Chicago City Wire

A plaintiffs’ firm that orchestrated a media campaign to help further a wrongful conviction case surrounding the 1993 murder of a college basketball star is accusing a former detective, who investigated the murder, of launching a media campaign of his own.

In a federal court filling, the lawyers representing Tyrone Hood and Wayne Washington, convicted in the 1993 murder of Marshall Morgan Jr, on the South Side, are asking the judge to bar comments that now retired detective Kenneth Boudreau has made to the media.

The filing by Loevy & Loevy, representing Hood, and Steven Greenberg, representing Washington, cited a February 28 article published in Chicago City Wire entitled “Reporters willing participants in contrived media campaign that freed convicted killer: city attorneys.”

In the article, Boudreau was quoted as saying that the plaintiffs’ attorneys know that police officers have no voice while still on active duty.

“Everything has to be handled by the city,” Boudreau said. “That's why they can write what they want without being challenged. If you look all the Loevy & Loevy complaints, they cite these articles in their civil complaints to be used against us."

The filing cites Boudreau comments as example that “if there is anyone fighting a ‘media battle’ it is the Defendants, but more to the point, Defendants cannot hope to push their ‘media campaign’ narrative at trial while barring Plaintiffs from pointing out that they are engaged in far more aggressive efforts. This is thus yet another example of extreme over-reach of Defendants’ motions…”

Earlier, city attorneys, representing Boudreau and other detectives in the case, accused Loevy & Loevy of the same thing.

In a response to the original motion by Hood’s attorneys to bar the evidence of the media’s role in the case, city attorneys blasted reporters from the New Yorker magazine, NBC Chicago and other news outlets for pushing a narrative that one of the convicted killers of a college basketball star in 1993 was innocent of the crime. No evidence that would stand up in court exists to exonerate Tyrone Hood for his role in the murder of Marshall Morgan Jr., the attorneys said.

“Rather, it (the eventual reversal of the conviction) was the product of an intense media campaign by Hood’s attorneys involving local and international celebrities, ‘friendly reporters’ and, primarily, The New Yorker Magazine,” the response stated.

Media pressure, they said, led former Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, on his last day in office in 2015 to commute Hood’s sentence. Hood and Washington then had their convictions vacated in 2015 by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, and in 2016 they sued in federal court for wrongful conviction.

The media campaign was orchestrated by The Exoneration Project (EP), an activist organization associated with Loevy & Loevy.

“…they waged a media campaign created by Hood’s team at the Exoneration Project (the “EP”) that was designed to try Hood’s case, unopposed, in the court of public opinion in order to get then-Gov. Pat Quinn’s attention and convince him to release Hood,” the attorneys stated.

Boudreau, his former partner Jack Halloran, and other detectives who once worked under Commander Jon Burge (some briefly), have been named in other wrongful conviction suits. Burge was convicted of perjury in 2011 over allegations he tortured prisoners. He died in 2018.

Some of the cases have been settled out of court but Boudreau and Halloran have vowed to fight on in court, saying that allegations they abused suspects were untrue.

By one estimate, city taxpayers have shelled out $130 million in wrongful conviction cases over alleged forced confessions.