Jury awards $120 million to two Chicago men wrongfully convicted of 2003 murder

A jury has awarded two Chicago men $120 million after they were wrongfully convicted of a 2003 murder.

John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell both spent more than 16 years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2019 in the murder of 18-year-old Christopher Collazo.

Two Chicago men wrongfully convicted

Fulton and Mitchell both were teenagers when they were arrested, and have maintained they were coerced into making false confessions, after detectives made false promises of leniency and subjected them to physical and psychological abuse.

According to their lawsuit against the city, no physical evidence or eyewitnesses ever connected them to Collazo’s murder.

Attorneys for Fulton accused prosecutors and police of concocting photographic evidence to convince the jury that no cameras monitored the back door of his apartment, allowing him to sneak in and out undetected. However, the back door was monitored by a security camera, and the door required an electric fob that tracks people coming and going, meaning he couldn’t go in or out without proper detection, said attorneys.

On the night of Collazo’s murder, Fulton was at the hospital with his fiancée, and otherwise at home, where surveillance cameras monitored every doorway of their apartment building, according to the lawsuit.

Judgements

In 2019, a judge vacated Fulton’s and Mitchell’s convictions and prosecutors dropped all charges against them.

In 2020, both men sued Cook County prosecutors and police for “malicious prosecution.”

On Monday, Mar. 10, a federal jury awarded them $60 million each in damages for their wrongful convictions.