Chicago City Wire

Chicago taxpayers have paid more than $1.1 billion in police-related lawsuit settlements and verdicts since 2008, a financial burden that former mayoral candidate Paul Vallas warns could worsen as hundreds of cases remain unresolved.

“It has gotten so bad that the most obvious way for the city to manage risk — the purchase of liability insurance — is rapidly becoming unavailable as the city’s insurers, once willing to protect the city from catastrophic losses, have run for the hills,” Vallas wrote in a commentary.

Vallas said part of the solution is to educate the public that “many convictions are vacated for technical or procedural reasons, not because the defendant is innocent or the police acted illegally.”

“It is one thing for someone to be released after serving time; it is another for them to become a multimillionaire at taxpayer expense,” he says.

Many of the largest payouts are settlements from wrongful conviction lawsuits filed in federal court over claims of police and prosecutorial misconduct. These cases have been covered extensively by Chicago City Wire.

Last April, for example, the so-called Marquette Park Four, convicted of a 1995 double murder, were awarded a $50 million settlement.

The four, Charles Johnson, Larod Styles, TroShawn McCoy and LaShawn Ezell, were exonerated by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx just weeks after she first took office in December 2016.

Prosecutors in her office reportedly pushed for a new trial after new evidence emerged, but in early 2017 Foxx dismissed the charges.

The wrongful conviction complaints in this case are similar to dozens of others filed over the past decade, involving former underlings of Commander Jon Burge, who was convicted in 2010 of perjury related to allegations that he tortured suspects and coerced false confessions.

One of those detectives named in the Marquette Park Four case — and other lawsuits— is Kenneth Boudreau, now retired. Boudreau says the claims against him are false.

“I didn’t arrest anyone. I didn’t interview anyone,” he told Chicago City Wire referring to the Marquette Park Four. “My only involvement was to assist in the lineup. Nothing improper occurred here.”

Vallas is also proposing reforms to a 2008 state law that allows those exonerated of crimes to petition a judge for a Certificate of Innocence (COI). If granted, the COI makes petitioners eligible for compensation and strengthens their case for federal wrongful conviction lawsuits.

Vallas said the COI law should be amended so petitioners receive compensation only if they agree not to pursue additional civil litigation.

The proposed amendment, based on a Texas model, “would prevent ‘double-dipping’ and ensure fair compensation without bankrupting municipalities,” Vallas wrote.

In one notable case, Gabriel Solache and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes were awarded COIs in November 2022, after Foxx’s office reversed its opposition. Solache and Reyes were convicted of the 1998 murders of a husband and wife and the kidnapping of their children.

Foxx’s office did not explain the reversal but later stated in a motion that dropping opposition to the COIs did not mean it believed the two men were innocent.

The wrongful conviction lawsuits involving Solache and DeLeon-Reyes are still pending.