Crime & Law
Jury Awards $120M to 2 Men Wrongfully Convicted of 2003 Murder, Setting New Chicago Record
The Dirksen Courthouse is pictured in Chicago. (Capitol News Illinois)
A federal jury ordered the city of Chicago on Monday to pay $120 million to two men who were wrongfully convicted of a 2003 murder and spent a combined 32 years in prison, setting a new city record for a wrongful conviction case.
John Fulton was 18 and Anthony Mitchell was 17 when they were arrested in connection with the March 10, 2003, murder of 18-year-old Christopher Collazo, whose body was discovered bound with duct tape and partially burned in a Back of the Yards alley.
Fulton and Mitchell were awarded $60 million each, officials said. Each spent 16 years in prison before being released in 2019.
They were represented by Loevy and Loevy, a law firm that specializes in police misconduct litigation and advertises itself by telling potential clients that “no law firm in Chicago has been more successful in litigating police brutality and police misconduct cases.”
Both Fulton and Mitchell were convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping in 2006 and sentenced to 31 years in prison. They were released in 2019 after a Cook County judge overturned their convictions and ordered a new trial, prompting prosecutors to drop the charges against them.
A spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Law vowed to appeal the verdict.
No physical evidence tied either Fulton or Mitchell to Collazo’s gruesome death. Both testified they confessed to killing Collazo after Chicago police detectives promised them leniency, threatened them with physical violence and physically abused them.
A police officer testified that Fulton spontaneously confessed to the murder just before he administered a lie detector test. The same officer made the same claim in other cases more than 100 times in a five-year period, according to Fulton’s lawsuit.
The only evidence against the two Black teens in the murder of the White teen came from a 17-year-old girl who told police Collazo sold guns to people in the neighborhood and clashed with Fulton. She later recanted her identification of Fulton and Mitchell as the killers.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Flood granted Fulton and Mitchell a new trial after ruling that the jurors in their cases should have heard evidence that a camera surveilling the back door to Fulton’s home did not capture him leaving before the murder and returning before he went to school the next day.
That door was also opened with an electronic key that would have shown Fulton’s key was not used to enter the door around the time of Collazo’s murder.
Lawyers for Fulton and Mitchell accused prosecutors with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office of deliberately obscuring evidence about the cameras and the electronic key.
Ald. William Hall (6th Ward), who went to De La Salle High School with Fulton, was in the courtroom when the jury handed down a record-shattering verdict.
“Money doesn’t take back the trauma he experienced,” Hall said. “This is both victory and vinegar.”
If the Fulton and Mitchell verdict is upheld, it would be equivalent to nearly 150% of the city’s annual $82 million budget to cover the cost of police misconduct lawsuits.
It also would be significantly more costly than nearly any other lawsuit brought by a Chicagoan who was wrongfully convicted based on evidence developed by Chicago police, spotlighting the risk the city faces by taking police misconduct cases to trial.
By comparison, the most recent wrongful conviction lawsuit settled by the Chicago City Council called for Ricardo Rodriguez to get $5.5 million after spending more than 22 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of a 1995 murder.
Until now, the most expensive wrongful conviction verdict came in 2021, when a jury ordered the city to pay $22 million to Nathson Fields, who was convicted of a 1984 double murder and sentenced to death before being exonerated. That verdict was upheld on appeal.
In all, between January 2019 and June 2024, Chicago taxpayers spent a total of $200 million to resolve lawsuits brought by more than three dozen people who were wrongfully convicted based on evidence gathered by the Chicago Police Department, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
Six months ago, a jury awarded $50 million to Marcel Brown, who was wrongfully convicted of a 2008 murder and spent 10 years in prison. That verdict is not yet final.
Hall said the massive verdicts in the Fulton, Mitchell and Brown cases should prompt city officials to reconsider their strategies for handling lawsuits stemming from wrongful convictions.
“This is money that could have been invested in roads and any number of other priorities,” Hall said. “We need a new strategy.”
Note: Loevy and Loevy has done legal work for WTTW News.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
