MEDIA CONTACT: Patricia Tremmel at 847-491-4892 or p-tremmel@northwestern.edu

May 25, 2004

Center Files Wrongful Conviction Lawsuit

CHICAGO --- Michael Evans and Paul Terry spent nearly three decades in prison each before Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law petitioned the court to conduct DNA testing, which established their innocence  and led to their convictions being set aside on May 23, 2003.

One year later, the men, who at the time of their arrests were high school students with no previous convictions, will file wrongful conviction lawsuits in federal court Monday, May 24, 2004.

The suits seek redress for the nearly three decades that Evans and Terry each spent in prison, on the grounds they were framed by the police and victimized by a conspiracy to cover up the police misconduct.

The suits contend the high-profile nature of the heinous crime put pressure on the Chicago Police Department to close the case, particularly after weeks without investigative success, resulting in the wrongful convictions of Evans and Terry.

The two men were wrongfully prosecuted for the January 14, 1976 rape and murder of nine-year-old Lisa Cabassa as she was walking home alone in her neighborhood on Chicago's Southeast side, according to the lawsuits. 

Evans and Terry were convicted of the crime April 1977 and sentenced to 200 to 400 years in prison.

More than 25 years later, their Center on Wrongful Convictions’ attorneys successfully petitioned the courts to conduct DNA testing on the biological evidence which had been removed from the victim’s body and preserved in storage.

Evans is represented by Karen Daniel, Northwestern University School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions; Locke Bowman, MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago Law School; and Jon Loevy of the firm Loevy & Loevy in Chicago.

Terry is represented by attorneys Flint Taylor and Jan Susler of the People's Law Office and Jeff Urdangen, Center on Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern University School of Law.