Mayor Brandon Johnson is proposing a staggering $260.8 million settlement to resolve 16 lawsuits alleging misconduct by disgraced former Chicago police Detective Reynaldo Guevara.
The mass deal pitched by Johnson’s Law Department appears to be the largest single police misconduct settlement in U.S. history. And it will leave a deep and costly mark on the city’s finances as City Hall faces the daunting challenge of crafting a 2027 budget — even as Johnson and key aldermen praise it as a move that will save taxpayers a fortune.
And as expensive as it is, it covers roughly half of the outstanding Guevara-tied police misconduct lawsuits. Chicago taxpayers will almost certainly be on the hook for more huge payouts in the not-too-distant future to people suing on the grounds that Guevara framed them for murder.
The Tribune first reported the impending deal in mid-September, citing court records that marked an incoming “global settlement” involving Guevara, who has been accused of manipulating lineups, threatening witnesses and beating suspects into confessions.
Chicago will save as much as $400 million with the deal by avoiding costly court verdicts, legal defense costs and plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees, according to Law Department spokesperson Kristen Cabanban. The settlement will be paid over two years starting in 2027, she added.
“While previous administrations turned a blind eye to these abuses and kicked the can down the road, we are meeting the obligation we have to bring some level of restitution to those who have been harmed and their families,” Johnson said in a news release Thursday afternoon.
The proposal’s cost and scope appeared in a City Council agenda posted Thursday morning. It was negotiated under the direction of Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry, who retired Thursday from her post as the city’s top attorney.
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All lawsuits involved stemmed from misconduct that allegedly occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. Collectively, the 17 plaintiffs spent 384 years in custody, according to Cabanban, meaning the city will pay $680,000 for each year they spent behind bars.
Underlying the hundreds of years in prison are lives upended by alleged framing.
Among those included in the proposed package is Robert Bouto, who spent 23 years in prison until two eyewitnesses said Guevara threatened them into identifying the then-17-year-old as the gunman who killed a 15-year-old.
Edwin Davila argued he was framed when he was 21 for a 1995 killing. He said he had an alibi and that no physical evidence connected him to the crime before a judge vacated his charges after 25 years behind bars.
Antonio McDowell got a full exoneration just last year. It came over two decades after he lost his freedom when he was injured in a drive-by shooting, went to help police identify the assailant and, he alleged, found himself framed by Guevara.
Finance Committee aldermen are set to first vote on the package of settlements Monday. If the deals are approved in committee, the full City Council could approve them Oct. 14.
Aldermen will face a momentous task: in just a matter of days, assess a mass deal larger than the budget of many city departments with no apparent rival in size in Chicago or American history, save for a $90 million mass deal crafted by Johnson’s administration and enthusiastically passed by the City Council last year.
Signs pointing to the mass settlement grew unmissable in recent weeks.
In addition to U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt’s notice, Johnson himself hinted at the likelihood of such a deal by projecting an unprecedented $401 million price tag for settlement and judgments next year.
The mayor and administration spokespeople had declined to say whether a Guevara mass settlement was in the works, but Johnson himself alluded to the likelihood while detailing his budget forecast. He promised “the absolute maximum level of transparency” as the city deals with towering lawsuit liabilities, many set in motion long before he took office and tied to alleged forced confessions by detectives in decades-old murder cases.
“This has just been a long time coming,” Johnson told reporters while unveiling the budget deficit earlier this month. “Half of the people that work in my administration weren’t even born, and the rest of us were children.”
The mass settlement would resolve 16 lawsuits brought by 17 plaintiffs, all represented by the law firm Loevy & Loevy. A spokesperson for the firm declined to comment on the deal.
“Unfortunately, it is Loevy policy not to comment on any possible settlements until they are approved by the full city council,” spokesperson Michael McDunnah wrote in an email.
The deal would easily make Guevara the costliest single police scandal in Chicago history, outstripping the around $210 million spent so far on cases against former Cmdr. Jon Burge, whose “midnight crew” of detectives was accused of beating and torturing dozens of suspects into murder confessions beginning in the 1970s.
Guevara, who retired a decade ago and is still collecting a handsome city pension, has denied any wrongdoing. Still, in case after case, dozens of mostly Latino men previously convicted of murder have had their cases reversed and won certificates of innocence while accusing the 82-year-old retired homicide detective of manipulating lineups, threatening witnesses and beating them into murder confessions.
Guevara repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, putting the city on the financial hook for the collective centuries they spent in prison.
Even before any global settlement, Guevara cases have already cost around $160 million in verdicts and settlements, including $43 million for six settlements approved by aldermen this year.
A mass settlement could also end up saving the city money it typically spends hiring private law firms to wage long legal battles to defend City Hall in court before usually settling cases individually.
A Tribune investigation earlier this year detailed how that longtime strategy has run up the tab for taxpayers, making reverse-conviction cases more expensive on average for Chicago taxpayers than similar legal claims in New York and Los Angeles.
Through January of this year, for example, lawyers had invoiced Chicago nearly $8 million in fees to fight the group of lawsuits the city now wants to settle, according to a Tribune analysis of available city data.
The move marks the Johnson administration’s second attempt at such a sprawling settlement. Last year, aldermen approved Johnson’s plan to settle for $90 million almost 180 cases involving former Sgt. Ronald Watts, accused of planting evidence to frame hundreds of men.
Aldermen, civic leaders and financial ratings agencies praised Watts deal as an effective way to reduce taxpayer costs by avoiding legal bills and the towering liability of potential court losses. Still, many criticized Johnson’s decision to use debt to pay for the cost, a move that his budget forecast this year signals he will not repeat.
Alongside the Watts deal and other recent Guevara settlements, the new package would bring closure to 72% of all outstanding reversed-conviction cases, according to Cabanban.
The Watts and Guevara settlements have major differences, however. While the Watts cases typically involved brief stints in jail for smaller crimes, each of the 16 Guevara cases in the package involves murder, large amounts of time behind bars and a complex set of facts.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, a member of the Finance Committee, said he had not been briefed on the deal, although he added that he supported the administration’s past global settlement as a cost-cutting move.
“I am very disappointed that the City Council is only learning about this through the media,” said Lopez, a frequent critic of Johnson’s settlement efforts. “If we could put as many of these things behind us, yes I voted for it, but there should be no reason for this level of secrecy, particularly on something this monumental.”
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Aldermanic briefings have occurred, said the Finance Committee chair, Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd. Lopez was notified about the briefings three times, she added.
“Many aldermen skip briefings, and those aldermen that come to the briefing, I think, understand the circumstances that are presented by the Law Department,” she said.
Dowell declined to discuss the specifics of the cases, but praised the concept of a mass settlement, even as she acknowledged that eye-catching sum.
“That is what we’ve been required to pay by the court system, and we have to figure out a way to make people who have been harmed whole,” she said.
The deal is in the best interest of taxpayers, said the Finance Committee’s vice chair, Ald. Bill Conway, 34th. The downtown alderman, who like Dowell is not a consistent Johnson ally, estimated it will save the city between $250 million and $500 million. The council has become very familiar with Guevara cases in recent years as the lawsuits loom, he said.
“I don’t think it’s moving ahead too fast,” Conway said. “Although the amount of money is huge, I think aldermen are familiar with the general liability we have with regard to this to this detective.”
Tribune reporter Joe Mahr contributed.