Wrongfully convicted man loses bid for retrial of lawsuit against police

In a 2-1 decision Wednesday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a bid by Michael Evans for a re-trial of a lawsuit against 10 Chicago police officers he holds responsible for his wrongful conviction in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl.

Evans was convicted of the January 1976 abduction, rape and strangling of Lisa Cabassa, and served 27 years in prison. He was freed in 2003 after DNA tests arranged by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University showed that neither Evans nor his co-defendant, Paul Terry, could have raped the girl.

Evans later filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against the 10 police officers for allegedly framing him. He was seeking as much as $60 million in damages.

But in August 2006, the nine-member jury in the court of U.S. District Judge David H. Coar upheld the detectives and police officials who arrested Evans and helped put him behind bars.

At trial the officers and their lawyer, Andrew Hale, maintained they went by the book in investigating the case. They also denied framing Evans.

Jurors were told one of the officers had taken the 5th Amendment, which protects a witness from self-incrimination, when asked questions before trial on how the case was handled. But they also heard from an eyewitness who stuck with her story that she had seen Evans wrestling with the victim.

Hale also told jurors the fact that DNA had cleared Evans of the rape did not mean he had not helped in the girl's abduction and murder.

"The evidence proved for itself I'd never done it," Evans complained at the time. "I was pardoned and vindicated. How much more evidence do they need to say, innocent, innocent, innocent? What more do they need? I got a pardon of innocent."