Taylor v. City of Chicago

80 F. Supp. 3d 817, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19628, 2015 WL 739414
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedFebruary 19, 2015
Docket14 C 737
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 80 F. Supp. 3d 817 (Taylor v. City of Chicago) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Taylor v. City of Chicago, 80 F. Supp. 3d 817, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19628, 2015 WL 739414 (N.D. Ill. 2015).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

John Z. Lee, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Daniel Taylor (“Taylor”) has sued the City of Chicago (the “City”) and Chicago Police Officers Anthony Villardita (“Villardita”), Thomas Johnson (“Johnson”), Brian Killacky (“Killacky”), Terry O’Connor (“O’Connor”), Rick Abreu (“Abreu”), Robert Delaney (“Delaney”), Sean Glinski (“Glinski”), Michael Berti (“Berti”), as well as unidentified employees of the City of Chicago pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Taylor alleges Defendants violated his constitutional rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and brings additional claims for malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy pursuant to Illinois law. Defendants have moved to dismiss Taylor’s Complaint in its entirety. For the reasons provided herein, the Court grants in part and denies in part Defendants’ motions.

Factual Background1

On November 16, 1992, Jeffrey Lassiter and Sharon Haugabook were shot and killed in Lassiter’s apartment at 910 W. Agatite in Chicago, Illinois. Compl. ¶ 10. The property manager, who lived upstairs, called 911 at 8:43 p.m., immediately after he heard the gunshots. Id. ¶ 11. Police arrived at the scene within three minutes. Id.

At the scene of the murders, the Defendant Officers learned that there was one witness, Faye McCoy, who lived in the building and was an active member of the community. Id. ¶ 17. McCoy had seen four men leaving Lassiter’s apartment building shortly after the shooting and told the Defendant Officers that they were men from the West Side of Chicago, who recently had been selling drugs in the community, including someone named “Goldie.” Id. ¶¶ 17, 19. None of the persons she saw was Plaintiff or any of the other young men that she knew from her neighborhood. Id. The Defendant Officers had McCoy look through an array of seven photographs of potential suspects, and she identified the photograph of Dennis “Goldie” Mixon as one of the four men she saw leaving the murder scene. Id. ¶ 20.

During the initial investigation, several other witnesses identified Mixon as a drug dealer, who recently had engaged in a physical altercation with Lassiter. Id. ¶ 21. The Defendant Officers were also aware that, prior to Lassiter’s murder, Mixon had taken over Lassiter’s apartment building to sell crack. Id. As a result of these statements, Mixon became the prime suspect in the killings. Id. ¶ 22. Unfortunately, the Defendant Officers were unable to find Mixon, and the case went cold for several weeks; that is, until [821]*821Lewis Gardner was arrested on unrelated charges. Id.

Gardner was a fifteen-year-old juvenile with a. 70 IQ score, who lived with his family near the victim’s apartment. Id. ¶ 23. The Defendant Officers interrogated him for over fifteen hours, during which time they kept Gardner’s mother out of the interrogation room, psychologically abused Gardner, and told him he could go home if he would provide a statement parroting what the Defendant Officers told him. Id. ¶ 24. As a result of the Defendant Officers’ coercion, Gardner falsely implicated himself, Taylor, and five other innocent young men in the murders. Id.

Once the Defendant Officers obtained Gardner’s false confession, they arrested Taylor and the five other men identified by Gardner — Alda Phillips, Paul Phillips, Joseph Brown, Deon Patrick, and Rodney Matthews — and coerced all of them into making false confessions. Id. ¶25. Neither Taylor nor any of the other men had any involvement in the murders. Id.

When the Defendant Officers arrested Taylor on December 3, 1992, he was seventeen years old and sleeping at a shelter. Id. ¶ 28. The Defendant Officers brought Taylor in for questioning at what was then Area 6 police headquarters. Id. When questioned, Taylor denied having any knowledge of the crime. Id. ¶ 29. He told the Defendant Officers that on the date of the murders he was actually in police custody on an unrelated offense and thus had an airtight alibi. Id. ¶¶ 13, 30. In fact, at 6:45 p.m. on November 16, 1992, around two hours before the murders took place, Chicago Police officers in the 23rd District had arrested Taylor on a disorderly conduct charge. Id. ¶ 13. According to the Department’s own records, Taylor was received by the 23rd District lockup at 7:25 p.m., and his fingerprints were sent to the Department Headquarters at 7:35 p.m. Id. ¶ 14. Taylor eventually bonded out at 10:00 p.m., more than an hour after the murders. Id. ¶ 15. Because Taylor was in police custody during the commission of the murders, it stands to reason that he could not have participated in them. Id. ¶ 16.

Despite having this information, the Defendant Officers arrested Taylor anyway and allegedly punched and hit Taylor with a flashlight while he was in custody. Id. ¶ 29. The Defendant Officers threatened Taylor that if he did not give them information about the murders, they would continue the-beating. Id. On the other hand, if he confessed, the Defendant Officers told Taylor, they would allow him to go home. Id. Believing the Defendant Officers’ statements that he would be released, Taylor confessed to the murders even though he had not committed them. Id.

Within days of Taylor’s arrest, the Defendant Officers obtained a copy of an arrest report that confirmed that Taylor had been in jail at the time of the shootings. Id. ¶ 31. They also received a copy of Taylor’s bond slip confirming he had not been released from the 23rd District lockup until 10:00 p.m. that night. Id.

Notwithstanding the evidence of Taylor’s innocence, the Defendant Officers allegedly proceeded to frame Taylor for the murders. Id. ¶ 32. For example, the Defendant Officers fabricated an encounter between police officers and Taylor on the street near Lassiter’s apartment around 9:30 p.m. on the night of the murders. Id. ¶ 33. This fictional encounter was memorialized in a fraudulent police report that was created weeks after the purported encounter and well after the Defendant Officers had learned that Taylor was in police custody at the time in question. Id. The Defendant Officers never disclosed their fabrication to the prosecutor, the court, or Taylor. Id.

[822]*822In addition, the Defendant Officers allegedly coerced a witness named Adrian Grimes, by means of threats and a promise of leniency on unrelated charges, into falsely stating that he remembered seeing Taylor at a park near Lassiter’s apartment just prior to the murders. Id. ¶ 34. Grimes would later recant this statement, and the Defendant Officers never disclosed to the trial prosecutor or the defense the manner in which they induced Grimes to make the false identification. Id.

The Defendant Officers also tried, unsuccessfully, to coerce McCoy into falsely identifying Taylor from a lineup. Id. ¶ 35. When McCoy denied having seen Taylor or any of his co-defendants on the night of the murders, the Defendant Officers prepared a false report stating that McCoy had identified Taylor as one of the perpetrators and falsely testified to the same. Id.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
80 F. Supp. 3d 817, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19628, 2015 WL 739414, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/taylor-v-city-of-chicago-ilnd-2015.