An Evanston man who was exonerated last year after spending 24 years in prison for a 1996 murder is suing Evanston police, saying they coerced him into falsely confessing, as well as others, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Attorneys for Frank Drew, who was 16 at the time a fellow Evanston teen was murdered and is now 45 years old, have brought a federal civil rights lawsuit against the defendants, including eight then-members of the police department, Cook County and a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.
The suit asks a jury to award damages in recompense for Drew’s wrongful arrest and prosecution, and the near quarter century he spent in prison for a murder, according to his attorneys.
Spokespersons for the city of Evanston and the Cook County Chief Judge’s office said they could not comment on pending litigation. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Evanston Police Department, with the assistance of a prosecutor of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, ignored evidence pointing to a (different) suspect and, for reasons we don’t know yet, decided to pursue Frank Drew instead,” said Rachel Brady, one of Drew’s attorneys.
She said Evanston police interrogated Drew for 18 hours, beat him and coerced him into signing a false confession. He did so because he thought it would be the only way to end the abuse, she added.
The lawsuit names former Evanston police detectives Jeff Jamraz, James Hutton, Mark Kostecki, Carlos Mitchem, and John Howard, who all left the department or retired by 2015, and Lieutenant Charles Wernick, Sergeant Robert McCarthy and Commander Michael Gresham, who also no longer work for the Evanston police department. Additionally, it names the City of Evanston, Cook County and Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Steve Goebel.
The murder for which Drew was imprisoned took place on Dec. 12, 1996.
A teen named Ronald Walker was standing near the intersection of Church Street and Dodge Avenue in Evanston when two men approached him, according to the lawsuit. The men said something to him, then fired several gun shots, striking and killing him. The shooters then ran from the scene, and were witnessed by several people.
Per the lawsuit, witnesses told police that the shooter was “heavy set” and “chubby” and used his left hand to shoot, and they identified one 210-pound young man who fit that description in a lineup, who confessed his involvement, but police did not charge that young man.
Drew was 5’7″ and weighed 130 pounds at the time, and is not left-handed, according to the lawsuit.
“After (the 210-pound youth’s) release, the Walker murder investigation went cold,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit went on to say that in January 1998, a man named Maurice Ruff told Evanston police that Drew and another teen, Jeffrey Lurry, had killed Ronald Walker.
The police interrogated Drew for 18 hours, according to the lawsuit, which said police coerced and beat him until he signed a false confession.
“After hours of interrogation and physical abuse, Defendant (Evanston) Officers overcame Plaintiff’s (Drew’s) will, and he agreed to sign a false statement incriminating himself and adopting the information Defendants provided him,” the lawsuit states.
Drew and Lurry were tried together in the same case, but with separate juries, according to Brady. On March 15,1999, Drew was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison without parole, according to previous reporting and Drew’s law firm.
Brady said Drew started to petition for his exoneration without an attorney in 2002, and that he was later able to achieve it with assistance from the Exoneration Project, a free legal clinic with ties to the University of Chicago Law School.
In a May 2022 Cook County evidentiary hearing, Judge Anjana Hansen vacated Drew’s conviction and he was released from prison custody in June 2022. In March 2024, the charges against him were dropped.
At the 2022 evidentiary hearing, Judge Hansen noted no physical or forensic evidence tied Drew to the crime, nor did any witnesses identify him as being present at the murder scene. She also noted that Drew’s inculpatory statement (which his lawyers called a coerced confession) and Ruff’s accusation, which he later renounced, were the only trial evidence that tied Drew to the murder scene.
She also noted that Ruff had signed an affidavit saying he lied when he told police Drew had told him he was the murderer, that Drew had told him no such thing and he had no idea who murdered Ronald Walker.
Brady said Lurry is in the process of petitioning for exoneration.
When asked how much Drew is seeking in compensation, Brady said, “We ask juries to come up with an amount that they think would be appropriate to compensate a person for the enormous and indescribable loss that they have suffered for decades behind bars.”
She said it’s typical for juries to award between $1 million and $2 million for each year of wrongful incarceration, but that amount has also been growing. Brady said her firm won a $50 million wrongful conviction in the last year for a person that was incarcerated for 14 years.
“Juries are understanding the magnitude and the tremendous loss that these wrongful convictions cause, and it’s impossible to compensate someone for having to mourn the death of their little brother behind bars, and to mourn the loss of their childhood and their young adulthood,” she said.
Brady said that while Drew is exonerated, his charges are still on his record. She added that he was able to get a job and is trying to get his life back together and has a partner and a stepchild.
“Frank is wonderful,” Brady said when asked how he is doing. “He’s deeply traumatized by what has happened to him, in a way that I think that none of us could understand. But he’s positive, he has a positive outlook. He believes the best in people.”
Brady said Drew wants to one day be able to move to a rural area and have his own farm.
She said, “When you grow up in a relatively bustling community like Evanston… and (then) you’re in prison where it’s noisy all the time and they don’t ever turn out the lights, even at night… a quiet life on a big piece of land where you can see the stars would be very appealing.”
