City settles for $9 million in rape conviction suit

January 27, 2006 (WLS) -- The City of Chicago settled a lawsuit with a man wrongly convicted of rape.The settlement amount is $9 million. Lafonso Rollins spent more than decade in prison for the crime he did not commit.

Rollins was released in 2004 after DNA evidence cleared him in the 1993 rape of an elderly woman. When he got out of prison Rollins sued the Chicago Police Department. Friday afternoon, he and his attorney talked about the settlement with the city.

A $9 million tentative settlement, is certainly one of the largest ever of its kind in Chicago, and in announcing it Friday, the city says it is now investigating why an innocent man was charged, and whether its crime lab dropped the ball on this case -- and perhaps others.

Lafonso Rollins did 11 years in prison until DNA tests exonerated him in the rape of an elderly woman. The city has now agreed to pay Rollins and his attorneys $9 million for the wrongful conviction.

But the settlement, Rollins says, does not remove the anger or the years lost.

"This is not my lottery ticket or anything. Keep in mind, the most important thing right now is for everybody to focus on that, OK, I made it, I'm free, you know what I'm saying? It's over with. Make sure the next guy doesn't go through this heat," said Rollins.

Rollins was a 17-year-old special ed student when he was first charged in 1993 with the rape of an elderly woman. Though he had maintained his innocence, he was convicted based largely on a confession that he signed, but did not write. It was, he says, coerced by police.

"They came on hitting on me. They kept told me they were going to wring me out to dry if I didn't tell the truth. Finally, I just said I had no sleep and I was scared," said Rollins.

Police say they are now investigating how the case was handled by area two detectives at the time, as well as something else.

"Very recently, in responding to the charges and allegations of the lawsuit, we received documents which indicate there might have been a problem with the way the old Chicago crime lab handled cases," said Mara Georges, Chicago Corporation Counsel.

The city won't say what those documents reveal, who they are from, and what impact they may have on other cases involving the old Chicago police crime lab, which was taken over by state police in the mid-90's.

Right now, the corporation counsel says there are more questions than answers.

"That's what the OPS investigation is going to determine, to see if there was any wrongdoing by the crime lab back then. But you got to remember the science back then, DNA was not being used by the police department or the courts back then," said Supt. Phil Cline, Chicago police.

"It doesn't matter what the police department is currently saying, they had genetic markings. They knew how to run DNA tests on January 29 of 1993," said Robert Fioretti, Rollins' attorney.

Fioretti argues that there are others who have been wrongfully convicted and have the potential of being exonerated, as Rollins was, by DNA evidence.

Superintendent Cline says his department will now review a number of criminal cases going back through the early 90's and late 80's in which there could be questions about actual guilt. How many cases, and which ones have not yet been established.

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