Anand Swaminathan

Seven Shots in the Stairwell

Tony Robinson was unarmed inside a Madison house when Officer Matt Kenny fired seven rounds. Anand Swaminathan and the family’s legal team prepared to test the officer’s account against a dashcam clock, bullet paths, wound tracks, firing distance, and the dimensions of a narrow staircase.

Emergency callers reported that Robinson, nineteen, was behaving erratically and had assaulted people. Kenny entered the house alone. Within moments, every round from his weapon struck Robinson.

Kenny said Robinson punched him, kept swinging, and created an immediate risk that the officer would lose consciousness and control of his gun. The district attorney declined criminal charges, and the police department found the shooting consistent with policy. The family’s civil action focused on the physical sequence underlying that justification.

Timing, Distance, and the Officer’s Account

At trial, the family’s lawyers planned to compare the squad-car recordings with the timing and spacing of the shots. They also examined Kenny’s movement, bullet trajectories, wound paths, the distance between the gun and Robinson, and what witnesses below the stairway saw and heard.

The family’s experts concluded that the second shot in the first three-round sequence occurred while Kenny was outside the stairwell and that several rounds were fired from three to four feet away. The defense maintained that the shooting occurred during a continuous close struggle.

The court dismissed the City of Madison because the evidence did not establish municipal-policy liability, although Wisconsin law required indemnification if Kenny were held liable. Days before the scheduled February 2017 trial, the City’s insurer paid $3.35 million to resolve the case without an admission of wrongdoing.

The Witness Who Came Back

Jacques Rivera was convicted in 1990 of murdering Felix Valentin on Chicago’s West Side. The prosecution depended on Orlando Lopez, who was twelve when he witnessed the shooting and thirteen when he testified. Rivera received an eighty-year sentence.

Lopez later recanted. At a 2011 hearing, he testified that he had identified the wrong man and had tried before trial to tell police and prosecutors. The state judge found him credible and ordered a new trial. Prosecutors dismissed the charge, Rivera left prison after more than twenty years, and he received a certificate of innocence.

Swaminathan helped try Rivera’s federal civil-rights case in 2018. At Rivera’s civil trial, Swaminathan and the team examined the original identification, Lopez’s attempt to withdraw it, missing police reports, and information withheld from Rivera’s criminal lawyer.

Verdict, City Practice, and Appellate Resolution

The federal jury awarded Rivera $17 million in compensatory damages and a combined $175,000 in punitive damages against three former detectives. It also found Chicago responsible for a police practice of withholding reports and investigative material.

During appellate proceedings, the parties settled for $18.75 million, resolving the verdict rather than adding a second recovery.

Rivera’s litigation connected a child’s identification to the systems surrounding it: how police selected a suspect, recorded the witness’s words, responded when he recanted, and decided which reports the defense would receive.

The Street Files in the Basement

Nathson Fields spent most of eighteen years in prison on death row and came within days of execution five times. His convictions for the 1984 murders of Talman Hickman and Jerome Smith were overturned after corruption involving the trial judge came to light. A 2009 retrial ended in acquittal.

Fields alleged that detectives fabricated evidence and withheld exculpatory material in police “street files”—investigative files kept outside the material delivered to prosecutors and defense counsel. During the civil case, lawyers discovered files stored in basement cabinets. An early protective order restricted their ability to contact lawyers in other cases, making proof of a citywide practice difficult.

After a new trial was granted, a federal jury awarded $22 million in compensatory damages and $40,000 in punitive damages against two detectives. The Seventh Circuit affirmed in 2020. It held that the evidence supported fabrication and suppression findings and allowed the jury to conclude that Chicago continued withholding favorable street-file material despite prior notice of the constitutional danger.

Swaminathan was part of the trial and appellate team. The other street files supplied evidence that favorable material was repeatedly separated from the files disclosed to defendants.

Three Days of Missed Epilepsy Medication

Ray Fox entered Stateville Correctional Center with prescribed medicine that controlled his epilepsy. For three days, Fox and other incarcerated men repeatedly sought the medication. He suffered seizures, a brain aneurysm, and permanent cognitive injury.

Swaminathan tried the case with Mike Kanovitz, Steve Art, and Cindy Tsai. After a one-week trial, the jury awarded $11 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages against a prison medical official—a total $12 million verdict. The district court later denied requests for a new trial and reduction of the verdict based on settlements with other defendants.

To prove Fox’s claim, the team used prescription records, his requests for medication, custody logs, the timing of his seizures, medical testimony, and evidence that the official could have provided treatment. Because Fox was incarcerated, prison personnel controlled access to his daily medication.

Twenty-Seven Hours of Missed Medication

May Molina was disabled and relied on daily medication for diabetes, hypertension, thyroid disease, and asthma. Chicago police arrested her in 2004. Her daughter brought the medicine to the station, and an officer refused it.

About sixteen hours into detention, Molina’s lawyer found her barely able to speak, walk, or stand and urged guards to take her to a hospital. Molina died alone in a cell after roughly twenty-seven hours.

The Seventh Circuit restored the medical-care claim in 2011, holding that a jury could find her need obvious and hospital transport readily available. At the 2013 trial, Swaminathan and the team proved a widespread City lockup practice of denying needed medication or medical attention. The jury awarded Molina’s estate $1 million.

