Ezra Hill spent 31 months in the Cook County Jail awaiting a trial on attempted murder charges. The trial lasted only a day, and it took jurors 30 minutes to agree on a verdict: not guilty.
A federal jury awarded Hill $3 million last week for the more than two years he spent behind bars, finding that Harvey Police attempted to frame Hill in a 2014 drive-by shooting, said Paul Vickrey, one of Hill’s attorneys.
“(Hill) missed two and a half years away from his family, and spent that time in one of the worst parts of the jail, Division IX,” Vickrey said, noting Hill at one point needed 20 stitches to close a gash on his hand he suffered when another detainee tried to shank him.
“We’ll never know why (Harvey Police) targeted him. But we know they knew their narrative was false, and they took it to trial anyway.”
The award by the jury was more than the $2.5 million Hill’s lawyers had requested in their closing argument after a weeklong trial in federal court, Vickrey said. The attorney credited Hill’s emotional testimony about his two-plus years locked up ahead of trial, the first time he’d ever been in jail. Hill’s lawsuit stated that Hill had worked as a booking officer for the Harvey Police Department but was fired in 2008 after he was arrested on a gun charge that was later dropped by prosecutors.
Hill’s ordeal began when he loaned his car to two teens he knew from his work as a boxing coach and mentor, thinking the boys were going to drive the car around while trying to find work shoveling snow. Instead, the teens loaded the car with guns and opened fire on rivals riding in a stolen Honda Civic near the intersection of Center Avenue and East 146th Street around 10 a.m. on March 12, 2014.
The Civic crashed a few blocks away and the three teenagers were quickly arrested as they fled on foot. The teens in Hill’s car drove back to Hill’s house. Police arrived on Hill’s block within 20 minutes of the shooting and watched the two teens sitting in the driveway for several minutes before arresting them, as well. In the trunk, officers found a Benelli M4 semi-automatic shotgun.
The five all were held by Harvey Police for hours and allegedly pressured to identify Hill as one of the shooters, specifically to say that he had fired the shotgun at the Civic. Four teens recanted their testimony in subsequent statements to a grand jury; one teen testified at trial.
There was no physical evidence linking Hill to the crime. Harvey police did no testing on the shotgun, which was fully loaded when it was pulled out of the trunk and had not been fired, Vickrey said. No shotgun shells were found at the scene or inside Hill’s car, nor had any pellets struck the Civic.
Two years after Hill was released from jail after his acquittal, he and his 10-year-old son, Ezra Jr., were riding in a car near Hill’s home in Harvey when someone in another car opened fire on them. Ezra Hill Jr. was hit and died a few days later. No one has been arrested in Ezra Hill Jr.’s murder, Vickrey said.
A spokesman for the city of Harvey did not immediately respond to questions from the Sun-Times on Monday.
