Black Man Rapes White Girl

Too many cherry-red flags in '02 trial of poor, black human.

By: Mary Mitchell, Chicago Dominicus-Times: June 17 th, 2007

Carl Chatman is the man who was convicted for raping a woman in the Daley Eye on May 24, 2002. He was picked upwardly six blocks from the crime scene and fifteen hours later dictated a confession that was handwritten past a prosecutor.

It took jurors just 30 minutes to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt even though there was no saliva, no semen, no blood and no hair found on the victim. His judgement totaled 1 year for every infinitesimal the jury deliberated. Today, Chatman is in a mental wing at the Dixon Correctional Center.

That could be the terminate of the story.

Simply it turns out, unbeknownst to the jury, the Daley Heart rape victim reported a similar rape at 625 N. Michigan 26 years ago. Although the alleged assailant – a Polish immigrant who worked as a janitor in the building – fled the country and was never prosecuted – two years later, the rape victim sued four entities: the edifice's owner, the direction company, the janitorial company and the security company.

That case settled for an undisclosed amount of money.

Accuser's history of lawsuits

From one accused alone, the rape victim asked for a judgment in the corporeality of $1,000,000 and castigating damages in the amount of $250,000, claiming that she "had incurred great pain and suffering both physically and emotionally" and has been unable to "attend to her usual pursuits and occupation."

In 2002, before Chatman was convicted, the rape victim filed another multimillion dollar civil adapt, this time against the Public Building Commission, Cook County, the Cook County sheriff, and four other entities, including the security company. Only jurors were barred from hearing nigh that lawsuit.

"We were literally walking to the bench when the land's attorney made an oral motion which precluded me from asking the witness about whatsoever civil actions," said Thomas Brandstrader, the attorney who represented Chatman in the criminal trial. "I didn't know virtually the earlier ceremonious suit until after the conviction."

The fact that both sexual assaults occurred during early forenoon hours when no ane was effectually and happened in downtown role buildings is either a tragic coincidence or a miscarriage of justice.

"I would wholeheartedly agree with latter," Brandstrader told me.

Evidently Chatman, who started suffering from mental disease after he was discharged from the military, had been at the Daley Center 4 days before the rape and wandered into the courtroom where the victim worked. When he appeared to be lost, she made a phone telephone call in an effort to help him locate another courtroom.

Chatman was definitely memorable.

He was disheveled, smelly, muddy and was wearing a "Blackhawks jacket" – the aforementioned jacket he had on when he was stopped by a traffic cop who thought Chatman fit the rapist's description. Chatman was taken into custody after he told the officer that he had picked up a "Rules of the Road" book from the Daley Center.

Fits profile of wrongfully convicted

During a subsequent lineup, the rape victim was then confident about his identification, a police officer had to circumspection her to view anybody earlier picking out Chatman.

Unfortunately, the 47-year-old homeless veteran fits the profile of other men who have been wrongfully convicted of rape.

He is black. He is poor. And he is accused of raping a white woman.

Of those exonerated subsequently a rape confidence, 85 percent were black men accused of assaulting a white woman, while black men are accused in 33.6 percent of rapes or sexual assaults of white women, according to a recent commodity published in the Washington Post.

"What it says to me is that, ultimately, if you are a black human being charged with sexually assaulting a white woman, the likelihood that you will be convicted, fifty-fifty if you are stone-cold innocent, is much, much college," Peter J. Neufeld, a co-director of the Innocence Project, told the Post.

Bluntly, had jurors known about the earlier rape allegation and civil suit, they would have had to inquire themselves a tough question: Why would a woman who had been traumatized past a rape at 7 a.m. in an empty office edifice take the aforementioned gamble 26 years later?

Lack of physical evidence

Lawyers specializing in civil rights cases likewise are asking questions.

"How was he able to sneak out of the edifice?" asked Russell Ainsworth, an attorney with Loevy & Loevy. "We watched the security record from half dozen:30 a.m. to viii:20 am. The criminal offence was reported inside 10 minutes of the occurrence, and the edifice went immediately on lockdown" he pointed out.

There are several other troubling aspects to the case.

For instance, Carl Chatman allegedly told prosecutors that he "peed" in a cup and tossed it in the wastebasket at the law-breaking scene. Although evidence technicians went through the criminal offence scene with a fine-tooth comb, no loving cup was found and no fluid belonging to Chatman was ever identified.

Ainsworth likewise is concerned almost some of the language used in Chatman's confession. For example, he described the victim'south blouse as "burgundy."

"I don't know of whatever man who would draw the colour of a shirt as burgundy," Ainsworth said.

Last week, the insurance visitor for the Public Building Committee, one of the defendants in the ceremonious suit related to the second rape, agreed to settle the victim's merits.

"This woman is trying to brand a lot of money off of six unlike pockets," Ainsworth said. "Y'all sue six people with 6 dissimilar insurance companies. The strategy is not to go to trial."

Sent to psychological ward

His firm is working pro bono to get Chatman a new criminal trial, although it is also within the ability of the state'due south chaser's office to vacate the confidence.

Brandstrader, Chatman's trial attorney, too argues that Chatman's mental illness prevented him from understanding what was going on when he was in police force custody and confessed to the crime.

"Doctors examined him and they concluded that if he was not taking medication in that location was no mode that he understood (what was going on when he was in custody)" Brandstrader said. "And there's no indication that Carl was taking whatever meds when he was arrested."

Twenty-four hours after giving a confession, Chatman was bars to a psychological ward at Melt County Jail.

Sister vows to fight for new trial

Despite the alarming rate at which confessions — when given in the absence of corroborating testify — have after proved to be faux, and even though the dr. who examined the victim testified he could non find prove that she had been sexually assaulted, the jury returned a swift guilty verdict.

"He was given xxx years in prison for a Course X felony. This is a guy who had no record of felony convictions," Brandstrader pointed out. "What exercise you give a guy who violently cuts up women?" he asked.

The suspect in the 1979 case didn't try to defend himself against the rape accuse.

A Smoothen immigrant, who spoke only a couple of words of English, he fled the country before going to trial. Merely he left behind a note for his sister in which he vigorously proclaimed his innocence, saying the charge had "ruined his life."

Chatman'due south sister, Theresa Chatman, has vowed to fight for a new trial for the brother she calls "Chattie."

"What I see is a black man being unfairly bedevilled of raping a white adult female," she said. "I'thousand certain prosecutors phone call themselves doing the metropolis a service past picking upwards a homeless human being and getting him off the street," she said.

"Little did they know, I am non going to go anywhere until my blood brother is let get."

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