Jury awards $120 million to two men wrongfully convicted of 2003 murder
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CHICAGO (WBBM) — Attorneys for the city of Chicago plan to appeal a federal jury’s verdict awarding $120 million to two men who were wrongfully convicted of a 2003 murder.
John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell both spent more than 16 years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2019, and prosecutors wound up dropping all charges against them in the murder of 18-year-old Christopher Collazo.
Fulton and Mitchell both were teenagers when they were arrested, and have said they were coerced into making false confessions, after detectives made false promises of leniency, and physically and psychologically abused them.
According to their lawsuit against the city, no physical evidence or eyewitnesses ever connected them to Collazo’s murder.
Fulton’s attorneys accused police and prosecutors of fabricating photographic evidence to convince the jury that no cameras monitored the back door of his apartment, allowing him to sneak in and out undetected. However, his attorneys said the back door was monitored by a security camera, and the door required an electric fob that tracks people coming and going, meaning he couldn’t go in or out without detection.
In 2019, a judge vacated Fulton’s and Mitchell’s convictions and prosecutors dropped all charges against them.
In 2020, both men sued police and Cook County prosecutors for “malicious prosecution.”
On Monday, a federal jury awarded them $60 million each in damages for their wrongful convictions.
Fulton said they’re not the only victims of injustice.
“We got a lot of work to do. There are a lot of people that are just like me that are wrongfully incarcerated in the justice system, and they need to be brought home, too,” he said.
On the night of Collazo’s murder, Fulton was at the hospital with his fiancée, and otherwise at home, where surveillance cameras monitored every doorway of their apartment building, according to the lawsuit.
A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department said they plan to appeal the verdict.
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