Chicago City Wire

Seven years after Cook County State's attorney Kim Foxx vacated the convictions of two men who confessed to the 1994 murder of Antwinicia Bridgeman—whose mutilated body was found in the basement of a South Side home—on the basis of police misconduct and lacking DNA evidence, a national watchdog group is calling for the Chicago Police Department to reopen the investigation. 

In a July 31 letter to Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling asking that the case be reopened, Judicial Watch (JW) noted that lack of DNA does not prove innocence.

Following the confessions of Darrel Fulton and Nevest Coleman—whose family was living in the house where Bridgeman's body was found—the two were convicted of murder in 1997. In 2017, Foxx vacated their convictions on claims of police misconduct, and the lack of Coleman's and Fulton’s DNA at the scene.

“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 said. “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.

Most news reports hailed Coleman’s exoneration, and his return to his old job with the White Sox. But a May 2018 ESPN investigative story into the case that quoted the former prosecutor, Brian Sexton, former Detective Kenneth Boudreau, and a biomedical forensics expert, raised questions regarding the exoneration.

Robin Cotton, the director of the Biomedical Forensic Sciences Program at Boston University, told ESPN that a DNA sample matching someone besides Coleman and Fulton doesn't automatically prove their innocence.

"Regardless of what they might think, the question is what they can prove," Cotton said. "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."

Boudreau told ESPN that he’s been targeted in civil actions because of his connection to other high-profile cases. But he said none of the claims against him have ever gone to a trial. The city has instead settled the suits.

He conceded that the new DNA evidence could warrant further investigation but said that it doesn’t prove Coleman's innocence.

"There's factual innocence, and there's actual innocence," Boudreau told ESPN. "Factual innocence is 'factually I can't prove you're guilty.' Actual innocence is where you are actually innocent. And there's nobody here that's been actually innocent.”

For his part, Brian Sexton, the prosecutor who tried the case in 1997, said he doesn’t think they got the wrong guy. 

“I believed then, as I do now, we had the right guy," he told ESPN. "Do I think he's guilty? Yes I do.”

Coleman filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit in federal court in 2018.

The Cook County State’s Attorney Office, helmed by Foxx since 2016, is responsible for over 250 exonerations. Most are not based on new evidence indicating innocence, but on extraordinary claims that police tortured suspects, fabricated evidence and colluded with prosecutors to win guilty verdicts.

Over the last decade, the city of Chicago has shelled out over $300 million in wrongful conviction settlements—pre-trial payouts stemming from civil lawsuits brought under allegations of police misconduct. 

Foxx announced in April 2023 that she will not seek a third term. In November, the winner of the April Democratic Primary for State's Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke will face off against Republican Bob Fioretti and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski.