Former federal prosecutor Dan Webb was commissioned to investigate the city’s Federal Civil Rights Litigation Division by Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel following the resignation in January of Jordan Marsh, a former senior city attorney sanctioned for concealing evidence in a police shooting case. After more than six months of investigating the division, Mr Webb has made more than 50 recommendations for cleaning up the city’s law department – but has cleared city attorneys of intentional misconduct relating to evidence. ‘I found evidence that mistakes were made in discovery and sometimes documents did not get produced. But I found no evidence that there was any systematic or planned system to conceal evidence,’ he concluded.

Mistakes, not misconduct

Chicago City Hall’s civil rights lawyers have long been the subject of scrutiny, with many accusing the city’s attorneys of intentionally hiding incriminating evidence in cases relating to police misconduct. Mr Marsh’s case was one of six since 2012 in which courts have disciplined city officials for failing to produce documents in discovery or not producing them quickly enough. With a team of nine lawyers from his firm Winston & Strawn, Mr Webb was tasked with scrutinising 75 ‘sample’ cases handled by city civil rights attorneys over the last five years from a total pool of around 1,800 cases, the majority of which pertain to allegations of police misconduct. Chicago City Hall corporation counsel Steve Patton has promised to commit more funds and training resources to discovery in light of Mr Webb’s review findings.

Lawyers skeptical

Despite the findings, civil rights attorneys who regularly file police brutality cases in Chicago have been quick to question Mr Webb’s conclusions. ‘It strains credulity in the extreme. It’s absurd,’ said attorney Jeffrey Granich to ABC News. ‘When you make a mistake once, it is an error. When you do it again and again and again, it’s a systematic practice.’

Sources: Associated Press (via ABC News); Chicago Tribune