Brian Towne v. Karen Donnelly, et al.

Chicago, Illinois personal injury lawyers represented Plaintiff, who sued Defendants for violating his civil rights.



Brian Towne, the former State's At-

torney for LaSalle County, Illinois, defeated criminal charges

against him when an Illinois court ruled that the proceedings,

which had idled for about two years, violated his right to a

speedy trial. In the wake of that decision, Mr. Towne brought

this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Pertinent to this appeal, he

alleged that State's Attorney Karen Donnelly, with the aid of

assistant state's attorneys and police investigators, had pros-

ecuted him in retaliation for his previous campaign for state's

2 No. 21-2469

attorney and, in so doing, had violated his First Amendment

rights. The district court dismissed the complaint as untimely.

The court ruled that the two-year statute of limitations for

Mr. Towne's First Amendment retaliation claim had expired.

The court explained that the limitations period had begun to

run when he was indicted, not when he was acquitted.

Because our precedent establishes that a First Amendment

retaliation claim such as Mr. Towne's accrues when the un-

derlying criminal charge is brought, and because the Supreme

Court's decision in McDonough v. Smith, 139 S. Ct. 2149 (2019),

has not disturbed that conclusion.



* * *



Mr. Towne served as the LaSalle County State's Attorney

from 2006 until 2016. During his tenure, Mr. Towne encoun-

tered Karen Donnelly in three situations. First, Ms. Donnelly

worked as a legal intern with the State's Attorney's Office in

2012. During the internship, she impermissibly accessed a file

about the ongoing prosecution of her son, and Mr. Towne

locked the file to prohibit her continued access to it. Second, a

few years later, Ms. Donnelly applied for a position with the

State's Attorney's Office, and Mr. Towne did not hire her. Fi-

nally, Ms. Donnelly ran against and defeated Mr. Towne in

the 2016 election for State's Attorney.



Soon after taking office, Ms. Donnelly launched an inves-

tigation into Mr. Towne's conduct as State's Attorney. She

claimed to suspect him of criminal acts during his tenure in

office; Mr. Towne alleges that the inquiry "was wholly politi-

cal and motivated by personal animosity towards” him.1

Ms. Donnelly enlisted assistant state's attorneys and police

officers for the City of Ottawa to help with an investigation.

Over the next seven months, they interviewed witnesses, con-

cealed exculpatory portions of the interviews, and fabricated

inculpatory testimony.2

Based on this allegedly fabricated evidence, a grand jury

indicted, and Mr. Towne moved to have a special prosecutor

appointed in the case. The state court granted the motion, but

the special prosecutor did not act on the charges against

Mr. Towne. After ten months with no development,

Mr. Towne moved to dismiss the charges on the ground that

the prosecutorial inaction violated his right to a speedy trial.

The trial court granted the motion in August 2019 and dis-

missed all criminal charges against him.



* * *



See: http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2022/D08-11/C:21-2469:J:Ripple:aut:T:fnOp:N:2917013:S:0

For the reasons set forth in this opinion, the judgment of

the district court is affirmed.

AFFIRMED