Illinois
Chicago top prosecutor: 7 convictions tied to ex-cop vacated
CHICAGO (AP) — The Cook County state’s attorney’s office on Tuesday said judges have vacated seven murder convictions connected to a retired Chicago police detective accused of framing others who were sent to prison.
An eighth cases remains, pending further court proceedings.
State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told reporters that her office no longer will oppose post-conviction litigation in the eight cases following a 2019 review of cases related to allegations of police misconduct involving Reynaldo Guevara.
“We no longer believe in the validity of these convictions or the credibility of the evidence of these convictions,” Foxx said.
The seven cases dismissed Tuesday involved slayings committed between 1989 and 1994.
Five defendants already have completed prison sentences and are no longer in custody. Two others are expected to be released, while one remains in custody pending further court proceedings.
Two dozen cases already have been vacated and action on three additional cases is expected in the coming weeks.
Guevara — a former member of a police department dogged by decades of scandal, cover-ups and brutality — has never been charged with a crime. Foxx said her office is reviewing possible charges against Guevara, who retired in 2005 and is receiving a city police pension and a Chicago Park District pension.
He helped inmates win freedom by repeatedly invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination or insisting that he couldn’t remember facts, thus forcing prosecutors to dismiss charges in several cases.
In one case, after he was granted immunity by prosecutors, he answered repeatedly that he didn’t remember confessions that he elicited from two men ultimately convicted of murder. The judge characterized his comments as “bald-faced lies” and threw out the confessions.
“Could we try these cases again today without the work of Detective Guevara?” Foxx said Tuesday. “Based on our review, we are not able to retry these cases.”
She added that additional investigations could be conducted “to see if, in fact, someone else committed these crimes.”
Last September, Chicago’s City Council agreed to pay $20.5 million to two of at least a dozen men whose murder convictions were dismissed after allegedly being framed by Guevara.
The lawsuits were filed on behalf of Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez who spent 23 years in prison before they were released in 2016. A key witness in their case admitted that he had lied about hearing them confess because Guevara had threatened to beat him if he didn’t.
In 2009, a jury awarded $21 million to a man who spent 11 years in prison before he was retried and acquitted because witnesses testified that Guevara intimidated them into falsely identifying the man as the killer. The city later agreed to pay $16.4 million.
Another jury awarded $17 million in 2018 to a man who made similar allegations.
Foxx said Tuesday that she would not discount the impact each case had on the defendants and their families.
“While we focused on the allegations of misconduct, we did not want to lose sight that lives were lost and the impact that our decision could have on the families of victims who believed that justice had been served by these convictions,” she added. “We looked at these cases with a careful lens to ensure that we got it right.”
Oregon
Portland accuses DOJ of moving cops accountability goalposts
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The city of Portland has accused the U.S. Department of Justice of stating incorrect information and misinterpreting police programs while negotiations continue about how to bring Portland back into compliance with a police use of force federal settlement agreement.
City attorneys responded in July to the Justice Department’s sixth periodic assessment with a line-by-line rebuttal claiming the Justice Department is moving the goalposts or simply wrong, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. OPB obtained a copy of the rebuttal through a public records request.
The Justice Department declined to comment to the media outlet.
“The city believed, until recently, that the parties were working under a common understanding of the requirements of the Settlement Agreement,” the city’s response to the DOJ says. “This year’s Compliance Assessment Report, however, revealed numerous areas where a difference in the parties’ understanding led to a DOJ finding of only ‘partial compliance’ with particular provisions.”
The rebuttal was delivered in a closed-door meeting July 28, one day after the city and federal prosecutors updated U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon on the city’s progress in implementing agreed-upon changes. Ahead of that court appearance, the city filed a response to the Justice Department focusing on areas where the city had been successful.
Now, Portland city attorneys say the Justice Department is shifting requirements. For example, the Justice Department said the city was in only partial compliance with a section requiring the Portland Police Bureau’s Behavioral Health Unit Advisory Committee to advise the bureau on interactions with people in mental health crises. The Justice Department said the city had failed to follow through on a commitment to have the committee review actual police encounters rather than simply advise on policies and training methods.
“DOJ now interprets the stated goal of the paragraph as requiring BHUAC to review the violent encounters themselves. The city disagrees with that interpretation.”
To be freed from the settlement agreement and the accompanying federal oversight, Portland must be found in compliance and remain in compliance with the settlement’s terms for one year. The city in February 2020 was found in compliance for the first time since the agreement took effect in 2014.
But the Department of Justice and the independent group overseeing the agreement, found the police bureau’s forceful response to racial justice protests later that year exposed significant shortcomings and the city fell out of compliance.
City attorneys also said in other sections of their rebuttal that federal prosecutors’ facts were wrong. In the July 27 court appearance, the Justice Department tentatively conceded it may have erred.
“We measure compliance based upon data presented to us,” said Jonas Geissler, the federal prosecutor overseeing the settlement agreement. “If there is an error we are pleased to correct it.”
Geissler said they plan to conduct a more in-depth audit of the cases in question.
