After a two-week trial, a jury in federal court on Monday, September 9, awarded $50 million to Marcel Brown after he spent 10 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
Sixteen years after he was framed as an accomplice in a murder, Brown was vindicated with the large verdict in addition to $50,000 in punitive damages.
“Justice was finally served for me and my family today,” Brown said at a press conference with his family behind him outside the Dirksen Federal Building. “All glory given to God and we’re just thankful to be here today.”
Locke Bowman, an attorney with the law firm of Loevy & Loevy, said “This $50 million dollar verdict is a wake-up call to Mayor Johnson and Superintendent Snelling that it’s time to get a grip on the way CPD conducts its investigations.”
The lawsuit named as defendants the City of Chicago, a group of Chicago police officers, and assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Michelle Spizzirri.
Brown’s attorneys argued that the defendants had violated his client’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, maliciously prosecuted him and intentionally caused him emotional distress when they prevented him from speaking with a lawyer and drew a false confession out of him after more than a day of illegal interrogation.
The case is one of the first wrongful conviction cases to go to trial under a state law requiring murder interrogations to be videotaped.
Brown was just 18 when he was arrested and accused of helping his cousin kill 19-year-old Paris Jackson. In 2011, he was convicted of murder after a bench trial presided over by Judge Thomas Gainer. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but he served 10. He was exonerated in 2018.
Brown’s cousin, Renard Branch Jr. was sentenced to 47 years in prison.
On the night of August 30, 2008, police responded to calls of shots fired in Amundsen Park on the west side of Chicago. Officers surveyed the park and left. Witnesses later said that multiple groups of young people were in the park when the shooting started, and that Brown’s cousin, 15-year-old Renard Branch Jr. had drawn a pistol and fired some of the shots.
The next morning, a Chicago Park District employee found Jackson’s body behind the field house in the park. He had been shot once.
Witnesses said that after the shooting, Branch got into a gold Chevy Malibu and left the scene. Police tracked down the car; Brown was driving the car that night.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, on September 3, 2008, police arrested Brown at his home and took him to a Chicago police station. He had no criminal record. There, Brown was interrogated for 34 hours before he falsely confessed to being part of the crime. His video-recorded interrogation cumulatively totaled 5 to 5 ½ hours.
During the marathon interrogation, Brown said he was denied legal counsel, phone calls to his family, and provided little food. His interrogation was recorded on video, which became key evidence in the case.
Brown was charged with first-degree murder. Three witnesses testified that Brown never got out of his car when he pulled up at the park. One witness testified that Brown got out of his car, but never went past the entrance gate to the park.
An attorney from the Office of the State Appellate Defender referred the case to the Northwestern University Center on Wrongful Convictions because Brown’s trial attorney David Weiner never challenged the involuntary custodial statement. He was later suspended from the practice of law.
In addition to not suppressing Brown’s statements made during the interrogation, Weiner also failed to enter into evidence the video recording of the interrogation. In March 2014, the Illinois Appellate Court upheld Brown’s conviction after it rejected a defense argument that Brown’s trial attorney had provided an inadequate legal defense because of Weiner’s failure to enter the videotaped interrogation as evidence.
But in a post-conviction petition filed by the Center on Wrongful Convictions, new evidence emerged indicating a teenager known as “Day Day,” one of the dice players in the park, shot Jackson.
A transcript of the interrogation shows that Brown asked to speak to his mother seven times. His request was denied each time. He repeatedly denied knowing that Branch had a gun. Brown told the detectives that he and Branch went to the park to get their sisters. While they were at the park, a teenager he knew as “Day Day” began shooting and they fled.
Brown said Day Day was the gunman at least a dozen times, but the detectives accused him of lying. They told Brown he would get 30 years behind bars for something that Branch had done. The detectives later said he would get 35 years, and subsequently increased it to 45 years.
Gradually, Brown began to change his account of the shooting. At first, Brown said that Branch had shot back at Day Day, but more than 40 times he said he did not know Branch had a gun until he pulled it out. The detectives continued to pressure him to admit that he knew Branch had the gun when they left to go to the park, and that Branch had threatened to kill people. Detectives knew Brown’s admission would implicate Brown under the murder accountability statute.
In June 2018, Judge Gainer found that the police had refused to allow the attorney to see Brown, in violation of Illinois law. Brown’s conviction was thrown out and Judge Gainer ordered a new trial. Brown’s statements implicating himself in the shooting could not be presented at a second trial.
On July 18, 2018, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office said it would not appeal the decision and the charges against Brown were dismissed.
After obtaining his certificate of innocence, Brown received $160,000 in compensation from the Illinois Court of Claims.