Chicago City Wire

A former Cook County State’s Attorney and the county itself will soon be off the hook as defendants in a wrongful conviction case brought by Robert Bouto, convicted of the 1993 murder of Salvador Ruvalcaba.

Attorneys with Loevy & Loevy, the law firm representing Bouto, filed the motion to dismiss in federal court on May 12, citing a settlement of $3 million that had earlier been reached between the county and Bouto.

The city of Chicago and former members of the police force remain as defendants, including retired Detective Reynaldo Guevara, who has been named in over a dozen wrongful conviction suits.

“The claims against the remaining Defendants in this case who are not the County Defendants remain pending, and Plaintiff intends to pursue all categories of claims and damages for injuries against those non-settling Defendants at trial in this case,” Bouto’s attorneys stated.

In the initial investigation, Bouto was identified by six witnesses as the shooter, a former prosecutor familiar with the case said.

“No one told them [the witnesses] who to point out and they identified him, three as to clothes he was found it right after shooting, and three by sight of him,” the former prosecutor said.

The 17-year-old Bouto was sentenced to 45 years for the murder but served 23 when in 2018 former State’s Attorney Kim Foxx vacated his conviction based on claims that Guevara and other defendants named in the lawsuit “coerced, manipulated, and instructed eyewitnesses.”

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."