Exonerated prisoner sues police, lab analyst
A man who spent eight years in prison pleading for the DNA test that finally cleared him of a rape charge filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Chicago police, two detectives and a former crime lab analyst.
Marlon Pendleton, 50, said in the lawsuit that the detectives mismanaged the lineup that led to his arrest and the lab analyst who might have cleared him instead prepared a misleading report.
"The torment, suffering and irreversible damage inflicted upon Marlon Pendleton in all those hours, days, months and years in prison is unfathomably cruel and sad," Pendleton attorney Gareth Morris said.
Detectives Jack Stewart and Steven Barnes mismanaged the lineup at which a witness picked out Pendleton as the rapist by letting the witness see Pendleton in handcuffs before the lineup, the lawsuit said.
It also said that former crime lab analyst Pamela Fish, who is no longer a police employee, prepared a report wrongly saying that not enough evidence remained from the rape to perform a meaningful DNA test.
Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said the department could not comment on pending litigation. A spokeswoman for the city law department did not immediately return a message from The Associated Press.
Pendleton tried for years to get an independent expert to perform a DNA test on evidence from the second rape and got his wish in 2005.
Two California-based experts appointed by a circuit judge found that there was enough DNA evidence to perform the test and concluded Pendleton could not have been the rapist.
Pendleton has had a tough time adjusting to life on the outside, his attorneys said. He lives with a close friend, has a supportive family and gets by performing odd jobs, but he needs more support, they said.
Among other things, they hope that Gov. Rod Blagojevich will pardon Pendleton, something that would clear the way for a state payment of $120,000 to $140,000 in compensation for being wrongly imprisoned.
But Pendleton stands to get a lot more money from a lawsuit, they said. Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University, compared it to a case in which a wrongly convicted man received $1 million for each year he had spent in prison.
Actually, Pendleton was convicted of two rapes. He served six years for the first and eight years of a 10-year sentence for the second.
The DNA test that cleared him pertained only to the second rape for which he served eight years. But Pendleton and his attorneys told the news conference they believed that he would eventually be cleared of the first.
"My hands were clean, my hands are clean and my hands always will be clean of the crime of rape," Pendleton said.