Out of Prison and Broke, Wrongly Convicted Sell Their Cases

The proliferation of litigation funding in the U.S. has extended to civil rights claims brought by the wrongly convicted. Some funders are willing to provide exonerees as much as $1 million in upfront cash. Recently, Chicago-based exoneree Charles Johnson received $226,000 from Illinois after serving 22 years for a crime he didn’t commit. With funding from Validity Capital (at their cost of capital) and represented by his lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis, he was able to successfully sue the City of Chicago and its police department in 2018.