After 19 years behind bars, man sues Chicago police for framing him

Published: 16 January, 2013, 02:39

After nearly two decades of imprisonment for a murder he didn’t commit, a Chicago man says he was framed by a group of policemen who bribed court witnesses to go along with their story and has filed a lawsuit against the perpetrators.

Rodell Sanders, 49, has spent years trying to convince the court of his innocence and was exonerate after 19 years imprisonment. The former prisoner is now taking the Chicago Heights Police Department and several of its officers to court for his wrongful conviction and the bribery that landed him in jail.

Sanders was arrested and charged for a 1993 murder in which a group of men robbed and fatally shot one of two people who they found sleeping in a car. He was accused of being part of the group, even though he always claimed to have been “nowhere nearby”, and was instead playing cards at his friend’s apartment.

“There was no physical evidence linking Sanders to the crime. Rather, the only purported evidence against Mr. Sanders were two purchased and patently false witness identifications,” states the complaint. “These wrongful misidentifications were procured through manipulation and bribes by members of the City of Chicago Heights’s infamously corrupt police department.”

While one of the shooting victims died, survivor Stacy Armstrong accused Germaine Haslett of ordering the shooting. Haslett was working for Chicago Heights police as a snitch in another case, prompting the police to protect him and instead accuse Sanders of the murder.

Sanders did not match the victim’s description, but the police manipulated Armstrong into changing her accusation, the lawsuit states. Police staged the crime, paying thousands of dollars to numerous witnesses and even the Haslett family to testify against Sanders.

FULL STORY: http://rt.com/usa/news/imprisonment-chicago-police-sanders-080/