CHICAGO (AP) - An attorney says jurors in a civil rights case who awarded nearly $500,000 to a man serving life in prison for killing seven people should have been told details of the Chicago-area slayings.
James Degorski had claimed in his lawsuit that a Cook County jail guard beat him in 2002 after his arrest in the 1993 murders at a Brown’s Chicken and Pasta restaurant.
During a three-day trial that ended Friday, a U.S. judge in Chicago barred lawyers from mentioning details of the killings.
The restaurant’s owners and five employees were shot and stabbed. Their bodies were stacked in a walk-in cooler and freezer.
John Winters Jr. represented the former guard. He says jurors didn’t fully understand just “how vicious” Degorski was and that he was a “cold-blooded murderer.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.