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player ready...A man whose murder conviction was reversed by an Illinois appeals court that called his case “extraordinary” has filed a federal lawsuit against the police and prosecutors who investigated and tried his case, alleging that they coerced witnesses and hid evidence that could point to his innocence.
Kevin Jackson, 44, who on Tuesday filed the civil rights complaint in U.S. District Court in Chicago, named as defendants Chicago police Detectives Brian Forberg and John Foster, whose work has come under scrutiny in recent years. Jackson also accused Cook County assistant state’s attorneys working in the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit of failing to disclose a conflict of interest when the unit reinvestigated the matter years later.
Officials with the city, state’s attorney’s office and Police Department said they do not comment on pending litigation.
The Tribune has chronicled Jackson’s case, which took an unusual path to becoming overturned.
Jackson was sentenced to 45 years in prison in the 2001 killing of Ernest Jenkins at a gas station in West Englewood. He served around 23 years before a panel of appellate judges ordered his release and overturned his convictions following a denial by a Cook County judge.
The release was a long time coming for Jackson, who maintained his innocence as his case was examined by the Conviction Integrity Unit until it reported that it found no merit to Jackson’s case.
But Jackson’s attorneys later learned that an assistant state’s attorney who worked closely with the Conviction Integrity Unit was married to Forberg. When the attorneys raised concerns, the state’s attorney’s office appointed special prosecutors Thomas Geraghty and Robert Owen to look into the matter.
Following an investigation, Geraghty and Owen wrote a report that was sharply critical of both the police investigation and the work on the case by the Conviction Integrity Unit. The investigation was “tainted by coercive police tactics” that later were not critically examined by Cook County assistant state’s attorneys who reviewed the case, the report found.
Known in the department as “closers,” Forberg and Foster have been accused in multiple cases of coercing witnesses to implicate suspects in order to quickly solve cases.
In Jackson’s case, the bulk of the state’s case against him was based on witnesses who retracted their statements. One witness was a pregnant woman who said the detectives threatened that she’d give birth to her child in jail and lose custody if she didn’t name their suspect, according to Geraghty and Owen’s report.
Jackson’s suit alleges that Forberg knew he didn’t commit the murder, but pursued the case anyways.
When Jackson said he wasn’t there that day, according to the suit, Forberg replied: “I know you didn’t do this but who did?”
Jackson is still pursuing an on-paper exoneration in the form of a Certificate of Innocence, but that process was delayed when the prosecutor’s office assigned outside counsel to handle the matter.
The state’s attorney’s office had said that state law allows it to appoint special assistant state’s attorneys, which the office does at times “based upon our staffing and resources.”