Illinois Man Sues Police, Prosecutor For False Murder Conviction

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After spending more than two decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, an Evanston, Ill. man is pursuing justice against the police who he says framed him of the crime and beat him into making a false confession.

Frank Drew was convicted of a murder in 1998, and served 24 years of a 60-year prison sentence, according to Evanston Roundtable. He was released from prison in 2022, after two witnesses recanted their statements, and the state of Illinois dropped all charges against him in March 2024. 

Now that Drew is out, he has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Evanston, Illinois’ Cook County, a Cook County prosecutor, and eight officers in the Evanston Police Department.

“Evanston police knew Frank was innocent, and they didn’t care,” said attorney Alyssa Martinez, of legal firm Loevy + Loevy, in a statement. “They just wanted to close this case. They didn’t care what lies they had to tell to do it, they didn’t care who the real killer was, and they didn’t care that they were ruining our client’s life.”

Evanston Roundtable reported that the City of Evanston denied comment on pending litigation, and didn’t receive responses from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office or the officers who were named individually in the suit. (Two of the officers are deceased.)

In December 1996, a teenager named Ronald Walker was murdered in Evanston. According to a press release by Loevy + Loevy, witnesses described the assailant as a “chubby” Black man who held the gun in his left hand. A man named Gregory Boyd matched the description and was positively identified in lineups by seven witnesses, but was ultimately released from police custody. 

Evanston Roundtable reports that the case went cold until a year later, when an alleged gang member named Maurice Ruff was arrested on unrelated drugs and weapons charges, and pressured by police for information around Walker’s murder. Ruff implicated Frank Drew, who was 16 at the time, and another boy, Jeffrey Lurry. Lurry reportedly confessed to the crime after speaking with Ruff, under pressure because of Ruff’s gang leadership and because Ruff was dating Lurry’s sister.  

Drew turned himself into police after hearing that they were searching for him, and denied any involvement in the shooting. He didn’t match any of the witness descriptions, and wasn’t implicated by any of the physical evidence. Still, “eager to close the case,” according to the suit, “police coerced false witness statements implicating Plaintiff, fabricated police reports, and beat and interrogated Plaintiff for hours until they extracted a false confession.” The process includes an alleged 18-hour session where Drew was subjected to “verbal and physical abuse,” and being disallowed from calling his mother. He agreed to give a false confession, and was later convicted in 1998 when he was 18 years old.

In 2022, according to the lawsuit, “Ruff admitted, under oath, that he has no idea who killed Ronald Walker and he lied to secure a deal on his own charges and in response to improper police pressure. … For his part, Lurry also recanted, admitting that he falsely implicated himself and Plaintiff in response to improper police pressure.”

From here, Drew is looking to make sure everyone involved in his false conviction pays for their wrongdoing.

“This thing I had nothing to do with has stolen my whole adult life,” Drew said in the press release. “I want to move on, but I also want to make sure the people who did this to me are held accountable so this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

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