A federal jury in Chicago awarded $120 million on Monday to two Illinois men who spent more than 16 years behind bars for a 2003 murder they did not commit.
John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were teenagers when they were convicted in 2006 for the murder of Christopher Collazo, whose body was found bound and partly burned in an alley on the South Side of Chicago in the early hours of March 10, 2003. Their convictions were vacated in 2019.
Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell each filed a federal lawsuit in 2020 against the City of Chicago, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and several Chicago police officers, arguing that the men had been framed and were coerced into giving false confessions.
After a month of testimony, a federal jury deliberated for two days before finding that the men had been railroaded into giving false confessions and that detectives had fabricated evidence against them, according to court records. Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell were each awarded $60 million in damages.
Mr. Fulton said in a phone interview on Tuesday that he knew his day of justice would come.
“It was a sense of relief,” he said of the verdict. Referring to others still serving time for crimes they did not commit, he added, “I also thought about all the others who haven’t gotten a chance to see this day for themselves.”
Jon Loevy, a lawyer for Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell, described the moment the jury read its verdict as “very emotional.”
“They were teenagers when this started,” Mr. Loevy said. “They’ve been on a 20-year odyssey.”
The City of Chicago Department of Law said in a statement that the city would appeal the verdict. The Chicago Police Department referred inquiries to the city’s Law Department.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, which Mr. Loevy said reached a settlement with the two men before trial, declined to comment on the verdict.
According to court documents, Chicago police officers responded to a 9-1-1 call around 3 a.m. on March 10, 2003, reporting a fire in an alley on the city’s South Side, where they discovered the burned body of Mr. Collazo. He was bound with duct tape around his wrists and ankles and across his mouth, the documents said.
Detectives linked Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Fulton to the crime by coercing false witness statements, the court documents said. Both Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Fulton denied responsibility for the murder. Mr. Fulton told the police he was at the hospital with his fiancée on March 9 and otherwise home in his apartment until he left for school the next morning, several hours after Mr. Collazo’s body was found.
Police interrogated Mr. Fulton, who was 18 at the time, for several days, promising him leniency and using intimidation and physical abuse to force a false confession that implicated Mr. Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell, who was 17, was interrogated for more than 40 hours and subjected to the same “abusive” tactics until he, too, was coerced into giving a false confession, according to the court documents.
Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell continued to maintain their innocence after they were each sentenced to 31 years in prison in August 2006. But detectives never had any evidence linking either man to the crime, Mr. Loevy said.
A Cook County circuit judge vacated their convictions in June 2019, citing constitutional violations that tainted the investigation. The trial jury also was not told that there was a camera monitoring the rear door to Mr. Fulton’s apartment building, which was equipped with a swipe fob — evidence that would have supported his account that he was at home when Mr. Collazo was killed.
The State’s Attorney’s Office subsequently dropped all charges against them, according to court documents.
“I think this jury and others are saying that they’re tired of it, that we cannot have more wrongful convictions,” Mr. Loevy said outside the courthouse on Monday.
Mr. Fulton said he and Mr. Mitchell had planned to use some of the settlement money to help others fight wrongful convictions.
“We got a lot of people who are just like me that are wrongfully incarcerated in the justice system, and they need to be brought home, too,” he told reporters outside the courthouse on Monday. “The day of celebration will be when all the wrongfully incarcerated individuals can step in the free world.”