Four Veterans and an Afghanistan Contract

Charles Shepherd, Danny Rude, Robert Dillard, and Rickey Mackey had military backgrounds and later worked inside Fluor’s support operation for United States bases in Afghanistan. Their False Claims Act case challenged performance under LOGCAP IV and Task Order 0005.

The allegations concerned government property and materials, required inventories, reports submitted during Army evaluations, labor billing, and retaliation after employees raised concerns. The relators said inventory obligations were ignored, deficiencies were concealed, and the Government was billed for work that had not been performed as represented.

The district court denied both sides’ summary-judgment motions in January 2026. Questions involving falsity, knowledge, materiality, inventories, award-fee submissions, labor hours, and retaliation required a jury to weigh competing evidence.

Six Weeks of Contract Data

Thirteen years after filing, the relators reached trial in South Carolina. The six-week presentation required the team to translate a military logistics contract into evidence jurors could evaluate: property systems, Maximo records, inventory schedules, government audits, staffing assumptions, invoices, award-fee submissions, internal communications, and witness credibility.

During trial, the court ordered production of compensation agreements for fact witnesses expected to testify and allowed cross-examination about whether those agreements created bias.

On March 12, 2026, the jury awarded $15 million. The False Claims Act calls for trebling that damages figure to $45 million. As of July 26, 2026, post-verdict proceedings remained pending and no payment had been reported.

Swaminathan served as trial counsel on the team led by Jon Loevy, alongside Mike Kanovitz, Daniel Twetten, Frank Newell, Anna Dover, Gwen Parker, Heather Sticht, Dominique Gilbert, Aadi Tolappa, Alexandra Wolfson, and local and separate counsel.

The American Citizen ICE Tried to Remove

Jilmar Ramos-Gomez is a United States citizen and Marine combat veteran. After a Grand Rapids arrest, local officers turned him over to immigration authorities, and ICE began detention and removal processing against a person who could not lawfully be deported.

Swaminathan served as cooperating counsel with the ACLU of Michigan and other lawyers. Grand Rapids paid $190,000 and adopted a policy barring officers from asking about immigration status or contacting ICE for civil immigration enforcement. Kent County adopted a judicial-warrant requirement before transferring a person to ICE.

A separate Federal Tort Claims Act case against the United States settled in November 2022, and public-records cases resolved in February 2024. The federal settlement amount was not disclosed.

A Faculty Appointment and Personal Speech

Steven Salaita resigned from Virginia Tech and prepared to join the University of Illinois after accepting a tenured faculty appointment. The University later withheld final approval after public controversy over his personal tweets criticizing Israel’s 2014 military campaign in Gaza.

Swaminathan and Loevy + Loevy joined the Center for Constitutional Rights in representing Salaita. The federal court allowed the central First Amendment retaliation, contract, and procedural-due-process claims to proceed beyond dismissal. The ruling treated the appointment process, the timing of the Board’s vote, and the response to personal speech as matters requiring further litigation.

The case settled in November 2015 for $875,000: $600,000 to Salaita and $275,000 to counsel. The agreement resolved the claims without reinstatement and became part of a broader national debate over academic freedom and public speech.

Seven Petitions from One Detective’s Cases

Swaminathan’s exoneration work has repeatedly returned to investigations associated with former Chicago detective Reynaldo Guevara. In August 2023, Louis Robinson’s homicide conviction was vacated after twenty-seven years. No physical evidence connected him to the crime; he had an alibi; and the post-conviction case described manipulated witness identifications.

In February 2024, Swaminathan joined Exoneration Project lawyers Fadya Salem and Josh Tepfer in filing petitions for seven more men: Jayson Aguiar, David Kruger, Juan Molina, Edwin Ortiz, Oscar Soto, Victor Vera, and Tyrece Williams. Their cases required separate witness histories and court records while drawing on a common body of evidence concerning Guevara’s methods.

Oscar Soto’s conviction was vacated and the charge dismissed in July 2024. His later federal complaint places fabricated reports, manipulated identifications, ignored alternative suspects, and the absence of physical evidence before the civil court.

Francisco Romero and the Identification Record

Francisco Romero was eighteen when Chicago police charged him with the 2001 murder of a twelve-year-old boy. He spent more than twenty-two years in prison before prosecutors dismissed the charges in June 2024.

His 2025 federal complaint alleges that detectives relied on an unreliable informant and manipulated an eleven-year-old witness through photo arrays and lineups. Witness descriptions included a facial tattoo Romero did not have, and no physical evidence tied him to the shooting.

Swaminathan represents Romero with Jon Loevy, Steve Art, Brian Morris, Jordan Poole, Jennifer Blagg, and Eric Bisby. The complaint alleges that officers constructed the identification while omitting facts that contradicted it.

Finance, Legal Aid, and Trial Preparation

Before law school, Swaminathan worked in finance. At Harvard Law School, he performed more than 2,000 hours of pro bono service, worked in the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, received the Andrew L. Kaufman Award, and was a Haywood Burns Fellow of the National Lawyers Guild. He later clerked for Magistrate Judge Theodore Katz in the Southern District of New York.

His present docket spans shooting reconstruction, identification records in wrongful-conviction cases, medication and medical-causation proof in prison cases, and contract and accounting records in False Claims Act litigation.