Man wins $1.3M in malicious prosecution case

Fabricated confession had landed him three years in prison

By Duaa Eldeib, Tribune reporter
6:54 PM CDT, June 9, 2010
Donny McGee, who was arrested for the gruesome 2001 murder of his 76-year-old neighbor three days before his wedding, was awarded $1.3 million after a Cook County jury found Tuesday that three members of the Chicago Police Department made up his confession.
Police, facing public pressure to solve the murder of Ethel Perstlen, arrested McGee and then said he voluntarily confessed to the crime — though there was no physical evidence or a written or taped confession, according to the lawsuit filed by McGee. Perstlen was found stabbed and burned beyond recognition in the bathtub of her Clearing home in April 2001.
"The murder was every Chicagoan's nightmare," said McGee's attorney, Russell Ainsworth. "When he refused to confess to the murder, they fabricated it."
McGee, who was acquitted of the murder in 90 minutes by a jury in 2004 after serving three years in prison, filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago, detectives Edward Farley and Robert Lenihan and Officer Robert Bartik. DNA evidence excluded McGee from committing the crime, Ainsworth said.
The jury found the defendants guilty of malicious prosecution but denied a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. The city was ordered to pay $975,000 in compensatory damages, and the three officers must pay $110,000 each in punitive damages. Farley and Bartik are still with the department, and Lenihan has since retired.
"These officers lied," McGee, 35, said. "(The jury) saw the truth, and the truth is by their verdict."
Andrew Hale, who represented the city and the officers, called the ruling a "huge travesty."
"The whole case came down to did he confess or not?" Hale said. "And I thought the evidence was overwhelming that he confessed. The jury would have to believe that these three defendants made this all up. For what?"
Ainsworth's firm, Loevy & Loevy, is also pursuing a separate case of a false confession against Bartik.
"The way it turned out, the person who confessed to the murder is actually obtaining money from the officers he confessed to," Hale said. "Justice wasn't served."
Hale said he plans to appeal the ruling.