litigation,” according to his bio on Reed Smith’s website.
Sussman was succeeded in Foxx’s office by current First Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Magats.
Magats famously served as the face of the decision by Foxx’s office to not prosecute actor Jussie Smollett for allegedly concocting a hoax in which he was allegedly assaulted by two supporters of President Donald Trump in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood in 2019.
Magats has later stated he did not believe Smollett was innocent of the charges brought by Chicago Police of falsifying a police report.
For his part, Sussman has publicly questioned Foxx’s office’s decision to not prosecute Smollett.
In the Fulton case, Foxx has argued Sussman should be off limits in the case because he was a “high ranking official” within Foxx’s office, and his communications and “mental impressions” of the deliberations and reasoning within Foxx’s office that led to the vacating of Coleman’s and Fulton’s convictions are protected by various privileges and legal doctrines.
They said any testimony from Sussman would not lead to any “admissible evidence relevant” to Coleman’s and Fulton’s lawsuits.
“Mr. Sussman is not an ‘expert witness,’ and elicited opinions regarding the merits of the instant litigation (Fulton’s lawsuit), including whether or not the Plaintiff or Defendants engaged in wrongdoing, would invade the province of the jury,” Foxx wrote in the motion to quash.
Foxx said her office offered to allow the officers’ lawyers to question others in her office, but those offers were refused, prompting the motion to quash.
Sussman is being represented in the subpoena-related action by an attorney from Foxx’s office, as well.
The officers’ lawyers have not yet responded to Foxx’s motion to quash.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office is also representing Garfinkle and Cook County in the cases.
Fulton is represented by attorney Kathleen T. Zellner, of Downers Grove.
Coleman is represented in his lawsuit by attorneys with the firm of Loevy & Loevy, of Chicago.
The police officer defendants are represented by the firm of Rock Fusco & Connelly, of Chicago.
The city of Chicago is represented by the Sotos Law Firm, of Chicago.
Foxx’s filing comes less than a month until Election Day, as Foxx, a prominent Democrat, attempts to ward off Republican challenger, former judge Pat O’Brien.
O’Brien is running on a campaign to unseat Foxx for leaving the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office “in a state of disarray,” contributing to rising crime in Chicago.
Earlier this month, Foxx refused to debate O’Brien on television, accusing him of “Trump-like name calling and fear mongering.”
O’Brien said Foxx’s “unwillingness to debate … shows she makes no effort to be transparent and is unwilling to be held accountable for her actions as Cook County State’s Attorney.”