
A man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering and sexually assaulting his own grandmother in Waukegan and sentenced to life has filed a federal lawsuit after being exonerated in the case.
Robert Melock, who was 22, was charged with raping and murdering his own 72-year-old grandmother, Augustine Melock, who had been found stabbed, strangled, and sexually assaulted in January 1989.
A jury sentenced Melock to death as prosecutors branded him “a lying, raping, murdering man” with no remorse during his first trial.
The conviction and sentence were reversed following an appeal and a judge in 1993 sentenced Melock to nearly 100 years in prison following a second trial.
“He doesn’t deserve light at the end of the tunnel,” prosecutors argued. “He doesn’t deserve hope.”
Melock did not give up hope and continued maintaining his innocence despite spending more than three decades of his life in prison.
His numerous appeals and requests for post-conviction relief were unsuccessful until 2023 when new evidence was presented showing the extent to which the Waukegan Police Department had “lied, manufactured evidence, and brutally coerced false statements” from Melock, according to the man’s attorneys.
The conviction was vacated in December 2023 and prosecutors dismissed all charges against him.
The Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit agreed in court that Melock’s constitutional rights were violated due to certain evidence being suppressed and destroyed and due to Melock being denied the opportunity to present evidence of the circumstances surrounding his interrogation.
Earlier this month, attorney Steve Art of Loevy + Loevy, a Chicago-based civil rights law firm, filed a federal lawsuit on Melock’s behalf.
The suit names the City of Waukegan, nine former officers of the Waukegan Police Department and the form John E. Reid and Associates as defendants.
John E. Reid and Associates is a corporation that provides interview and interrogation training to police forces around the world.
The firm had a contract to provide consultation to the Waukegan Police Department. Part of Melock’s interrogation was conducted by police and Reid employees at Reid’s Chicago offices.
The lawsuit alleges the interrogations were “brutal, relentless, and coercive,” employing some of the controversial techniques that John Reid developed.
The suit said police woke Melock from his bed in the early hours and proceeded to interrogate him for 17 hours straight, moving him from location to location in an effort to exhaust him.
When Melock continued to maintain his innocence, the officers and Reid employees subjected him to a polygraph test and pressed him with “repetitive and accusatory” questions about his grandmother’s murder and sexual assault.
The lawsuit said Melock continued to maintain his innocence and the officers lied to him and told him he failed the polygraph and they were “150%” certain he had committed the crime.
Attorneys say Melock was a vulnerable 22-year-old who had not been read his Miranda rights and had no attorney present.
“Though he continued to maintain his innocence, his interrogators eventually coerced him into signing a fabricated confession. The officers quickly realized that this first confession lacked sufficient details about the crime, and so they fabricated a second and forced him to sign that one as well,” the attorneys said in a statement.
The lawsuit said prosecutors at trial also presented evidence of a supposed spontaneous confession Melock gave to a fellow inmate, Susan Holloway, while in county jail the day after his interrogation.
Decades later attorneys discovered Holloway had never been in lockup with Melock. Another woman was, but she refused to implicate him.
Attorneys say there was never any physical or forensic evidence linking Melock to the crime. The suit alleges that the officers concealed or destroyed evidence that would have cleared him.
Attorney David Brodsky, who was an Assistant Public Defender for Lake County when he took Melock’s case in 1989, was enraged enough about the police tactics that he drew a contempt charge from the judge by referring to the polygraph test in his opening statements.
After Melock was sentenced to death, Brodsky stayed with the case through the appeal and the second trial, converting his client’s sentence from death to life.
Brodsky was named Chief Public Defender in 1997 and was appointed as a judge for the 19th Judicial Circuit in 2007.
After his retirement from being a judge in 2023, Brodsky took up the case again and helped Melock secure his exoneration.
“I am beyond thrilled to finally see Robert Melock released from prison and beginning to heal,” Brodsky said.
“It is long past due that the system that incarcerated him acknowledged Robert’s innocence, and that he receives some form of justice for what was done to him,” Brodsky said.
In 2015, the Waukegan Police Department and John Reid & Associates were sued and paid a $20 million settlement to Juan Rivera, who spent two decades in prison after being coerced into falsely confessing to the rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in 1992.
Rivera’s settlement at the time was the largest ever awarded to a single wrongful-conviction plaintiff in United States history.
At least four of the defendants named in the latest lawsuit — Lucian Tessmann, Donald Meadie, Richard Davis and Phillip Stevenson — were also involved in framing Juan Rivera, attorneys said.
“These cases are travesties of justice from any perspective,” said Art, who represents both Melock and Rivera.
“Just as they did with Juan Rivera, Waukegan and John Reid framed Bob Melock, an innocent man, and stole decades of his life. In doing so, these corrupt law enforcement officers let the men who really committed these horrendous crimes go free,” Art said.
“Bob Melock suffered immeasurable damage and was nearly killed by the state, but at the same time the people of Waukegan suffered as well, because their police department cared more about manufacturing phony convictions than catching rapists and murderers,” he added.