Photo caption: Roosevelt Myles, during his return to Chicago, held a press conference outside of the Daley Center where he explained his reasoning and retold his story that led him to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division at the Dirksen federal courthouse.
Roosevelt Myles returned to Chicago last weekend to file a federal lawsuit against eight police officers and the city before speaking to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, in whose office prosecutors tried to block the wrongfully convicted man from being exonerated for a murder committed 30 years ago.
It was a bittersweet return to the city that has forever scarred Myles, whose lawyer, prominent New York Attorney Jennifer Bonjean, announced a blistering lawsuit she filed on behalf of her client during a press conference on September 29 at Federal Plaza in the Loop. It was one of five lawsuits Bonjean filed for wrongfully convicted men who allege they were framed by Chicago police officers.
Three days after Myles announced his lawsuit, he attended Foxx’s luncheon for wrongfully convicted people at Kennedy King College. There, Myles said he spoke to Foxx, the powerful Cook County prosecutor whose office kept him locked up for six more years after she was elected as a reformer in 2016.
At 59 years old, Myles spent half of his life in prison after he was convicted of murdering teenager Shaharian Brandon on the West Side in 1992. Hours after the shooting, Myles was arrested and taken to a West Side police precinct, where he said police repeatedly beat him to force a confession out of him as he maintained his innocence.
Myles was convicted of murder and attempted robbery in 1996. He spent 28 years in prison because of false testimony from Octavius Morris, who was with Brandon when he was fatally shot.
During his post conviction appeal, Myles was forced to wait 22 years just for a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courts building.
Six of those years came under Foxx’s administration. Prosecutor Tom Dombrowski caused many delays, and at one point had Myles’ post-conviction case dismissed, before an appeals court sent it back to the Cook County Circuit Court.
Last December, Myles was finally exonerated after Judge Carol Howard threw out his conviction when Dombrowski told the court his intention to stop fighting Myles’ appeal. That resignation came just before Octavius Morris appeared in court to testify that disgraced Detective Anthony Wojcik forced her to testify that Myles killed Brandon.
Wojick, who retired in 2017 after he was recommended for termination for allegedly falsifying police reports in the Laquan McDonald shooting scandal, is one of eight police officers named in Myles’ lawsuit.
In addition to the city of Chicago, the other defendants include Officers Robert Rutherford, Kevin McDonald, Kenneth Berris, Anthony Bongiorno, Raymond Schalk, Daniel Engel and John McMurray.
According to the lawsuit, the defendants “conspired among themselves and with others, known and unknown, to prosecute Plaintiff for the murder and attempted armed robbery of Brandon, while indifferent to the fact that he was innocent.
“All of the Defendant Officers concealed the fact that they had conspired to and did frame Plaintiff for the murder by coercing, threatening, and manipulating witnesses into making false statements implicating Plaintiff, and by knowingly inducing false testimony from young victims or easily manipulated witnesses through trickery, manipulation, suggestion, pressure, coercion, and other unlawful tactics.”
The lawsuit repeated facts of the case that had been well documented. There was no physical evidence that linked Myles to the crime and the “defendants ignored the statements of multiple witnesses who insisted that Myles was not the killer.”
After an appeals court granted Myles an evidentiary hearing in 2000, a string of public defenders racked up over 100 continuances as he waited for his day in court.
Tired of the delays, Myles retained Bonjean in 2017. Six years later, Bonjean stood by Myles in a courtroom where his fight to clear his name finally came to an end.
His parents died waiting to see their son become a free and vindicated man.
Myles’ 39-page lawsuit accuses the defendants of 12 illegal acts, including fabrication of evidence, malicious prosecution and unlawful detention and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
As an exonerated man, Myles now seeks his Certificate of Innocence, which allows him to bring a claim for damages against the state.
Filed at the U.S. District for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division at the Dirksen federal courthouse, the lawsuit does not yet include monetary damages but requests a jury trial.
“They ruined families and entire communities,” Bonjean said at the press conference.
At Foxx’s luncheon for wrongfully convicted people, Myles said he spoke to Foxx. He told the Crusader that he said to her “I am here. I am here.”
After the luncheon, Myles said, “She knew who I was. She knew exactly who I was. She said, ‘welcome home’.” Myles didn’t say whether Foxx apologized for her office fighting him in court as he sought to be exonerated.
But in a brief interview after the luncheon, Foxx said, “Again, it’s humanity and the way this works is….It took that long for us to get to the position that he gets home. It’s heavy.”
When the Crusader reminded Foxx that her office fought against Myles and at one point had a judge dismiss his post-conviction appeal, Foxx did not apologize.
She said, “I think not just his case, but overall there has to be a greater sense of urgency around these cases. The backlog is huge, the process is onerous. His case was 22 years. There are other cases that are 10 years, 15 years, and coming into the last seven years trying to undo work that has been done before. It’s hard.”
