Chicago City Wire

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office recently declined to oppose the post-conviction petitions in separate double murder cases, positioning three convicted of the murders for large cash settlements from the city.

Her office declined to oppose Madeline Mendoza’s petition to vacate her conviction for her role in a1992 double murder in Humboldt Park. A Cook County judge vacated the conviction on Jan. 3. Mendoza spent more than 17 years in prison for the murders.

And in November, Foxx’s office refused to contest the Certificate of Innocence (COI) petitions for Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes, convicted for the 1998 double murder of married couple Jacinta and Mariano Soto, and the kidnapping of their two children, in Bucktown.

Cook County State's Attorney's Office | cookcountystatesattorney.org

The granting of a COI in the Solache/Reyes case presents a compelling argument in civil court for a wrongful conviction claim. Past wrongful conviction cases have resulted in millions awarded to both the once convicted murderers and their lawyers. Mendoza likewise plans to petition for a COI, according to news reports.

When asked what new evidence was presented in the Mendoza case that warranted the tossing of her conviction, the State’s Attorney’s office emailed a statement saying only that that court granted “Ms. [Madeline] Mendoza’s petition,” and  “in the interest of justice, prosecutors asked the court to vacate the convictions.”

In the Solache/Reyes case, the State’s Attorney took no position at the November hearing, and the office said it had no further comment on why it did not participate in the case.

Just two years earlier, Foxx’s office vigorously opposed the granting of the COIs in the case in which Jacinta and Mariano Soto were repeatedly stabbed in their apartment.

“The petition filed by Petitioner Reyes invites this Court to distort an Illinois statute so as to provide a financial windfall to a man who participated in a gruesome and violent double murder and the kidnapping of the murder victims' young children,” the state’s attorney’s office wrote in August 2020 in its petition. “The People are constrained to intervene and oppose Petitioner's request for a Certificate of Innocence. The Petitioner bears a statutory burden of proving that he is actually innocent of each of the criminal convictions entered against him in this case, but he does not and cannot satisfy that burden.”

And in 2017, when charges against Solache and Reyes were dropped, former First Assistant State’s Attorney Eric Sussman told CBS Chicago: “There is no doubt in my mind, or the mind of anyone who has worked on this case, that Mr. Solache and Mr. Reyes are guilty of these crimes,” Sussman said. “It is a tragic day for justice in Cook County.”

Retired detective Reynaldo Guevara was the lead investigator in both double murder cases. Mendoza’s lawyers argued in her petition that another woman was the sole murderer, and that Guevara and his partner, Ernest Halvorsen, concocted story that Mendoza took part. Solache and Reyes claim that Guevara beat them into confessing to the murders of Jacinta and Mariano Soto. Guevara has denied the allegations.