$22.5 Million Verdict Arrives Too Late for Wrongfully Convicted Illinois Prisoner
On August 8, 2024, the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois entered judgment for the estate of a former state prisoner after a jury awarded $22.5 million in damages for 22 years he spent wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.
The verdict arrived too late for the prisoner, William Amor, who died in January 2024 before the case went to trial. During those proceedings, the Court heard that Amor was convicted of events that occurred on September 10, 1995, at his home in Naperville. At the time he was 39 and living in a condominium with his 18-year-old wife, Tina, and her disabled mother, Marianne Miceli, who owned the condo. That evening, Amor and Tina went to a drive-in movie. Less than 20 minutes after they left, Miceli called 911 to report a fire and said that she had no means of escape. She subsequently died from smoke inhalation.
The resulting investigation quickly pointed towards money as a motive for arson, after close family friend Marilyn Glisson told detectives that she overheard Amor and Tina talking about a life insurance policy that needed to remain in place. She further stated that Amor was manipulative, used others for money, and that he controlled Tina. Amor then became suspected of setting the fire, though its origin was initially declared undetermined. He was arrested on an outstanding DeKalb County warrant on September 15, 1995.
Upon his release 18 days later, his wife served him with divorce papers, and Naperville police detectives whisked him away for a marathon 15-hour interrogation. Amor alleged that during the interrogation detectives fed him details of the crime and physically threatened him if he did not tell them what happened. Amor subsequently wrote a written statement, confessing that he spilled vodka on a newspaper and knocked a lit cigarette on top of it before he and Tina left—even though he knew that a fire was likely to result. Many of those statements were repeated in a taped statement given to the prosecutor.
The cause of the fire was changed to arson. Amor was charged with aggravated arson and first-degree murder. A jury convicted him on all charges in 1997, and the trial court sentenced him to 45 years in prison for the murder, plus another 20 years for the arson.
When the Illinois Innocence Project (IIP) took up the case in 2012, it found that “junk science” had plagued arson investigations for many years. Among the facts that rigorous new science had demonstrated was that dropping a lit cigarette on a stack of vodka-soaked newspapers would not start a fire. Based upon that, Amor’s conviction was vacated on April 6, 2017, by an Illinois circuit court that found his confession was “scientifically impossible.”
The state retried Amor, but he was acquitted on all charges at a February 2018 trial. He applied for a Certificate of Innocence, which would pave the way for reparations. But a state court denied his petition because he had confessed, thereby bringing about his own conviction “voluntarily.” Represented then by attorneys from the IIP and the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, as well as the Chicago office of Cozin O’Conner, Amor filed a civil rights complaint seeking redress for the 22 years spent imprisoned after his wrongful conviction from Naperville and three of its former detectives: Michael Cross, Robert Guerrieri, and Brian Cunningham.
After Amor’s death, the trustee of his estate, Jeanne Olson, was substituted as Plaintiff. The case proceeded to a hearing on January 30, 2024, on Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, which was granted as to claims that they fabricated evidence and engaged in malicious prosecution. However, the motion was denied as to Amor’s eight other claims, including coercing his confession, engaging in civil conspiracy to violate his civil rights and failing to intervene to prevent the violation, plus a claim against the City for supervisory liability. See: Olson v. Cross, 714 F. Supp. 3d 1034 (N.D. Ill. 2024).
The case then proceeded to trial, at the conclusion of which the jury made its award, which included fees and costs for Olson’s attorneys: Jon Loevy, Locke Bowman, Tara Thompson, and Alyssa Marinez of the civil rights firm Loevy & Loevy in Chicago.
“The biggest regret in all of this is that [Amor] didn’t get to live to see justice,” Loevy said. “You know, this trial really proved what happened to him. It really proved that his rights had been violated in a way that he didn’t ever fully understand. So, I do regret that he didn’t get to watch the final chapter.” See: Olson v. Cross, USDC (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:18-cv-02523.
Additional source: Chicago Tribune
Related legal case
Olson v. Cross
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:18-cv-02523 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Jury Verdict |