Family members of incarcerated people call on State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to investigate convictions related to former CPD detective
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Family members who say their loved ones were wrongfully convicted due to misconduct by a former Chicago police detective on Tuesday called on Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to launch an investigation and take steps to undo the convictions.
The family members, who were joined by activists and attorneys at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, called for justice for incarcerated family members whose cases were investigated by Sgt. Brian Forberg. A Chicago Police Department spokesperson said Forberg retired effective Oct. 10.
“We’re tired,” said Lakisha Jackson, whose brother Kevin is serving a 45-year murder sentence. “We want all this put behind us today.”
In a statement, the state’s attorney’s office said it reviews “matters individually based on all available evidence and the law in our effort to rebuild trust in our justice system.”
“We understand the concerns of the community and will continue to fight for the best and fairest outcomes for every resident,” the statement said.
Reached by phone, Forberg said he had no comment.
The attorneys and activists released an open letter to Foxx and other officials that named more than a dozen people with convictions they said are connected to Forberg, who has been accused in court documents across a number of cases of pressuring witnesses into false testimony.
The letter also raised concerns of conflicts of interest in the state’s attorney’s office related to Forberg’s marriage to an assistant state’s attorney in the Conviction Integrity Unit. A number of cases related to the detective are being handled by special prosecutors.
“Kim Foxx, I voted for you from the time that you started,” said Norma Scales, aunt of a man who has accused Forberg of framing him. “Please step up before you step out.”
The family members invoked longtime systemic misconduct at the Police Department, stating that Chicago communities are still feeling the impact of officers such as Jon Burge, the notorious ex-Chicago police commander, who along with his “midnight crew” of detectives systemically tortured confessions from Black men; Ronald Watts, who has been accused of systematically framing people at the former Ida B. Wells public housing complex on the South Side; and Reynaldo Guevara, who has also been accused of framing suspects.
For Forberg, the allegations of misconduct center around his alleged treatment of witnesses.
In Kevin Jackson’s case, he was convicted of shooting and killing a man and injuring another at a gas station in 2001, though several witnesses recanted their testimony. One witness who was at the gas station said investigators, who included Forberg, threatened that she’d be detained and would have her baby in custody, according to court records.
In a 2021 Supreme Court decision, the court denied Jackson the right to file a post-conviction petition, but still raised concerns about the allegations of police misconduct in the case.
“I write separately because I am deeply troubled by the recurrence of complaints of serious misconduct by police officers against witnesses and defendants in criminal cases,” Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville wrote in a concurring opinion. “Such allegations call for corrective action to ensure that the methods employed by police in the investigation and prosecution of criminal offenses are both fair and appropriate.”
Neville wrote that prosecutors have “an obligation to investigate those allegations to ascertain whether the statements and grand jury testimony identifying petitioner as the offender were the product of witness intimidation or coercion.”
“I do not believe that prosecutors can sit idly by and allow serious complaints of witness intimidation and coercion to go uninvestigated,” he wrote.
Jackson is still fighting his conviction, and on Tuesday filed a motion for a court to vacate his conviction. The motion says prosecutors are not opposing it.
