Chicago City Wire

In September Robert Bouto struck a $3.1 million “good faith” settlement with Cook County in his wrongful conviction lawsuit stemming from the 1993 murder of Salvador Ruvalcaba.

The City of Chicago, also a defendant in the wrongful conviction lawsuit filed in April 2019, is urging a federal judge to reject an amended joint motion for good faith settlement filed by the plaintiff Bouto, and defendants - former assistant state’s attorney Kevin Hughes (who approved the murder charge against Bouto) and Cook County.

"Now, the Settling Parties move this Court for a finding that the Settlement Agreement, artificially limiting ASA Hughes’s role to avoid a setoff, was reached in good faith,” lawyers for the city wrote in their motion. “The Court must deny this motion. The allocation crafted in paragraph 4.3 is not in good faith and is plainly a purposeful attempt by Plaintiff, with the acquiescence of the County Defendants to prevent the City Defendants from rightfully setting off this settlement from any compensatory damages a jury might award on any claims – most particularly, the due process fabrication of evidence claim – left unresolved by the Settlement Agreement.”

Reynaldo Guevara | YouTube

Avoiding a setoff in legal terms means attempting to prevent a deal where one party can deduct a debt owed to them from a payment they are required to make to the other party, effectively canceling out the debts against each other.

The lawyers also argued that Bouto and the county in their settlement "failed to mention the additional requirement that the Settlement Agreement be consistent with the policies underlying the law, namely the equitable apportionment of damages among tortfeasors, which is a critical consideration in evaluating whether the Settlement Agreement was made in good faith.”

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx exonerated Bouto in 2018 three years after he was paroled when eyewitnesses to the murder recanted their testimony; his was one of over two dozen cases exonerated by Foxx over charges of misconduct directed at retired Chicago Detective Reynaldo Guevara. But his case, as with the other Guevara cases, isn’t clear cut.

The exoneration grew from an investigation by now disgraced Northwestern journalism professor David Protess and some of his students. In 2011, Northwestern released a statement after an internal review found what the university termed "numerous examples of Protess knowingly making false and misleading statements to the dean, to university attorneys, and to others.”

"Such actions undermine the integrity of Medill, the university, the Innocence Project, students, alumni, faculty, the press, the public, the state and the court," Northwestern said.

Moreover, In November 1998, the Illinois Appellate Court upheld the Bouto conviction and in 1999, the Illinois Supreme Court declined to review the case.

Bouto's September settlement said federal Judge John Kness …. “shall be allocated by plaintiff (Bouto) as follows: 

"First, $3,000,000 (three million dollars) shall be allocated toward Plaintiff's injury of pretrial incarceration flowing from his Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim (damages suffered as the result of pretrial incarceration from the time of a judicial finding of probable cause to the start of the Plaintiff's criminal trial). 

"Second, $100,000 (one-hundred thousand dollars) shall be allocated to 42 U.S.C. 1988 fees and costs incurred by the Plaintiff and his attorneys, Loevy & Loevy, solely in pursuit of claims against the County Defendants and which did not advance the claims against the City Defendants."