Eddie L. Bolden v. Angelo Pesavento, et al.

Chicago, Illinois personal injury lawyers represented the Plaintiff who sue on civil rights violation theories claiming that he was wrongfully charged, convicted, and incarcerated.



Bolden was arrested in February 1994 for the murders of Irving Clayton and Derrick Frazier and the attempted murder

of Clifford Frazier. A jury found him guilty in October 1996, and he was sentenced to life in prison. After Bolden filed a

petition for postconviction relief, the Illinois courts vacated his conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel and ordered a new trial. The State voluntarily dismissed the charges against him on April 19, 2016; Bolden was released

the same day. In total, Bolden spent over 22 years in prison.



Bolden sued the City and several police officers in January 2017, alleging that his arrest and wrongful conviction violated

the Constitution and state law. His trial was originally slated for November 2019 but ran into several delays. First, his case was reassigned to Judge Seeger in September 2019, who rescheduled the trial date for July 2020. Then this date fell

through when the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shutdown of all civil trials in 2020. Bolden's trial ultimately took place in

October 2021.



In his closing argument, Bolden's counsel urged the jury to award $44 million in compensatory damages—quantified

as "a million dollars for what they took and a million dollars for what they made him endure,” adding up to "$2 million for

each of those 22 years” Bolden had spent incarcerated. He stressed that this amount was only a starting point that

"doesn't even count how his life going forward has been forever changed” by the Defendants' conduct. The court instructed the jury that, upon a finding of liability, it should assess compensatory damages as "the physical and mental and

emotional pain and suffering” and "loss of normal life” that Bolden "has experienced and is reasonably certain to experi-

ence in the future.”

The jury found in Bolden’s favor on all claims and awarded him $25 million in compensatory damages plus $100,000 in punitive damages against each of the two living individual Defendants. After resolving the parties’ post-trial motions, the district court entered a final judgment on September 30, 2022.



Dolden moved to amend the judgment and add $7,629,466.51 in prejudgment interest. He calculated this amount as the total interest incurred from the date his sentence was vacated (April 19, 2016) through the entry of final judgment, compounded monthly at the average prime rate over this period of 4.13%. The district court granted his mo- tion, awarding Bolden the full amount requested. Defendants now appeal



Reversed in part with instruction apportion past and future damages.