$4.2 Million for Wrongfully Convicted Illinois Man Denied Exculpatory Evidence
$4.2 Million for Wrongfully Convicted Illinois Man Denied Exculpatory Evidence
A $4.2 million settlement has been reached in a civil rights lawsuit filed by a wrongfully convicted Illinois man.
Maurice Patterson was convicted of a 2002 murder and spent over eight years in the Cook County Jail and the Illinois Department of Corrections. He maintained his innocence, which was vindicated by DNA evidence after a previously withheld lab report of the murder weapon, a knife, was obtained in post-conviction proceedings.
Following his exoneration, Patterson obtained counsel and filed a civil rights action. During discovery, it was established that Chicago Police Officer Delores Myles sent the murder weapon to the Illinois State Police Crime Lab for analysis. The results of that analysis clearly established the victim’s blood, as well as that of another suspected with a violent criminal past, was on the knife.
The defense did not receive a copy of that exculpatory report; therefore, the civil suit alleged that the report had to be withheld by lab technician Michael Kopina, officers within the Chicago Police, or by all of them in concert.
Withholding that report allowed the prosecution to effectively argue the knife was not the murder weapon. The conviction, as a result, was based solely on eyewitness identification by people who did not actually see the perpetrator.
In an October 2012 report by Patterson’s attorney, the state of Illinois agreed to pay $800,000 on behalf of Kopina, and the City of Chicago agreed to pay $3.4 million on behalf of itself and the nine police defendants.
Patterson was represented by Arthur Loevy, Jon Lovey, Gayle Horn and Roshan Bala Keen of the Loevy & Loevy law firm; Locke Bowman of the Bluhm Law Clinic; and Steven Drizin of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. See: Patterson v. City of Chicago, USDC, N.D. Illinois, Case No. 11-cv-07052.
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Related legal case
Patterson v. City of Chicago
| Year | 2012 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC, N.D. Illinois, Case No. 11-cv-07052 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Settlement |
| Damages | 4,200,000.00 |