We have another large settlement involving the Chicago Police Department this year. The Chicago police will pay $22.5 million to compensate a mentally-ill California woman who was released by police into a high-crime area where she was kidnapped and raped before she fell from the seventh floor of a public housing apartment building. Christina Eilman, 27, survived and will be given the largest settlement in Chicago’s history (the prior record was $18 million).
Eilman was arrested and held overnight after she was found behaving strangely at Midway Airport. She was having a bipolar meltdown. She continued to display obvious signs of mental illness when the police simply released the former UCLA student into the high-crime neighborhood around the Wentworth District police station. She was wearing short shorts and a cut-off top and was near the exceptionally dangerous Robert Taylor homes project.
The fall from the building left her with a devastating brain injury and several broken bones, including a shattered pelvis. She now requires around-the-clock care .
While the city argued in court that she was viewed as competent, several officers to their credit testified under oath and said that the woman was clearly showing signs of mental illness. Other officers admitted that a supervisor ordered that she be taken to a hospital for evaluation but no car was available.
We have previously criticized Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez for extreme legal views in favor of the police. It appears that the Chicago Law Department shares the same tendency and fought hard to dismiss the case and leave the woman with nothing in damages.
The Chicago lawyers may have believed that they scored with a panel headed by conservative Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit. If so, they were wrong. In Paine v. Cason, 678 F.3d 500 (7th Cir. 2012), Easterbrook slammed the Chicago police and the arguments of the Cook County lawyers. The court recounted how the police ignored calls from her parents about her condition:
Eilman, 21 and in college, had been in an auto accident the previous year. She recovered physically but developed bipolar disorder, spending 37 days in a mental hospital. (Whether the accident caused the bipolar disorder or just aggravated an existing condition is not important.) Eilman failed to take prescribed psychotropic medicines and had relapses. Experts in this litigation concluded that, during May 5 to 8, 2006, Eilman was in an acute manic phase. She did not tell the police about her mental-health background, however, and was uncooperative after her arrest—sometimes refusing to answer questions, sometimes screaming, sometimes providing false or unresponsive answers. Phone calls from her mother and her stepfather told officers in Chicago that Eilman [**3] had bipolar disorder, but the officers did not believe the stepfather (they thought that the call was fake), and the officer who took the calls from Kathleen Paine, Eilman’s mother, failed to tell anyone else or record the information in Eilman’s file. While Eilman was in custody, some officers thought that she was just being difficult, some thought that she was on drugs (expert reports relate that methamphetamine could cause similar symptoms), some thought that she was no worse than the r
Easterbrook noted that anyone could see that she was in danger and speaks frankly about the dangers of a white young woman in a black neighborhood with a high crime rate (I can say that growing up in Chicago, one of my sisters was stopped while driving in one of these areas by an African-American police officer and told that the area was not safe for a white person to even drive through due to their race):
It was evening; the police station was close to the Robert Taylor Homes, a public-housing project with an exceptionally high crime rate; the police had not returned her cell phone, so she could not easily summon aid; she was lost, unable to appreciate her danger, and dressed in a manner that attracted attention (a cutoff top with a bare midriff, short shorts, and boots); and she is white and well off while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and thus a potential target for crime. Officer Pauline Heard saw Eilman standing, with a puzzled look, in the station-house’s parking lot. Heard pointed toward 51st Street.
The court said that the police showed no care or concern for this helpless individual:
They did not warn Eilman about the neighborhood’s dangers. They did not walk her to the nearest CTA station (parallel to driving Stevens to a phone), from which she could have reached a safer neighborhood in minutes. They did not drive her back to the airport, where she [**19] could have used her ticket to return to California. They did not put Eilman in contact with her mother, who had called the stationhouse repeatedly. Her mother could have called a car service to pick Eilman up and drive her to a hotel (or the airport), and told her to remain at the stationhouse until the car arrived. They did not even return Eilman’s cell phone, which she could have used to summon aid. They might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo. See Bowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616, 618 (7th Cir. 1982), which anticipated DeShaney but added that throwing someone into a snake pit would violate the due process clause.
Also named as defendants in the action were Chicago Police Sergeant David Berglind, Police Officers Teresa Williams and Pamela Smith and Detention Aides Sharon Stokes, Cynthia Hudson and Catonia Quinn as defendants in the lawsuit filed by Eilman’s parents.
The police charged a man in the rape. It appears that a crowd surrounded Eilman and she was led to a vacant apartment on the seventh floor. Several men demanded Eilman perform oral sex, but she refused and said that she would jump out the window if anyone laid a hand on her. Eventually, reputed gang member and convicted felon Marvin Powell entered the apartment and reportedly demanded that everyone else leave the apartment. He was convicted of abducting and sexually assaulting Eilman.
What is striking is how there is no indication of any disciplinary action taken against any officer for this calamity. Likewise, there is no criticism of the attorneys who fought to dismiss this case for six years. Six years of litigation that sought to deny all damages to this woman and the parents who will now have to care for her for life. That was done in the name of all Chicagoans. As a native Chicagoan, I feel nothing but shame and anger at the litigation efforts of the city.
In the meantime, a woman will require a lifetime of care and the citizens of Chicago will pay $22.5 million.
Source: Chicago Sun Times
SWM, Chicago needs a third party..the Elliot Ness Party.
Now the attorney can retire in comfort…. Suing the city of Chicago has better odds than the lottery….
Lunacy at work followed by inadequate blood money.
