A federal judge is expected to weigh in on efforts by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to prevent one, and possibly two, of her top former deputy prosecutors from facing questions from lawyers representing the Chicago cops and City Hall.
The questioning would center on Foxx’s office’s decision to walk away from a new trial for two men who had earlier confessed to a brutal sex assault and murder, leaving the officers and city facing a big lawsuit.
However, that case is just one of the most recent examples in which Chicago police officers have pushed back in court against the suits, precipitated by Foxx’s office’s decision to abandon retrials, even after her top deputies publicly stated they still believed the once-convicted men should not have been exonerated.
Russell Ainsworth
| Loevy & Loevy
This month, attorneys for the city of Chicago and a group of Chicago police officers have squared off in court with Foxx, as they seek to question former Cook County First Assistant State’s Attorney Eric Sussman and Mark Rotert, the former head of Foxx’s Conviction Integrity Unit.
The CIU investigates past convictions to determine whether they were obtained legally.
The lawyers for the city and police officers have said they believe the questioning is needed to better explain why Foxx did not contest the move to toss out the convictions and life sentences of Derrell Fulton and Nevest Coleman in connection with the 1994 murder of Antwinica Bridgeman.
Both men were eventually issued so-called certificates of innocence by a Cook County judge, after attorneys for the two men said their DNA did not match material found on Bridgeman’s body, when her body was found in the basement of the building where Coleman lived.
Both Fulton and Coleman had signed confessions related Bridgeman’s death. However, they later steadfastly denied those confessions, instead claiming police officers and at least one Cook County prosecutor had coerced them into signing them. Their case was reopened by the Cook County CIU in 2016 under former Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, 20 years after the two men began serving life sentences for Bridegman’s death.
Attorneys for Fulton and Coleman asked the court to vacate their convictions and give them new trials. However, Foxx’s office instead chose not contest their claims, and the court ordered the men freed and declared innocent.
They then sued the city of Chicago and several police officers, alleging malicious prosecution.
The case followed a familiar pattern, well-established amid a long line of cases brought by lawyers representing those who claimed their criminal confessions were the result of abuse at the hands of Chicago police officers.
By some estimates, the city has paid out more than $500 million in settlements to end lawsuits over police misconduct in the past decade. The city budgeted an additional $153 million more for such settlements in 2020.
The lawsuits are brought by many of the same trial lawyers, some of whom are already closely associated with non-profit groups who spearhead efforts to reinvestigate allegedly wrongful convictions.
In the Bridgeman case, for instance, Coleman is represented by attorneys with the firm of Loevy & Loevy, of Chicago.
Eight attorneys from the Loevy firm are among 13 total staff members listed on the website of the Chicago-based Exoneration Project, a non-profit organization associated with the University of Chicago School of Law, which first petitioned the court to reopen Coleman’s conviction.
Attorney Russell Ainsworth, who is listed among the staff members at the Exoneration Project, serves as the lead attorney on the legal team from Loevy & Loevy legal team now representing Coleman.
Those attorneys and the Loevy firm stand to earn potentially substantial legal fees from any settlement or judgment in Coleman’s favor in the lawsuit against the city and the officers.
The Loevy firm has also represented many others who have sued, and are suing in Chicago over allegations of police misconduct.
The firm has become known as the “go-to” source for legal representation for those suing over police misconduct.
The firm, for instance, is also representing Arturo Reyes and Gabriel Solache. Those men, like Coleman and Fulton, had confessed to playing roles in brutal murders – in their cases, the murders of Mariano and Jacinta Soto, who were stabbed to death in their home in Chicago in 1998.
Prosecutors had accused Reyes and Solache of playing roles in the murders, to allegedly help Adriana Mejia in a scheme to kidnap the Sotos’ two children.
Reyes and Solache, however, also claimed Chicago police had coerced them into their confessions.
Their cases were later reopened, and in 2017, Foxx’s office again opted not to pursue new trials against either man, even as Mejia – who also has accused police of coercing her into confessing to the murders and kidnapping – has remained in prison.
According to published reports, Foxx’s deputies, including Sussman, chose to drop the case, after Cook County Judge James Michael Obbish determined the convictions were the result of misconduct by Chicago Detective Reynaldo Guevara, an officer with an allegedly long history of misconduct. Obbish determined Guevara’s testimony could never be treated as credible, on any case he investigated, including that of Reyes and Solache.
Sussman and other Cook County prosecutors, however, have maintained they believe Reyes and Solache were guilty.
For their part, the city’s police officers’ union, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, petitioned the city in 2018 to allow FOP lawyers to represent the officers accused in the civil action brought by Reyes and Solache. They said they did not believe the city would be assertive enough in defending the officers against the misconduct allegations in federal court.
The city did not substitute lawyers, according to court records. Representatives of FOP Lodge 7 did not reply to questions emailed by The Cook County Record concerning their 2018 letter to Chicago city lawyers.
However, lawyers for the city and the officers in late September won approval from a federal judge to force Mejia to testify under oath about the Sotos’ murders and the police investigation, to possibly shed more light on Reyes’ and Solache’s misconduct accusations.
In that case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sunil R. Harjani ruled the Fifth Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination did not prevent lawyers for the police officers from questioning Mejia in the civil case.
The police officer defendants are represented in both cases by the firm of Rock Fusco & Connelly, of Chicago.