The family of a man who was charged with the brutal slaying of a 14-year-old girl in Dixmoor following the notorious exoneration of the so-called "Dixmoor Five," but was then later not convicted, can't sue the Cook County State's Attorney's office for attempting to put him behind bars.
Randolph brought his lawsuit against former Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and current Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx in 2022, after a Cook County judge essentially acquitted him at trial.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx
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In 2016, Randolph was charged by Alvarez for the 1991 rape and murder of 14-year-old Cateresa Mathews in suburban Dixmoor.
Attention was turned to Randolph following the exoneration of five other black men, famously known as the "Dixmoor Five," who had been initially convicted of Mathews' murder.
Those five - Robert Taylor, Jonathan Barr, James Harden, Robert Lee Veal and Shainne Sharp - were between the ages of 14 and 16 years old at the time. They were convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison each after two of them confessed to the killings and then agreed to testify against the other three.
However, the five were freed after they recanted their confessions and testimony, and DNA evidence in the form of semen on Mathews' body potentially implicated Randolph in the killing.
The Dixmoor Five were released from prison in 2011 and later sued for wrongful conviction, winning a $40 million settlement in 2014, at the time the largest conviction settlement in Illinois history.
They were assisted in the exoneration proceedings by a collection of organizations dedicated to clearing people convicted of heinous crimes, including the Innocence Project, the Center for Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School.
In the Dixmoor case, Alvarez used the DNA evidence to charge Randolph with the Mathews murder amid significant fanfare. Foxx continued that prosecution after she defeated and replaced Alvarez as state's attorney.
However, when Foxx's office took Randolph to trial, the Cook County judge presiding over the criminal trial issued a directed verdict for Randolph, essentially acquitting him of the charges.
Randolph then filed suit against Alvarez and Foxx, in their official capacity as state's attorneys, claiming they wrongly prosecuted him with "political motives" because they were "embarrassed" in the Dixmoor Five case and needed a conviction in the Cateresa Mathews murder.
According to court documents, Randolph had readily confessed to "having sex" with Mathews, even though he was 33 and she was 14 at the time.
However, Randolph asserted Alvarez and Foxx had moved ahead with the prosecution even though they "'possessed no evidence' tying Randolph to the crime" and were "well aware of Dixmoor Five's confessions to the crime and their statements that Randolph 'had nothing to do with the murder' and 'was not present at the time of the murder.'"
Randolph has been represented in the action by attorney Jeffrey S. Deutschman, of Deutschman & Skafish P.C., of Chicago.
Randolph died while the case was still pending. However, he was succeeded in the action by his relative, Willie Bowes.
In Cook County Circuit Court, Cook County Judge Gerald Cleary ruled in favor of Alvarez and Foxx. He dismissed the case, finding that Randolph could not prove he was prosecuted with malice or that the prosecutors did not have probable cause to bring him to trial, despite the directed verdict.
Therefore, Cleary said, Alvarez and Foxx are protected by the doctrine of absolute prosecutorial immunity, which generally bars lawsuits against prosecutors acting in the official course of their duties.
And on appeal, Bowes and Randolph fared no better, as justices there agreed that Cleary's ruling was not wrong, and the state's attorneys should be shielded by prosecutorial immunity.
"As we read it, plaintiff’s arguments are merely suggestive of an improper motive on the part of the defendants," the justices wrote. "Even were we to agree with plaintiff’s suggestion, and we hasten to add that we do not, a prosecutor’s motives, in determining absolute immunity, are 'irrelevant' to the court’s analysis where the prosecutor’s acts are associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process...
"Here, it is clear that neither defendant played an investigatory role in the prosecution of Randolph. Neither was involved in the DNA testing of the semen found on the victim, nor any other investigative act that took place prior to Randolph’s arrest, and plaintiff does not allege that they were.
"In fact, Foxx did not become involved until long after the investigation had concluded and Randolph had been arrested.
"Their functions, as alleged in the complaint, were limited to assessing the evidence, deciding to prosecute or continuing to prosecute Randolph for the murder, and presenting the evidence, 'scant' as it may have been, to the court. As we have already made clear, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the evaluation of evidence, decision to prosecute, and presentation of evidence are exactly the type of acts that absolute immunity is intended to shield," the appellate justices wrote in the decision.
The appeals panel upheld the dismissal of Bowes' and Randolph's lawsuit.
The opinion was authored by First District Appellate Justice Cynthia Y. Cobbs. Justices Nathaniel Howse and David W. Ellis concurred in the ruling.
Alvarez was represented by attorneys Eileen E. Rosen, Theresa B. Carney, and Austin G. Rahe, of Rock, Fusco & Connelly LLC, of Chicago.
Foxx, as current Cook County State's Attorney, was represented by the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
Foxx has opted not to seek reelection in 2024. When she departs office, she will be succeeded by the winner of the November general election contest, between Democratic nominee Eileen O'Neill Burke and Republican Bob Fioretti.