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LOCAL News :: Crime & Police

Trial of Chicago Cops Sued for Framing Man for Rape/Murder Begins Monday

Pardoned by the governor, Michael Evans wasted 27 years of his life in prison serving time for crimes he didn't commit. Evans served Illinois's longest-ever term in prison before exoneration by DNA evidence.
evans_complaint.pdf
Evans Complaint.pdf (808 k)
July 6, 2006--Chicago police will go on trial Monday in federal civil court, accused of manipulating and withholding evidence so as to frame an innocent man for murder and rape, leading to his incarceration for 27 years before being freed based on DNA evidence.

Michael Evans was a high school student with a clean record when he was falsely arrested in 1976 at age 17 by Area 2 Chicago Police, a police region which has since become infamous as the scene for most of the alleged tortures committed by ex-Commander Jon Burge and his associates. Mr. Evans is represented by the civil rights law firm of Loevy & Loevy (www.Loevy.com).

Multiple Area 2 homicide detectives stand accused of leading and intimidating witnesses, "including [using] actual physical violence, threats of physical violence, improper psychological intimidation/pressure, and unduly oppressive conditions of confinement" to get false statements. They are also accused of withholding evidence of Evans's innocence from his attorneys and manufacturing false evidence in order to secure a conviction which would help advance their careers.

As a result, Evans has lived almost all of his adult life behind bars and became Illinois's longest-held prisoner who would later be released based on DNA evidence.

In 2002, with the help of lawyers working pro bono at Northwestern University School of Law's Bluhm Legal Clinic, Evans successfully petitioned the court to have the DNA evidence in the rape/murder of nine-year-old Lisa Cabassa tested by a professional laboratory, and it was conclusively determined that the semen found in her body belonged to neither Evans nor his co-defendant, Paul Terry.

On May 23, 2003, Judge Denis J. Porter vacated Evans's conviction and released him and Mr. Terry immediately on their own recognizance. The Cook County State's Attorney proceeded to dismiss all charges against Evans on August 22, 2003. In explaining his decision to end prosecution of Evans, Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine wrote in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, "I want to make it very clear that anytime anyone spends a day, a week or a year in jail for a crime he or she did not commit, it is indeed, regrettable. In the case of Evans and Terry, wrongly incarcerated for 27 years, that feeling of regret is both present and strong."

Nonetheless, like usual, Devine has refused to criminally prosecute any of the 16 police officers named in the civil suit.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin at 10 am, Monday, July 10 in Judge David H. Coar's courtroom, Room 1419, 219 S. Dearborn Street, Chicago. Opening arguments in the trial are expected that afternoon.
 
 

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