Chicago City Wire

Martin Preib, the former spokesman for the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, says multimillion-dollar wrongful conviction settlements approved by city officials are adding financial strain to an already underfunded police pension system, according to a recent column.

On Aug. 1, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation estimated to add $52 million in costs to the city’s pension obligations. The Illinois Policy Institute reports that the city faces a projected $1.1 billion budget deficit and $11.1 billion in accrued liabilities by 2055.

In his Substack column Crooked City, Preib referenced recent City Council-approved settlements in wrongful conviction cases.

Martin Preib | Crooked City

“Earlier this year, the Chicago City Council, largely a collection of radically progressive stooges, voted to pay out several million dollars to a man convicted twice for his role in the murder of two cops,” Preib wrote. “His name is Jackie Wilson.”

“Paying out massive sums of money to dubiously 'exonerated' maniacs like Wilson is nothing new in Chicago,” he wrote. “More than a billion dollars has been paid out to various once-convicted rapists and killers whose rap sheets would send chills down the spines of ordinary Americans, a cost that is guaranteed to rise in the coming years.”

Wilson was convicted twice in connection with the 1982 murders of police officers William Fahey, 34, and Richard O’Brien, 33. In July, the City Council approved a $12.9 million settlement. That followed a $17 million settlement approved by Cook County in March 2024.

Wilson had been serving a life sentence when, in 2015, the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC) referred his case to a Cook County judge for a new evidentiary hearing. In 2018, Judge William Hooks ordered Wilson’s release and a new trial.

In 2020, all charges were dropped during his third trial following accusations against a former prosecutor. Those accusations were later determined to be false.

“This commission, called TIRC, should have mobilized the right in Illinois to fight what is clearly one of the most unconstitutional bodies ever created by a state legislature, one that has freed many violent predators into the public while at the same time dragging cops into decades-long civil suits,” Preib wrote. “TIRC is a pipeline for offenders to sue the city of Chicago, costing hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone into the police pensions.”

Separately, more than 250 individuals have been exonerated by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, many of whom have filed wrongful conviction lawsuits. Those dismissals were based on claims of police or prosecutorial misconduct rather than new evidence of innocence.