Man sues detectives, city over wrongful conviction
Judge ruled his rights violated in interrogation
Another wrongful conviction and long prison sentence have led to another multi-million claim against the City of Milwaukee.
Ladarious Marshall can’t get back 12 years of his young life, so he’s instead seeking $12 million in a lawsuit.
Marshall, 29, has sued the city and four police officers over a 2008 homicide conviction that was later thrown out because of how detectives handled his interrogation.
Marshall was 16 at the time and was charged as an adult in 2008 with firstdegree intentional homicide for the fatal shooting of Lavare Gould, 19, in Milwaukee. He confessed to a reduced charge of second-degree reckless homicide and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In 2020, a federal judge ruled detectives violated Marshall’s rights by continuing to interrogate him after he repeatedly invoked his right to remain silent. The judge ordered him to be released from prison if prosecutors didn’t restart the case against him within 90 days.
Instead, the state asked that Marshall’s conviction and sentence be vacated, and dismissed the case.
According to the lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee:
Two months after Gould’s slaying, police had no leads on a suspect. Then a man arrested on an unrelated case gave them conflicting information about Gould’s case, implicating Marshall and others.
Detectives arrested Marshall at his grandmother’s house, where he lived, at 7 a.m. After hours alone in a windowless room, he met detectives Gust Petropoulos and Michael Braunreiter.
Marshall said he didn’t want to make a statement, but the detectives kept asking questions and making comments laced with what they knew about the Gould case. Marshall, who had a learning disability, repeatedly stated he did not wish to speak with the detectives.
At one point, they falsely told Marshall they had spoken to his grandmother and she hadn’t corroborated his alibi.
During a break after a first interrogation, around 2 p.m., Marshall asked someone outside the room what was happening. Detectives used that as an excuse to start questioned Marshall again, according to the complaint.
That lasted another two hours, during which Marshall began answering some questions.
Later, while being interviewed separately by Braunreiter, and then by two other detectives, Matt Goldberg and Timothy Heier, Marshall said he’d been at the scene and fired a gun the first informant gave him, but not at Gould.
His attorney, Scott Rauscher of Lovy & Lovy in Chicago, has said Marshall did not kill Gould.
Around 6 p.m., Marshall was allowed to make a phone call, but couldn’t reach his grandmother.
He raised the interrogation issues pre-trial, but his motions to suppress his statements were denied. He faced a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, and chose to plead guilty to seconddegree reckless homicide.
Marshall’s appeals also failed, until he filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal court.
His lawsuit says Marshall was sent to Green Bay Correctional Institute, which was “wholly unsuitable for a child and was plagued by violence, inadequate staff, overcrowding and dangerously obsolete infrastructure.” The lawsuit continued that Marshall “lived in constant fear of being attacked by fellow prisoners” at the facility.
Though his lawsuit doesn’t specify damages, his prior notice of claim to the city cited the amount of $12 million.
The lawsuit raises several claims, including violation of his Fifth Amendment rights to a lawyer and against self-incrimination, to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment
The lawsuit also accused the defendants of conspiring to deprive Marshall of his rights, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress and failure to intervene. It says the city should be held responsible for the officers’ conduct.
The City Attorney’s Office and Police Department do not comment on pending cases.