As printed in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin: January 25, 2012
By Jerry Crimmins
Law Bulletin staff writer
A team of lawyers with a long track record in wrongful conviction cases represented Thaddeus Jimenez in the trial in which a federal jury awarded Jimenez $25 million Tuesday.
The verdict in the latest wrongful imprisonment civil action is believed to be the largest jury verdict for wrongful imprisonment in U.S. history, said Jon Loevy of Loevy & Loevy, lead lawyer for Jimenez in the civil suit.
"Each side spent more than a million dollars in attorneys' fees," Loevy said. "It was hotly contested."
The sole defendant in the end — after several other Chicago police officers and the city of Chicago were dropped as defendants — was retired Chicago police detective Jerome Bogucki.
Attorney Stuart J. Chanen of Valorem Law Group LLC said the city of Chicago agreed in advance to pay damages that Bogucki might be liable for if the plaintiff lawyers dropped the city as a defendant.
Thus, "we're going to ask that the judgment be entered against both parties," Chanen said.
"We are very disappointed with the decision," said Roderick Drew, spokesman for the City of Chicago Law Department. "We will be exploring all available options."
Jimenez's lawyers in this civil suit included Loevy and Michael Kanovitz of Loevy & Loevy; Locke E. Bowman and Alexa A. Van Brunt of the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law; and Chanen and Lisa R. Carter of Valorem Law Group.
A focus of Loevy's firm is civil rights suits for wrongful imprisonment on behalf of people who have already been exonerated.
Loevy said his firm has won three of the highest awards for wrongful imprisonment in the country, based on the amounts of money per year imprisoned.
Those were, he said, a $21 million verdict in 2009 in federal court in Chicago for a client wrongfully imprisoned for 12 years for murder; a $9 million verdict in 2006 for a client in Waukegan who was wrongfully imprisoned for 4½ years for rape; and a $6.5 million verdict in federal court in Chicago in 2005 for an ex-Chicago police officer who said he was framed by FBI agents for a murder.
Chanen is on a streak in which he has been winning the criminal cases and getting clients exonerated who were in prison for murder.
In the Jimenez case, Steven A. Drizin of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern and Chanen represented Jimenez in the criminal matter that led Paul P. Biebel Jr., presiding judge of Criminal Courts, to grant Jimenez a certificate of innocence in 2010.
Chanen also represented one of the men called the "Englewood Four" whose convictions were overturned in November for a rape and murder in 1994.
And Chanen represented another defendant from Dixmoor whose conviction was overturned in December for the murder of a 14-year-old girl in 1991.
In criminal matters when exoneration is sought, Chanen said he works pro bono. If civil suits follow, he may take some of those cases on a contingency fee basis, he said.
In the civil case that arose from Jimenez's wrongful imprisonment, Chanen and Loevy said they are working on a contingency fee basis.
Jimenez was arrested at age 13 for the murder of Eric Morro in a shooting at Belmont and Sacramento avenues on Feb. 3, 1993.
He was convicted twice for the crime in 1994 and 1996, Chanen said. But Drizin from the Center on Wrongful Convictions and lawyers from Katten, Muchin, Rosenman LLP — including Chanen who was then with the firm — presented evidence in 2008 and 2009 to show Jimenez was innocent.
In 2009, the Cook County state's attorney's office and Jimenez's attorneys filed a joint motion to vacate his conviction and sentence.
Jimenez was released from prison in 2009 and at the same time, authorities arrested a new suspect, Juan Carlos Torres, for the murder that Jimenez had been convicted of. Torres' case is still pending.
The civil rights lawsuit filed on behalf of Jimenez said Bogucki and five other Chicago police officers "fabricated evidence" and "manipulated and coerced" false testimony from witnesses to get Jimenez convicted.
The other officers were dismissed as defendants because they had only minor involvement or for "tactical reasons" prior to trial, Chanen said.
Efforts to reach Andrew M. Hale of Andrew M. Hale & Associates LLC, who represented Bogucki, were unsuccessful.
"The state's attorney's office deserves a lot of credit," Loevy said, for moving forward with Jimenez's lawyers to get his conviction thrown out in 2009. "The system is reluctant to admit that it made a mistake. … In this case, they took the evidence very seriously and really gave it an honest look and acknowledged that an injustice had occurred.
"That takes bravery and self confidence. They should be commended."