“There’s nothing in that rule requiring you to posture frivolous defenses, delay the process, or try to make people believe the impossible. You also have no duty to take ridiculous settlement positions in the hopes of starving out the opposition. You do have a duty to represent your client within the bounds of the undisputed facts and to avoid disputes where there are none. ”
I completely agree that a lawyer’s duty to zealously represent his or her client is bounded by the ethical rules. If you’re going to insinuate that the lawyer’s violated the rules of ethics, however, I would think it’s incumbent upon you to be specific and state what particular rule was violated and the bases for that assertion. You’ve suggested some actions that would be ethical violations, such as asserting frivolous defenses, but you haven’t backed those up with any facts. Do you believe Chicago’s lawyers in fact asserted frivolous defenses? If so, what were they and why do you believe they were frivolous?
The police have a great deal of contact with the mentally ill–they may not be able to do differential diagnosis, but they would know someone, generally speaking was psychotic and would be liable. Unfortunately, they usually are poorly trained and relieved to not have to spend time supervising teh mentally ill. Back in the day when i was a psychiatric tech, we had a lot of contact with police (bringing in people under evaluation for commitment, bringing in walk-aways who were commited or under guardianship) and the vast majority were more afraid and uncomfortable with their charges than we were, despite many of these people being quite psychotic. And, as far as I can tell, nothing much has changed.
Police, whether they’re in Chicago or Podunk notoriously cover for each other and don’t discipline unless there’s a grudge, and prosecutors willingly go along with this. Given that Prosecutors are usually grandstanders at election time, this is the kind of case that should stand in the way of the political career that many of them (including staff attorneys) usually want.
What mespo said, both times.
“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there.”
nick, The republicans live in the exurbs of Chicago. Maybe you could start a campaign to get them back into the city so there could be two parties but it might be difficult as the republican social policies don’t sell too well in cities. Maybe Joe Walsh could run for mayor. 😉
rafflaw, Come on!! Nothing changes in a city ruled exclusively by one party. Only the characters change. Often because many end up in Federal Prison. At least be intellectually honest.
This case made big news here in the Chicago area when it first happened and again with the news of the settlement. I am glad that the city has had to dig down very deep into its pockets to pay this settlement. Maybe the loss of the money will convince the City of Chicago and CPD that something has to change. Then again, maybe not.
Waldo:
“A lawyer’s duty is to zealously represent his or her client. ”
******************
There’s nothing in that rule requiring you to posture frivolous defenses, delay the process, or try to make people believe the impossible. You also have no duty to take ridiculous settlement positions in the hopes of starving out the opposition. You do have a duty to represent your client within the bounds of the undisputed facts and to avoid disputes where there are none. Defense guys forget that sometimes since reality is sometimes an inconvenient truth when your client has really screwed things up.
A lawyer’s duty is to zealously represent his or her client. The professor should know and support that instead of condemning the Chicago attorneys who defended the case.
Bipolar or not, the police should not release anyone into a dangerous neighborhood.
Hurt their wallet, and hopefully change will come about.
Many Chicago cops look upon contacts w/ citizens to hit them up for cash. There obviously was no way to make some bribe money on this so, “f@ck her”. Releasing this woman near the Robert Taylor Homes[Those are the high rises across the Dan Ryan from Comiskey for those who just have driven through Chicago] is not just heartless, it’s souless. This is a city ruled by one party for generations. They take care of the north shore, Magnificent Mile, and to hell w/ everyone else.
There is still a great deal of stigma surrounding mental illness. As well as ignorance. Medications are not a panacea as I have gone into episodes while in compliance with my medications. Some police officers have referred to me as an NHI, No humans involved I’m well educated and come from a good family. I’ve been punched in the face for no good reason by cops. I could go on and on. I hate this disorder. I’m stable now but I probably will Go eat fact to it again in the future. This disorder derailed my life. Not to mention the fact that while I’m in an episode the people around me Have to endure some pretty crazy behavior coming from me– and that’s putting it euphemistically. Unfortunately, what happened to this poor young woman is not uncommon, at least with regard to the rape & the utter lack of concern of the police.
How would the cops know if someone was bi-polar? Doctors cant agree on what that hyphenated word means. Bears cant agree on it. Usually it is a term employed by a doctor to describe a psychotic diagnosis but is used to take the sting off of it. In a rich suburb you get the bi polar appellation and in the inner city you get the psychotic or schizophrenia word.
If she is suing the cops for throwing her to the wolves when they knew that she was psycotic and defenseless then she should call it that. If does not help her case for her lawyers to be labeling her “bi polar”. Bi polar is generally used to denote someone who might be depressed at one period and then later manic or very mentally active at another. In between the two they are normal. So, was she very depressed when they put her in harms way, or very active or normal. If one is bi polar then one could be in any of the three status descriptions. Maybe they let her loose into harms way when she was normal.
Sociopaths, no empathy for others and apparently no fear of the consequences of their actions and I am talking about the police. 22 million will never give this wome back her life or her parents their daughter. It is not enough to teach Chicago a lesson. The police officers involved should lose their jobs and pensions and be prosecuted if possible and spend some time in jail.
I guess no humans were working at the station-house that night — or in the offices of the defense attorneys.
We have some ‘sick’ people in this world. I don’t know who is more ‘sick’ the loser convicted of the rape and beating or the police officers\cook county attorney\city of chicago leaders trying to protect their image or lack thereof.
This is quite sad…. I guess in some localities it’s business as usual…..