CHICAGO _ A federal jury on Thursday awarded a whopping $22 million in damages to a former El Rukn gang member who claimed two Chicago police detectives framed him for an infamous 1984 double murder that sent him to death row.
After 2/12 days of deliberation, the jury agreed with Nathson Fields' claims that Sgt. David O'Callaghan and Lt. Joseph Murphy violated his civil rights by withholding critical evidence from defense attorneys that could have pointed away from him as the killer.
The jury also found that at the time Fields was arrested and charged, the city had a pattern and practice of keeping secret "street files" in homicide investigations even though the practice was supposedly abolished in 1983.
In what is believed to be one of the largest awards in a wrongful conviction case in Chicago history, the jury found the city liable for $22 million in damages and also assessed a combined $40,000 in punitive damages against the two officers.
The Chicago Tribune has chronicled the case in several front-page stories over the past several years detailing how Fields' street file was found in 2011 buried in an old filing cabinet with hundreds of other homicide cases in a South Side police station basement.
Fields' first trial ended in a mistrial in 2014. The verdict in the second trial was overturned after the judge decided jurors should have heard evidence that Earl Hawkins _ an El Rukn hit man who admitted to at least a dozen killings and was a key witness for the city and police _ was expecting to be freed from prison years early.
After the trial, it was revealed that police detectives and prosecutors involved in the case had written glowing letters to the parole board about Hawkins and his cooperation _ although lawyers for the city have presented evidence that prison officials had already granted Hawkins' release before they read them.
Meanwhile, as Fields' third trial was getting under way last month, the U.S. attorney's office filed an unusual motion asking a federal judge to reduce the federal racketeering sentence for another convicted El Rukn killer, Derrick Kees, from 25 years to 12 years because of his anticipated testimony against Fields. Earlier this month, Kees testified that his agreement could mean he'll gain freedom next year.
Fields' double-murder conviction and death sentence were tossed after it was revealed the judge in the case had accepted a bribe. After Fields was exonerated in a 2009 retrial, he filed the suit claiming police had buried a "street file" in his case to hide evidence helpful to him.
Attorneys for the city, however, have long maintained that Fields was guilty of the murders and vehemently denied that any damaging evidence was concealed from the defense.
