Chicago approves $260.8 million to settle 16 Reynaldo Guevara wrongful-conviction lawsuits

Chicago will pay $260,814,000 to settle 16 wrongful-conviction lawsuits against former police detective Reynaldo Guevara and the City.

The Council approved the order, Or2026-0029301, at its Oct. 14 meeting as part of the Committee on Finance report. Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd Ward), the committee chair, read the 16 case names into the record, among them Flores, Martinez, Rivera, Robinson and Williams v. Guevara, and moved the item on the same roll call the Council had used for the first Finance item. No one asked to speak. The City Clerk's record shows 49 yes votes, no votes against, and Ald. Monique Scott (24th Ward) not voting.

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What is the City paying, and when?

The Finance Committee heard the package on Oct. 5. Our notes on that meeting say Jessica Felker of the Department of Law recommended settling the 16 cases, which involve 17 plaintiffs, for about $260.8 million, and told the committee the City's potential liability if the cases went to trial was more than half a billion dollars. She said the money would go out in four installments of about $65 million each, from April 2027 to October 2028.

Felker told the committee that Guevara asserts his Fifth Amendment right and will not testify, that defense witnesses are dying, and that recent juries have awarded more than $4 million for each year a plaintiff spent in custody. Ald. Rossana Rodríguez Sánchez (33rd Ward) said about $200 million had already been paid on Guevara cases and that the plaintiffs in this package had spent 383 years wrongly imprisoned.

Why settle instead of going to trial?

The City's lawyers made the same argument in September, when the Council approved two earlier Guevara settlements: $6 million to Gabriel Solache and $7.75 million to Arturo DeLeon-Reyes. At the Committee on Finance on Sept. 14, Felker explained what a plaintiff has to prove.

"Ultimately, the question is, did Guevara commit the misconduct that he is accused of? The question in these cases is not whether the plaintiffs are innocent. They don't have to prove that to get damages. What they have to prove is that the misconduct they allege is more likely than not true."

Felker said then that 43 Guevara cases were pending, and that the two September settlements would bring the count to 41. Ald. Byron Sigcho-López (25th Ward) asked about a City-commissioned review of the cases from about 2015; Felker said it is attorney-client privileged and cannot be released. On Oct. 5 he asked again, this time about a reported $1.9 million outside-counsel review.

"I mean, this alone has been almost $160 million on one disgraced detective."

When the September settlements reached the Council floor on Sept. 23, Dowell answered a colleague who had urged a no vote.

"I also want to remind this body that Officer Guevara has asserted his Fifth Amendment rights, and will not testify, which significantly weakens our ability to defend this case."

Who objected, and why?

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) was the lone no vote on both September settlements. He argued that the certificates of innocence behind the cases, issued under former Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, should not be the City's standard.

"Innocence, we learned, has nothing to do with a certificate of innocence. They could be guilty of a crime and yet we are still paying."

Ald. Jason Ervin (28th Ward) answered him on the floor.

"People's rights were violated. People were tortured."

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By Oct. 5, Lopez had changed his position on this package. Our notes say he told the Finance Committee he had voted against such settlements before but would support this one, calling it necessary, and he voted yes on Oct. 14. Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) objected that about 40% of the money typically goes to the plaintiffs' attorneys and that Guevara keeps his pension; Felker said state law removes a pension only after a work-related felony conviction.

Lopez and Dowell agreed on one thing: the Law Department exceeds its settlement allocation every year, and the Council should examine that during the budget.

How did the vote go?

The committee recommended the package on a voice vote on Oct. 5. On Oct. 14 it passed by the Finance report's first roll call, which the Clerk's record lists as 49 yes and Scott not voting; the count announced on the floor, taken before Scott joined the meeting remotely, was 48 to 0. A motion to reconsider failed.

What it means on your block

• The money comes from the City's budget. Four payments of about $65 million are scheduled between April 2027 and October 2028, on top of the roughly $200 million already paid on Guevara cases.
• More cases are coming. After the September settlements, 41 Guevara cases were pending; this package resolves 16 of them.
• The Finance Committee is where these decisions get made. Its meetings are public, and the Law Department presents each settlement before the vote.