CHICAGO (CN) — Two brothers sued Chicago and a group of ex-city cops in federal court on Tuesday, seeking restitution for their combined half-century behind bars. The brothers' twin complaints allege they were each tortured by Chicago police and falsely imprisoned for 25 years over a murder they didn't commit.
Worse, the complaints allege they were targets of police retaliation. The former cops who arrested the pair, and are named as defendants in their lawsuits, include officers who were trained by or worked closely with deceased, disgraced Chicago police commander Jon Burge. Under Burge's leadership, his "midnight crew" of officers tortured confessions out of more than 100 Black Chicagoans like the plaintiffs between the early 1970s and the early 1990s.
While speaking at a press conference on Tuesday both the brothers and their respective attorneys emphasized that the men had lost much they could never recover, like the deaths of older family members and the plaintiff elder brother Reginald Henderson's grandchildren being born.
"The people here, I was never a part of their lives," Henderson said through tears at the press conference, gesturing at a poster of all the loved ones who had died during his imprisonment.
Sean Tyler, the younger of the plaintiff brothers, spent his youth behind bars, his lead attorney noted.
"He goes in a 17-year-old kid, he comes out a 42-year-old man," said Jon Loevy, of the law firm Loevy & Loevy.
The "midnight crew" officers arrested Tyler and Henderson in March 1994 in connection to the murder of 10-year-old Rodney Collins earlier that month. No evidence tied either brother to the crime, the suits say: Rather, their arrests were revenge for Tyler's testimony in the 1991 murder case of Alfredo Hernandez, for which police attempted to frame another young Black boy named Marcus Wiggins.
Tyler was convicted of Collins' murder in 1995 when he was 17 and released on parole in 2019.
Henderson was convicted for the same murder in 1996 at age 22, and was not released until 2020. The state vacated both brothers' convictions in September 2021.
The brothers have together levied 25 civil rights, false arrest, intentional infliction of emotional distress and indemnification claims against the defendant police, the City of Chicago and former members of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.
"I'm asking that the people who wronged me pay for their crimes," Tyler said. "That's it."
Tyler was only 15 years old when he witnessed Hernandez' murder in September 1991. The midnight crew cops falsely accused the 13-year-old Wiggins of the crime, reportedly beating a confession out of the teenager with flashlights and electrocution.
In response to his arrest, Wiggins' mother asked other members of the community to come forward and share what they knew about Hernandez' murder, hoping to clear her son's name.
Tyler eventually came forward to testify to Wiggins' innocence in 1993, helping to secure a dismissal of the charges against him. He testified despite worrying that police would target him for retaliation.
"He was ... frightened because once he was identified as a witness, approximately five plain clothes officers came to his home in unmarked cars and told him that 'if he continued to help, that he may need help himself,' or words to that effect, which [Tyler] interpreted as a threat," Tyler's complaint states.
Despite a court order for police investigating Hernandez' murder case to stay away from Tyler, the brothers allege it was a threat they made good on. Both brothers reported being beaten in police interrogation rooms as the midnight crew worked to extract false confessions from them.
"[Henderson] remained in custody for over 48 hours. He was never read his Miranda rights; he was denied food and water; and he was denied access to the restroom. Eventually, [Henderson] agreed to sign a statement crafted by the defendant officers," the elder brother's complaint states.
Meanwhile the police reportedly beat Tyler so badly that after his interrogation he began vomiting blood — a symptom of hematemesis consistent with chest trauma — and had to be taken to the emergency room. Like his older brother, Tyler was released only after he signed a bogus confession to the State's Attorney Office crafted by his abusers.
Beyond the brothers' individual stories, their attorneys also accused the City of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department of knowingly tolerating, even encouraging, a culture of violence and racism among law enforcement.
"What's important to ... both these cases is that it's not just a couple bad police officers. It's an entire system that backs them up," Henderson's lead attorney Jennifer Bonjean of the Bonjean Law Group, who also represents the jailed singer R. Kelly, said Tuesday.
Bonjean isn't the first to make this allegation. Even before popular outrage at police violence exploded into mass civil unrest in the summer of 2020, a federal court imposed a consent decree on the Chicago Police Department in January 2019 over the objections of the local Fraternal Order of Police and District Attorney's Office. The decree mandated numerous reforms in police protocols, reforms that critics have since accused the Chicago Police Department of slow-walking.
And long before that, while Wiggins' criminal case was pending in January 1993, he filed a federal civil lawsuit against Chicago, Burge, and the police who beat him. Wiggins' allegations brought international scrutiny on the city, and that same year the police department fired Burge. But the abuse under Burge was so far-reaching that as late as 2015, the city under former mayor Rahm Emanuel created a $5.5 million reparations fund for his victims.
Two years later, the city council approved a $31 million settlement for the "Englewood Four," four men who had spent over a decade in prison for the rape and murder of a sex worker before DNA evidence exonerated them.
As with Henderson, Tyler and Wiggins, the Englewood Four claimed police beat confessions out of them.
"It's literally in the past," attorney Loevy said Tuesday of the brothers' arrest. "But sometimes the past haunts the present."
Chicago's Law Department declined to comment on the suits.
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