Media Coverage: Lyon Files Lawsuit Against Chicago Police Department For Men Wrongfully Convicted of Murder
Men Wrongfully Convicted of Murder File Lawsuit Against Chicago Police Department
Chicago Suntimes
‘I’ll never get that time back’: After 16 years in prison, two men sue cops, prosecutors in 2003 murder case
The federal lawsuits were filed Wednesday on behalf of Anthony Mitchell and John Fulton, who said they were forced to confess to murdering Christopher Collazo.
The lawsuits were filed Wednesday on behalf of Anthony Mitchell and John Fulton, who were initially convicted in the murder of Christopher Collazo. Seventeen current and former employees of the Chicago Police Department and Cook County state’s attorney’s office, as well as the city and county, were named as defendants.
“I’ll never get those years back, but I pray I get justice,” Mitchell said at a news conference Wednesday. “I’ll never get that time back.”
Mitchell and Fulton, who were 17 and 18 years old at the time of their arrests in 2003, were each sentenced to 31 years in prison following their 2006 convictions. No physical evidence or eyewitnesses linked either man to the crime. Judge Lawrence Flood, last year, vacated their convictions and the state’s attorney’s office subsequently dropped all charges.
“In 2003, John and Anthony were teenagers with bright futures ahead of them when they had their lives destroyed as a result of misconduct committed by the police and prosecutors named in these lawsuits,” said Sam Heppell, an attorney for the two men.
“They were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for a murder they did not commit because the defendants in these lawsuits fabricated false evidence, withheld exculpatory evidence and used an array of coercive tactics to compel them to falsely confess to the murder of Christopher Collazo.”
Around 3 a.m. March 10, 2003, a man called 911 to report a fire in the alley of the 5200 block of South Peoria Street. Collazo’s partially burned remains were soon found in the Back of the Yards alley. His wrists, ankles and mouth were bound with duct tape. The man who called 911 told police that he saw two men near the fire, but he could not get a good look at their faces.
About a month earlier, Fulton tried to buy a gun from Collazo. Instead of completing the deal, Collazo and another member of the Maniac Latin Disciples robbed Fulton at gunpoint, the suit states. That was the last time Fulton and Collazo crossed paths.
The suit states that a mutual friend of Fulton and Collazo brokered the phony gun sale, though the friend initially “denied knowing of any connection between that robbery and Collazo’s murder a month later.”
Police re-interviewed the mutual friend and “through threats and intimidation, and by feeding her a false narrative that they had concocted, Defendants coerced [the mutual friend] into falsely implicating [Fulton] in Collazo’s murder,” the suit states.
Fulton was questioned by detectives for several days, though he initially refused to give a false confession and told police that, at the time of the murder, he was at the University of Chicago Medical Center with his fiancée and then at his home in Bronzeville, the suit alleges.
Fulton eventually gave a false confession to police that implicated himself, Mitchell and a third person, the suit states. Murder charges were brought against all three, though they were later dropped against the third person after a judge ruled that his confession had been coerced.
Representatives for the state’s attorney’s office and the city declined to comment on the lawsuits.
Chicago Tribune
2 exonerated men file federal suits claiming Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors framed them for murder as teens
Two men exonerated of a 2003 murder have sued Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors in federal court, alleging they manipulated photo evidence, physically abused the pair, and fabricated their supposed confessions out of whole cloth.
John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were arrested as teenagers, then spent nearly half their lives behind bars before a Cook County judge tossed their convictions last year. Their lawsuits, filed Wednesday, seek damages for civil rights violations and malicious prosecution.
“I still don’t feel free. I still feel like I’m trapped inside of an ice cube, stuck in time. Sometimes I feel like the 18-year-old kid that got locked up, that was always told to tell the truth. The truth didn’t set me free,” Fulton said at a news conference Wednesday. “… It’s a nightmare every day of my life.”
Fulton was two months away from his high school graduation when he was arrested; his fiancee had just given birth to their child, according to a news release from law firm Loevy and Loevy. Mitchell’s girlfriend was pregnant when he was locked up. Neither had any convictions on their records, according to the lawsuits.
“They had everything in the world to look forward to, but instead their lives were shattered,” attorney Sam Heppell said at the news conference.
The two teens were arrested for the grisly 2003 murder of Christopher Collazo, whose body was discovered bound with duct tape and partially burned in an alley in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
Police allegedly leaned on a 17-year-old girl to falsely implicate Fulton and Mitchell in the murder, along with another boy, Antonio Shaw.
Fulton had an alibi. On the night of the death, he was with his fiancee at the University of Chicago hospital, then home at their apartment — where security cameras monitored every doorway. And Fulton’s alibi also clears Mitchell, according to the lawsuit, since prosecutors alleged that Fulton was the instigator of the attack and recruited Mitchell for help.
“In order for Anthony to be guilty, John had to be guilty. Because it was John who was supposed to have driven the car, John who supposedly had the beef with the victim,” attorney Andrea Lyon said Wednesday.
But after “false promises of leniency, threats and physical violence,” Fulton, Mitchell and Shaw each gave multiple false confessions, they allege.
A police officer acting as polygrapher even said that before administering a lie detector test, Fulton spontaneously confessed to the murder — a claim the same polygraph officer allegedly made more than 100 times in a five-year period, according to the lawsuit.
“For this phenomenon to happen repeatedly … defies all statistical probability,” Fulton’s lawsuit alleges.
And to get around Fulton’s alibi, an investigator with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office took misleading photos to make it look like there was an unmonitored back door in his apartment complex — when in fact, each door was in view of a security camera and a key-fob system tracked each entry. Fulton could not have left and returned undetected, as authorities claimed, according to the suit.
Shaw succeeded in getting a judge to throw out his confession before trial, and the charges against him were dropped. But Fulton and Mitchell were convicted and each sentenced to 31 years behind bars.
A spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. A representative of the city Law Department also declined to comment, saying it had not yet seen the suit.
About a year after his release from custody, Mitchell spoke with emotion in his voice at the news conference Wednesday publicizing his suit.
“I could stand here all day about how I’m bitter or mad, but I’m not mad at anybody involved,” he said. “I just want justice so it won’t happen to anybody else.”
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
