Chicago City Wire

Ricardo Rodriquez, charged with a 2019 home invasion a year after Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx vacated his murder conviction, is now a millionaire. On Monday, Chicago City Council approved a $5.5 million payout to Rodriquez in a wrongful conviction case filed over his 1996 conviction for the murder.

The Rodriguez wrongful conviction case has much in common with the progression of the other 200-plus exonerations under Foxx: inmates claim police misconduct; key witnesses recant; judge vacates conviction at Foxx’s request; wrongful conviction lawsuits are filed in civil court. A settlement deal is arranged before the case even goes to trial.

Rodriguez was convicted of the 1995 murder of Rodney Kemppainen, a 38-year-old homeless man, on the Northwest Side. Rodriguez, a member of the Spanish Cobras street gang, claimed that now retired detective Reynaldo Guevara coerced him into confessing and framed him for the murder. A key eyewitness in the case recanted. Then, after serving 21 years of his 60-year sentence, a judge vacated Rodriguez’s conviction in March 2018 at Foxx’s request.

Rodriguez is one of over a dozen who have claimed Guevara abused and framed them in allegations, often recounted in news reports, that characterize Guevara as a “disgraced” detective. Yet, no evidence has ever been presented that Guevara, who has repeatedly taken the fifth in these cases on the advice of his attorneys, ever abused any suspects.

One key difference in the Rodriguez exoneration is that a Cook County judge denied his petition for a certificate of innocence (COI), a rejection that was upheld by an appeals court in 2021. A COI would have entitled Rodriquez to $200,000 from a state fund, in addition to this wrongful conviction settlement.

Foxx came to Rodriguez’s rescue again when in February 2019 her office dropped drug charges against him. This helped avert his deportation, according to former Chicago union spokesman and author, Martin Preib, who has researched dozens of Foxx exoneration cases.

“In addition to his gang membership, some of the evidence used to deport Rodriguez was a list of criminal offenses, which included two felony drug convictions,” Preib wrote in October 2022 in the Contrarian. “In one of the most suspicious acts in the long list of controversies that have plagued the Foxx administration, prosecutors walked into court and vacated the two ancient felony convictions against Rodriguez.”

“Why is a prosecutor going so far out of her way to vacate convictions from more than a decade earlier that will allow a member of a gang that has been terrorizing Chicago for decades to remain in the country?”

Then in September 2020, Rodriquez was charged with a 2019 home invasion and kidnapping on the Northwest Side. Police say the crime was drug related.

Over the past 13 years, Chicago taxpayers have dished out nearly $300 million in wrongful conviction settlements, according to a December 2023 NBC Chicago report. The payouts increased dramatically in 2021 and 2022, the report said.

The Guevara cases alone are estimated to cost taxpayers $1 billion.