U.S. District Court Judge Martha Pacold has cleared former detectives who investigated the 1994 rape and murder of 20-year-old Antwinica Bridgeman of a list of claims in the wrongful conviction lawsuits by the two convicted of her murder—Nevest Coleman and Derrell Fulton.
At the same time, the judge allowed other claims to stand should the case go to trial.
In her August 20 order, Judge Pacold granted summary judgment to former city detectives John Halloran, Kenneth Boudreau, and James O’Brien on Count II and Count 1V in the lawsuits—Fabrication of a False Witness Statement and Due Process respectively. Officers Gerald Carroll, William Moser, Albert Graf, Thomas Kelly, and Thomas Benoit were granted summary judgment on all counts involving both claimants,
Coleman and Fulton filed their wrongful conviction lawsuits in the US District Court for the Northern District in 2018. The lawsuits included 13 counts against the police, the city, a former assistant state’s attorney, and Cook County. The lawsuits came on the heels of being exonerated by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Foxx’s office cited claims of police abuse and prosecutorial misconduct, and the findings that Coleman’s and Fulton’s DNA did not match DNA recovered at the murder scene.
But an extensive report about the case in 2018 by ESPN writer Wayne Dreh quoted Robin Cotton, director of the Biomedical Forensic Sciences Program at Boston University, that the lack of matching DNA at a crime scene doesn’t prove innocence.
The report also said Cotton didn’t understand why the state didn’t feel confident retrying the case.
“Regardless of what they might think, the question is what they can prove,” Cotton says. “DNA is really good at saying, ‘This DNA came from this person.’ But how it got there and when it got there is not something you can get from the molecule. And that makes a difference.”
In July of last year, the national watchdog group, Judicial Watch, asked Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling to reopen the case.
“More advanced DNA tests on samples not available at the time of the murder from Bridgeman’s undergarments revealed semen from another individual, a serial rapist,” JW wrote. “These tests became the basis for claiming the men had been coerced into confessing by Chicago detectives, who dismissed the tests as conclusive evidence of innocence and maintained that numerous possibilities could account for the DNA sample that did not vindicate the men.”
Moreover, JW wrote that prosecutors under Foxx “were shocked at the decision to vacate the convictions.”
“Another factor in the case is tied to statements top prosecutors working under Foxx made during depositions,” JW stated. “In those depositions, these prosecutors stated they believed Coleman and Fulton were guilty of the crimes and that detectives in the case committed no misconduct.”
JW also cites statements from prosecutors saying pressure from the media, particularly the Chicago Tribune, led to the exonerations.
“‘I think Eric Zorn [Tribune reporter] didn’t have any understanding of the facts of that case and did not have a basis to be writing the things that he wrote,” one prosecutor stated during a deposition.
JW never received a response to their letter and the CPD never responded to a Chicago City Wire request as to whether the Department is considering reopening the case.
