A key Cook County panel approved a $22.3 million payout on Wednesday for three men who were wrongfully convicted of a fatal 1986 fire.
Commissioners on the County Board’s Finance Committee voted to pass settlements of $7.45 million for each man.
John Galvan, Arthur Almen darez and Francisco Nañez, were convicted of murder and aggravated arson in 1989 and 1990. A bomb and arson expert from the Chicago Police Department concluded the fire that killed two in a Little Village home in 1986 started with a liquid accelerant.After what they said was abuse and false assurances from detectives that they would be let go if they confessed, the three implicated each other in the fire, claiming they had set it by throwing a milk container stuffed with a rag and gasoline at the home in retaliation for a prior shooting attempt. When it did not catch fire, Galvan said he threw a lit cigarette into gasoline soaked wood on the porch.
All three were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
According to the Innocence Project, the national organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people, Galvan was 21 years into his sentence when he saw an episode of the television series “MythBusters” testing TV and movie tropes. The hosts tried to ignite a pool of gasoline with a lit cigarette, but could not. That kicked off a renewed call to attorneys and a series of appeals.
At a 2012 hearing, attorneys questioned CPD’s conclusions about the fire, alleging abuse by detectives and failure by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to question the narrative. It took another 10 years — with delays partly driven by the pandemic — before the three men were exonerated and released, in 2022.
All three were represented by the law firm Loevy & Loevy, which specializes in exonerations.
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The Chicago City Council agreed to pay a collective $48 million settlement to the men in May.
Commissioners separately approved a $180,000 settlement Wednesday to LaMar Hasbrouck, the former leader of the Cook County Department of Public Health who was fired late last year for not renewing his medical license with the state, a condition of his hiring in 2022.
Hasbrouck alleged unspecified “employment discrimination” against the county, according to board records, but told the Tribune last month the matter had “been amicably resolved” before he needed to file a formal complaint in court.
Commissioners also agreed to a $3 million settlement to Jasmine Taylor after her brother, Deon Lee, died while being detained at the Cook County Jail. Jail and medical staff failed to upgrade his care in response to increasing mental health episodes and Lee’s claims he wanted to hurt himself, according to the suit. It also claims the jail did not maintain enough staffing to perform well-being checks.
Lee, 30, died Aug. 13, 2022, from water intoxication after drinking excessively over several hours, according to the suit. His death was one of a handful of high-profile deaths at the jail that year. Officials had cut off water to his cell before, when he had purposely flooded it.
Lee “repeatedly demonstrated suicidal and self-injurious behavior” during his months in jail and was “not properly medicated for his underlying schizoaffective disorder. He further demonstrated on numerous occasions that he was psychotic and not medication compliant,” the suit said. He should have been put in a suicide resistant cell, the suit said.
The settlements will be taken up by the full board at its Thursday meeting.
A $150 million bond authorization vote also cleared the committee. Earlier this month, the ratings agency Moody’s upgraded the county, its fourth upgrade in less than four years. It cited years of improved funding for the county’s pension funds and efforts to build up its reserves, a boon for borrowing costs and a feather in County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s cap heading into budget season. The money will help pay for ongoing upgrades to county buildings.
The board also swiftly approved a separate resolution asking county agencies “to eliminate unnecessary educational barriers to employment within Cook County government by removing degree requirements from job descriptions and employment processes where such credentials are not legally required, essential to job performance or necessary based upon industry standards.”
Preckwinkle’s office has already tweaked job requirements to do the same, and the resolution is designed to get other separately elected officials’ offices to follow suit.