A settlement is in the works in the civil rights case former Ottawa fire fighter Ken Cusick filed against Ottawa police, LaSalle County, and others. A court document filed Thursday says the parties have reached a settlement in principle and need a few weeks to finalize the language.
Cusick says he was framed for murder 11 years after his wife’s death. A grand jury approved the charge in February 2017. A trial jury found him not guilty in December 2019. He’d been accused of drowning Tracy Cusick by forcing her face into a toilet bowl. A few months later, Cusick brought a federal case against several people involved in the investigation and prosecution.
In the years after Tracy Cusick’s 2006 death, her friends and family kept up the pressure to bring her killer to justice. Police eventually exhumed her body in the search for previously overlooked clues. The investigators believed she couldn’t have drowned in a toilet by herself. They said a person by herself would have to stay conscious to keep her face deep enough in the bowl. Unconscious, her weight would settle so that her face came out of the water and she’d breathe again.
In his lawsuit, Cusick says former state’s attorney Karen Donnelly campaigned on a promise of prosecuting him and a false narrative cascaded into malicious prosecution, defamation, and emotional distress. Other defendants include current and former Ottawa police officers, former coroner Jody Bernard, and forensics experts. Also named were “unidentified employees of the city of Ottawa and the county of LaSalle”.