Attorneys for Johnnie Lee Savory, who, at the age of 14, was wrongfully convicted of a double murder that he did not commit, have today filed a civil rights damages suit against the City of Peoria and numerous Peoria police officers. The suit alleges that these officers, acting jointly,repeatedly violated Savory’s constitutional rights while framing him for these crimes despite having no credible evidence to support the charges that they brought against him. It alleges that the police defendants subjected Johnnie to an unconstitutional police interrogation lasting 31 hours which was physically and psychologically coercive, that they unconstitutionally coerced witnesses into giving false testimony against him, and that they unconstitutionally suppressed and destroyed evidence that would have exonerated him. The suit further asserts that the physical evidence which was not destroyed further established that Savory was innocent, and that the police ignored and suppressed evidence that pointed to other more likely suspects. The suit also names the City of Peoria for having policies, practices and customs that caused the wholesale violation of Savory’s constitutional rights.
The suit also sets forth how profoundly his wrongful conviction and illegal imprisonment impacted Savory’s life. In 1977, at the age of 14, Johnnie was charged with killing his best friend and his best friend’s sister, and faced the death penalty. Despite his innocence, he was convicted, labeled as the worst kind of violent criminal, and sentenced to 50 to 100 years in the penitentiary. Finally, 30 years later, at the age of 44, he was released on parole, and had to fight for another eight years before he received a pardon from the Governor. Having lost his youth and young adulthood to dehumanizing prison life, Johnnie has nonetheless devoted himself since his release to giving support to other wrongfully convicted prisoners, and to starting his own family. While Johnnie knows that no amount of money can fully compensate him for what he has lost, he believes that this lawsuit will bring him some measure of long delayed justice.
