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Savory Seeks Civil Damages From Peoria

Johnnie Lee Savory who maintains police coerced him into making a false confession to a double murder is suing the city of Peoria, its police department and a number of police officers.

 

Attorneys for Johnnie Lee Savory filed the civil suit Wednesday in federal court in Chicago. The suit asserts Peoria police coerced a false confession from Savory when he was 14 after 31 hours of "abusive and illegal interrogation." It also claims the city destroyed evidence and that recent DNA testing rules out Savory as a suspect.

 

Former Governor Pat Quinn pardoned Savory in January 2015 as one of his lasts acts in the office. The National Registry of Exonerations lists Savory as exonerated in 2015 based on DNA testing. Savory's legal team says the exoneration allows Savory to file the civil suit for damages against the city and individual officers. Some questions remain about Savory's legal status as to whether he is positioned as pardoned or exonerated and whether Illinois law even includes exoneration in its legal framework.

 

Savory is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the nearly 30 years he spent in prison for the killings of 19-year-old Connie Cooper and her brother 14-year-old James Robinson.

 

The suit names 17 individual police officers, including Charles Cannon, Marcella Teplitz, Russell Buck , John Fiers, Charles Bowers, John Stenson, George Pinkney, E. Haynes, Walter Jatkowski, Glen Perkins, Allen Andrews, Harold Marteness, Mary Ann Dunlavey, Carl Tiarks, Peter Gerontes, and John Timmes as well as the Peoria Police Department, Dennis Jenkins, and the city of Peoria. 

 

The https://vimeo.com/199064474">video of the full press conferenceWednesday, January 11, 2017 in Chicago of the Johnnie Lee Savory federal civil rights damage lawsuit against the City of Peoria and the numerous Peoria Police Officers. 

The pdf of the lawsuit.