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player ready...Cook County prosecutors agreed to the dismissal of 20 convictions connected to notorious ex-Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts and his crew, and indicated they would oppose efforts to throw out another 15 cases, attorneys said in court Tuesday.
At future court dates this month, prosecutors will agree that at least 30 more Watts-related convictions should be vacated, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told reporters Tuesday.
More than 130 such convictions have been dismissed in recent years, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Foxx said the effort was crucial to restoring trust so that citizens are comfortable cooperating with police and prosecutors.
“This is integral to public safety, I cannot say it enough,” she said. “We ask every day for members of the community to step up and work with us … if they don’t believe the system is fair and just and in fact that the system is designed to hurt them, they won’t help us, and we need them.”
Judge Erica Reddick, acting presiding judge of the Criminal Division, formally vacated 20 convictions for 19 people at the end of a lengthy hearing Tuesday. The Watts era was “clearly shown to be a blight on the criminal justice system,” she said from the bench.
Prosecutors did not agree Tuesday to the request that 15 other convictions should be tossed out. Those cases may be headed for further hearings at which a judge will decide whether the convictions should stand.
Watts and his crew of tactical officers have been accused of orchestrating a lengthy reign of terror at the now-razed Ida B. Wells public housing complex on the South Side, systematically forcing residents and drug dealers alike to pay a “protection” tax and putting bogus cases on those who refused to do so.
When Watts was finally caught, in 2012, it was on relatively minor federal charges of shaking down a drug courier who turned out to be an FBI agent. Watts and Officer Kallatt Mohammed both pleaded guilty, and Watts received 22 months in prison. He was released in 2015.
Tuesday’s hearing was the latest in a string of “mass exonerations” related to Watts and his crew, the first of which made headlines in 2017 as the county’s first en-masse dismissal.
Prosecutors are committed to reviewing each case separately, rather than simply throwing out all cases with any connection to the crew, Foxx told reporters.
“We have to talk about them on an individual basis, it depends on who was working on the cases, the time period we’re looking at, the sufficiency of the evidence, or other evidence,” she said. “It is a process that has been painfully slow but one that we believe must be done meticulously.”
Attorneys for Watts’ accusers, however, told reporters they cannot see any differences between the cases that prosecutors have chosen to dismiss and maintain.
“Each one of these people has presented the same evidence of innocence,” said Joel Flaxman, who represents several of the people whose cases were heard Tuesday. “… We’re going to be back in court on each one of the cases, and I hope that we’ll be able to convince the state’s attorney. Failing that, we will have hearings where we convince a judge of the innocence of all our clients.”
Tuesday’s hearing was the first of three scheduled court dates at which prosecutors will announce whether they will fight to keep dozens of Watts-related convictions intact. Further proceedings are scheduled for later this month.
The hearings are a response to an expansive joint effort last summer by attorneys for 88 people with Watts-related convictions, who filed petitions en masse asking that those cases be thrown out.
It was a bold move, seemingly intended to force Cook County prosecutors to announce a decision on the cases after prosecutors’ ongoing review of such convictions had, in the view of some Watts accusers’ attorneys, stalled out.
Prosecutors said in November they would not oppose the dismissal of five of those cases.
Since there were still dozens of cases from last summer’s petition that had not yet been resolved, Reddick agreed to split the list of cases into three parts, so as not to overburden the schedule.
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