JUSTICE
From Prison, Rico Clark Fights a Murder Conviction and COVID-19 Detectives on the 2006 case have been dogged by allegations of witness coercion BY STENDER VON OEHSEN AND MILAN RIVAS, INJUSTICE WATCH
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n September 24, 2006, nineteenyear-old Damion Kendricks was shot and killed in an alley near 76th and Dorchester in the Grand Crossing neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Witnesses said they saw four men with hoodies pulled over their heads running from the scene holding guns, according to police. Only one of the men named by witnesses, Rico Clark, was convicted of the crime, and sentenced to fifty-five years in prison. But Clark has maintained his innocence all these years. “It’s always on my mind what I’m doing locked up,” Clark told Injustice Watch during a phone call from prison. “Because I had nothing to do with this.” An Injustice Watch investigation found that the case against Clark included problems often seen in wrongful convictions, including allegations of police coercion, recanted witness statements, and inadequate defense. Two of the three witnesses who named Clark as the shooter recanted at trial, testifying that Chicago police detectives forced them to make statements. Detectives Brian Forberg and Kevin Eberle have a pattern of alleged misconduct, including allegations of evidence tampering and witness coercion, according to several civil lawsuits and pending appeals. Clark’s defense attorney was later disbarred for misconduct he admits was a result of alcoholism. And the judge in Clark’s case has faced his own legal troubles. Clark, who was nineteen at the time, was arrested for the murder in March 2007, barely a week after his daughter was born. Before his conviction, his family says he had a great sense of humor and enjoyed putting on rap shows with his brother Lester Owens. “All he talks about is trying to get home to his family and his child,” said Jasmine Smith, who is engaged to Owens. 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
“It’s always on my mind what I’m doing locked up. Because I had nothing to do with this.”
Now, his family and attorneys said, Clark has contracted COVID-19 in prison, while his latest post-conviction petition has been stalled by the court’s coronavirus slow-down.
‘Really weak case’
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here was no mention of Rico Clark when detectives Forberg and Eberle first interviewed witnesses on the night that Kendricks was shot, according to court records. Kendricks’ brother-in-law, Leroy Moore, told the detectives at the scene that he heard gunshots from inside his apartment a couple of blocks away, ran outside, and saw a man with braids running away and holding a gun. Later that night, Kevin Eson, who detectives interviewed at the police station, told them he had been walking and saw the victim with four men. Police said he told them two of the men carried guns, but he didn’t identify them. Authorities did not officially link Clark to the case until December 4, 2006. According to court records, Moore picked him out of a photo lineup administered by Detective Forberg. Two months later, police arrested Demetrius Murry for cannabis possession, and detectives questioned him about the murder. He pointed out Clark and Corey Manuel as the shooters and later identified them in a photo lineup. In March 2007, prosecutors took the case to a grand jury, which rendered indictments for murder against Clark, Manuel, and a third man, Marcellus French. Prosecutors dropped the charges against French, but Clark and Manuel went to trial in October 2009. No physical evidence linked them to the crime. “This was an all-identification case,”
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said Eric Bisby, one of Clark’s attorneys. Moore was the only witness who testified consistently with his written statement. The two other key witnesses changed their stories, testifying that their identifications were coerced by detectives Forberg and Eberle. Murry testified that he told detectives what they wanted to hear because he was afraid he would be sent back to prison for violating his parole with the marijuana charge. Eson also walked back the statement he signed for Forberg and an assistant state’s attorney implicating Clark, testifying that he agreed to sign the statement because he was eager to leave the station. Detective Forberg contested both those claims and testified that there was no coercion. Manuel was acquitted. But in October 2009, based largely on Eson and Murry’s initial statements and Moore’s testimony, the jury found Clark guilty. “It was really a weak case [against Rico], and you have a known detective who has engaged in misconduct,” said Jennifer Blagg, one of the attorneys representing Clark in his post-conviction petition. “That’s not grounds for establishing [guilt] beyond a reasonable doubt.”
‘Turning a blind eye to patterns’
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n the years after Clark’s conviction, the detectives who helped put him behind bars have been accused in multiple cases of alleged witness coercion and mishandled evidence, according to an Injustice Watch
review of civil lawsuits and court records. Forberg, a twenty-five-year veteran of the force, was named in a $3.4 million wrongful conviction lawsuit filed in 2011 by Maurice Patterson. Though Forberg’s role in his case was not explicitly stated, the lawsuit accused him and eight other officers of manipulating witnesses, fabricating evidence, and withholding DNA results in the 2002 investigation. Patterson was exonerated in 2010 after a previously withheld state lab report showed someone else’s DNA was found on the alleged murder weapon. The city settled with Patterson but did not admit fault. “I still feel broken,” Patterson told Injustice Watch in a phone call in late June. “[The settlement] didn’t make up for the time that I went through being wrongfully convicted.” In two other cases around the time of Clark’s arrest, alleged misconduct by Forberg and Eberle led prosecutors to drop serious charges, according to civil lawsuits filed by the defendants. In 2005, the detectives accused Terrance Lofton of robbing a Dunkin Donuts three separate times, according to a lawsuit he later filed. Lofton was held in jail for nearly three years, even after a man who matched the description of the robbery suspect was shot and killed by police in the middle of an armed robbery of a different Dunkin Donuts in the southwest suburbs. The owner of the Dunkin Donuts eventually told an assistant state’s attorney he had picked Lofton out of a lineup because Forberg told him Lofton was the
