Chicago leads U.S. again in exonerations of wrongful convictions

[May 19, 2023]  By Glenn Minnis | The Center Square contributor

(The Center Square) – More than half of all criminal exonerations across the country in 2022 took place in Chicago, earning the city the moniker of “wrongful conviction capital of the United States” for the fifth consecutive year.

According to the annual report from the National Registry of Exonerations, Cook County recorded 124 exonerations in 2022, all but two of them tied to former Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts and Detective Reynaldo Guevara. Of all the individuals exonerated in Cook County that year, data shows all but one of the suspects were Black or Latino and that at least four people were exonerated twice.

The wrongful convictions have come at a financial price, with Chicago taxpayers paying out about $98 million to settle lawsuits alleging police misconduct in 2022 and some $82 million being set aside as part of the city’s 2023 budget to cover the cost of resolving legal actions taken against the department. In September, the Chicago City Council agreed to pay $9 million to a man who was exonerated after spending more than two decades in prison for a murder he has since been found to have not committed.

The report comes just days after newly-elected Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was sworn in and as the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability intensifies its search for a new city police commissioner from a list of at least 53 applicants. Johnson is already on record with his vow to reform the department, which remains under the control of a federal judge and a consent decree until at least 2027.

Since the beginning of March, CPD has now had three superintendents and was recently found to be in compliance with just 3% of the consent decree that was brought on by a 2017 federal investigation that found officers routinely violated the constitutional rights of Black and Latino residents.

In all, 97 of the exonerations from 2022 were linked to a pool of officers that included Watts. Over the past six years, 212 convictions that were tied to him and his crew that patrolled the Ida B. Wells housing project in the early 2000s have been overturned, according to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. In addition, 14 people who were convicted after arrests by officers tied to Watts were exonerated in 2021.

In the case of Guevara, 25 exonerations in 2022 were tied to him, and in 2017 a judge ruled he routinely lied under oath.