Chicago City Wire

A WTTW report noting that Chicago accounted for more than half of the exoneration cases in the United States over 2022, many of them convicted murderers, paints a sorry picture of the Chicago Police Department. All but two of the 124 overturned cases in Cook County, the report says, were tied to misconduct by former police officers.

What the story fails to report is the soft-on-crime political agenda and the awarding of massive legal fees to the attorneys representing the once-convicted murderers that are driving the exonerations – nearly all based on charges of police abuse by those convicted of the crimes.

The report cites that 25 of the cases alone in 2022 were tied to retired Detective Reynaldo Guevara, who “has been accused of routinely framing suspects.”

One Guevara case in particular is an exemplar of how the “exoneration industry” works and is thriving in Chicago. To this day, some prosecutors remained convinced that Arturo-DeLeon Reyes and Gabriel Solache, convicted of the 1998 murders of a husband and wife and the kidnapping of their children, are indeed guilty of their crimes. Yet, in 2017 a judge exonerated them based on accusations of abuse directed at Guevara, the detective in charge of the investigation.

Then last November, a judge granted Certificates of Innocence (COIs) to the pair after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO), under Kim Foxx, reversed itself and presented no opposition to the COIs. With the strength of the COIs, the two sued the city for wrongful conviction.

Foxx is one of left-wing billionaire’s George Soros’s most prized big city, soft-on-crime prosecutors – overseeing a surge of violent crime in their cities.

Also convicted with Solache and Reyes was 23-year-old Adriana Mejia who presented the kidnapped two-month-old child as her own. Mejia, who remains imprisoned, maintained for many years that all three were involved in the murders.

And a recent motion filed by city attorneys noted: “Until November 2022, the CCSAO’s position was consistent and unequivocal: Solache and Reyes were guilty. What is not clear, is how, when and on what record, that position changed. In addition, based on Mejia’s continued insistence for 25 years that Solache and Reyes helped her savagely murder the Soto parents and kidnap their children, defendants had every reason to believe that the CCSAO would continue to oppose the COIs and that they would be denied.”

In addition, one former assistant State’s Attorney, Eric Sussman, told CBS Chicago in 2017 when the charges were dropped: “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. It is a tragic day for justice in Cook County.”

Sussman, now in private practice, told Chicago City Wire in an email for an earlier story that he "certainly didn't believe that he [Guevara] coerced confessions in that case."

In March, the Cook County Record compiled a list of the law firms awarded settlement and judgment money by the city. A total of $117 million was paid out in 2022 alone.

At the top of the list was the prominent plaintiffs’ firm of Loevy & Loevy, the firm behind the Exoneration Project, a non-profit that petitions the courts to re-open criminal cases.

“According to the city data, the Loevy firm has brought at least 111 lawsuits against the city since 2010, primarily in suits alleging police misconduct or Freedom of Information Act violations by the city,” the article said. “And in those 111 cases, the city data specifically logs at least $32.9 million in attorney's fees collected by the Loevy firm from the city.”