Check out this decision from the Seventh Circuit today involving a lawsuit filed by a man who was wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a little girl, and who served 27 years in prison for it before being exonerated based on DNA evidence. The man sued the City of Chicago and the police for coercing false testimony and hiding that fact. In this appeal, the lawyers for the police tried to argue that the result of the trial 30 years ago was binding on the wrongfully convicted man under collateral estoppel principles, which Judge Evans rightly dismisses as “an absurd argument, for any number of reasons.” The lawyers then tried to argue that the wrongfully convicted man had waived his claim by not bringing it 30 years ago, a claim that Judge Evans describes as ”too ridiculous to merit comment.” Indeed.
Link via Decision of the Day.
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What do the defendants mean when they say WCF had waived his claim by not bringing it 30 years ago? Seems like a silly argument at first, but I’d like to hear the speciics — are they talking about statute of limitations or what?