INDIANAPOLIS — Multiple Indianapolis police officers are being sued by a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 25 years for a murder he didn’t commit. The lawsuit claims IMPD officials framed the man and buried evidence that led to the real killer.
Leon Benson and Kolleen Bunch filed a lawsuit in Marion County earlier this month against three Indianapolis police officers. The pair are arguing the officers “railroaded” Benson into spending nearly 25 years of his life in a maximum-security prison for crimes he did not commit.
Benson, the first person to be exonerated by the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit, and Bunch, the sister of murder victim Kasey Schoen, filed the suit on May 8.
According to their attorneys, the pair are the “first known exoneree and victim’s family to file suit against officers” in a wrongful conviction case. Together, they are seeking “justice for the tragic damage” they say their families have endured since the murder of Schoen.
“It was an honor to represent Leon Benson in his long and hard-fought battle to freedom,” said Professor Lara Bazelon. “It is a double honor to represent Leon and Kolleen as they join forces to demand a reckoning for all that they have suffered — and most of all for Kasey Schoen, a young man who was brutally murdered 26 years ago, and to this day has been deprived of any semblance of justice.”
Benson was previously charged and found guilty in Schoen’s death. However, on March 8, 2023, his first-degree murder conviction was vacated in Marion County Superior Court.
The vacation came after a joint re-investigation by the University of San Francisco and the newly established Conviction Integrity Unit revealed that “significant evidence” pointing to another man as the real shooter was “buried in a police file by the lead detective.”
Schoen died around 3:30 a.m. on August 8, 1998, after being shot five times execution-style while sitting in his car, which was idling at a curb in the 1300 block of N. Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Indy. Schoen was white and the suspect was Black, police said.
No murder weapon was ever found and no fingerprints, DNA samples or other forensic linked to Benson were recovered at the crime scene. Furthermore, several witnesses placed Benson inside a building across the street when the shooting occurred.
Additionally, multiple leads in the investigation pointed to another suspect — Joseph Webster, who was already facing other unrelated criminal charges at the time. However, IMPD detectives reportedly zeroed in on Benson as a suspect after Webster declined to be interviewed by police.
The case against Benson ended up resting on the eyewitness testimony of two people — a frightened newspaper carrier who was standing 150 feet away and a neighborhood man with a history of mental illness who reportedly held a grudge against Benson.
Dakarai Fulton, another witness who was standing mere feet away from the murder and knew both Webster and Benson personally, told police that Webster was the shooter. Yet, Benson’s attorney failed to call Fulton to the stand during the murder trial.
“Leon’s case is, unfortunately, a classic example of law enforcement tunnel vision and outright misconduct,” said Professor Charlie Nelson Keever. “It’s bad enough that the police ignored, fabricated, and manipulated evidence to convict the wrong person 25 years ago, but their refusal to bring Kasey’s true killer to justice today — in the face of a growing mountain of evidence exonerating Leon and pointing to the person responsible — is deeply troubling.”
During the collaborative investigation between Benson’s defense team, professors and law students uncovered evidence that “pointed convincingly to Webster” as the suspect. Also, the team found that the second “eyewitness” was not in a location to actually see the murder.
“Other witnesses came forward who also implicated Webster, but didn’t tell the full truth at the time of trial because he bribed, threatened, or intimidated them,” Benson’s defense team argued.
After this evidence was presented and the conviction was vacated, Benson was finally able to walk free from the Indiana state prison in Pendleton, a prison where he had spent more than half his life, including 11 years in solitary confinement.
“Truth never dies,” Benson declared to the public. “It is only rediscovered.”
Now, both Benson and Schoen’s family are seeking justice in what their attorneys called the final chapter in their journey.
“This lawsuit seeks to obtain justice for Leon and his family, but also Kasey’s family, who deserve justice for the unfathomable damage caused by Defendants’ egregious misconduct in letting the true killer roam free while police manipulated them into believing an innocent person was responsible for their loved ones’ death,” said attorney Elliot Slosar. “That type of misconduct ends here.”
