Chicago City Wire

A federal judge awarded the largest wrongful conviction settlement in the nation at $120 million to John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell for the 2003 murder of 18-year-old Christopher Collazo. Each had spent 16 years in prison until a judge threw out their convictions on their claims of police misconduct, with former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx then dropping all charges – as she had done in dozens of other cases over her eight years running the office. 

Former mayoral candidate Paul Vallas wrote in a recent commentary in the Chicago Contrarian that Foxx’s office became an “advocacy shop for violent criminals rather than victims.” 

The $120 million for Fulton and Mitchel comes on the heels of $50 million awarded to Marcel Brown, also exonerated by Foxx for a 2011 murder in August of last year. In Brown's wrongful conviction lawsuit, the Chicago plaintiff’s firm of Loevy & Loevy represented him—the same firm represented Fulton and Mitchell.

Without identifying the firm as Loevy & Loevy, Vallas wrote that in 2022 alone the firm secured $42 million in settlements out of a total of $117 million Chicago paid out to litigants. Since 2000, Chicago has paid out $700 million in lawsuits to criminals, most of whom were found guilty, for alleged police misconduct. Lawyers representing the city raked in $138 million.

“During Kim Foxx' eight years in office, more and more Chicago law firms started specializing not only in representing perpetrators accused of committing violent crimes, but also in suing the Chicago Police Department (CPD),” Vallas wrote. “Alleging "civil rights" violations by police, these firms frequently win mammoth, taxpayer-funded settlements that city leaders seem all too willing to award. It is no surprise that lawyers specializing in suing police were the largest segment of donors to Clayton Harris, III, Cook County Board President and Democratic Party boss Toni Preckwinkle’s hand-picked successor to Kim Foxx.”

According to Vallas, Foxx even went so far as brokering deals with a secret “Lawyers Committee”—a group of private lawyers that specialize in suing the police.

Reacting to the Fulton/Mitchell verdict, former Chicago FOP spokesman Martin Preib, and author of the column “Crooked City,” blasted both the media and city attorneys over the size and number of the awards. Preib has been covering the “exoneration industry” for over ten years.

“The media’s role in manufacturing these cases is something city attorneys have largely refused to address, relying on a bizarre and baseless policy that they cannot talk to the media. This is why you will never see well-paid city attorneys crafting simple press releases or statements, speaking on a podcast, or writing a guest editorial in a newspaper spelling out the blatant lies that drive so many exoneration cases, let alone walking up to a reporter sucking up to the exoneration attorneys on the first floor of the federal building and separating the facts from the myths.”