The Chicago City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to pay $260.8 million to 17 men whose murder convictions were vacated after evidence that former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara had framed them. The mass settlement resolves 16 lawsuits in one swoop, closing out one of the most expensive chapters in the department's history while leaving dozens of similar cases still working through federal court.
According to WTTW, the 17 plaintiffs spent a combined 383 years in prison, though the Chicago Tribune put the figure at 384 years in custody. Either way, the math behind the deal is staggering: the city will make four equal payments in April and October of 2027 and again in April and October of 2028, per WTTW's reporting.
As first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, city attorneys warned aldermen that rejecting a global deal risked jury verdicts that could have topped $1 billion. Deputy Corporation Counsel Jessica Felker cautioned that juries are unpredictable and that possible awards could be exceptionally large, according to the Sun-Times account. Ald. Bill Conway called it a gigantic but responsible settlement, while Ald. Ray Lopez backed it as revolting but necessary, even as he said he did not know whether the city actually had the money on hand.
A Pattern Stretching Back Decades
Guevara's alleged misconduct has touched far more than the 17 men covered by this settlement. The Sun-Times reports that 43 people convicted in cases he handled have been exonerated since the 1980s, including three women, with most living in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. Exonerations tied to his cases mostly occurred between 2016 and 2024, a period when Kim Foxx served as Cook County State's Attorney.
Some of the men swept up in Guevara's cases were as young as 14 when arrested for murder, with ages ranging up to 28, and plaintiffs in this settlement spent an average of 22.6 years in prison, per the Sun-Times. The city has already paid out separately for related claims: it agreed to pay $20.5 million to two men whose convictions were dismissed over alleged framing by Guevara, according to CBS News. CBS News also notes a jury awarded $21 million to one man who spent 11 years in prison before being retried and acquitted, which the city later settled for $16.4 million, and another jury awarded $17 million in 2018 to a man with similar allegations.
Guevara Has Never Faced Charges
Despite the mounting civil judgments, Guevara has never been charged with a crime, even as prosecutors have reviewed possible charges, CBS News reports. He retired from the department in June 2005 and, per WTTW, now lives in Texas and collects an annual pension of $91,000. A judge determined in 2017 that Guevara told “bald-faced lies” while under oath, according to the same WTTW report.
That pension has drawn particular frustration at City Hall. Ald. Jeanette Taylor has pushed back on the idea that Guevara continues collecting retirement pay for 30 years of CPD service, according to the Sun-Times, but Felker told her that a felony conviction within the scope of employment is the only ground that would allow the city to deny a police pension — and Guevara has not been convicted of anything.
Costliest Scandal in Department History
The Guevara scandal has now eclipsed the roughly $210 million in settlements, judgments, legal fees and reparations tied to former Cmdr. Jon Burge and his so-called midnight crew, the Chicago Tribune reports — with total Guevara-related costs now running more than twice that figure. WTTW's accounting puts the total cost of defending and resolving the 32 lawsuits naming Guevara at $472.8 million, including $56.2 million paid to private attorneys defending him and other officers across 57 misconduct lawsuits. Altogether, $416.5 million in taxpayer money has gone to people who said they were victimized by Guevara and to their attorneys, per WTTW.
Twenty-five lawsuits tied to Guevara remain pending in federal court, according to WTTW, while the Sun-Times separately reports that roughly 23 outstanding Guevara cases remain and that this settlement, combined with two additional cases, is expected to resolve about half of them. City Council pressured the Johnson administration to pursue a global settlement of the remaining cases rather than litigating them one by one, the Sun-Times reports, though officials have signaled that another similarly large settlement will likely be needed down the road.
A Growing Line Item in the City Budget
Prior Guevara-related verdicts and settlements had already cost the city about $160 million, including $43 million across six settlements approved by aldermen this year, according to the Tribune. Mayor Brandon Johnson's 2027 budget forecast sets aside $401 million to resolve lawsuits — $226 million more than in 2026 — as WTTW reports, with the mayor calling projected legal settlements the biggest driver of a projected $882 million budget shortfall for 2027, per the Sun-Times. WTTW separately cites the gap at $882.5 million, while the city's own FY2027 forecast document cites an $882.4 million resource gap.
From 2021 through 2025, Chicago taxpayers spent $472.4 million resolving police-misconduct lawsuits altogether, according to WTTW's earlier analysis. In 2025 alone, the city spent nearly $259 million on such cases, more than triple what it paid in 2024, with wrongful-conviction cases accounting for $193.4 million of that total, almost 75 percent, the same analysis found. A separate global settlement that year resolved 176 lawsuits tied to former Sgt. Ronald Watts — accused of framing hundreds of people on drug charges at the Chicago Housing Authority's Ida B. Wells complex — for $90 million, according to the Sun-Times; including those Watts cases, the city's 2025 police-misconduct total climbed to $360.3 million, per WTTW.
The federal consent decree requiring CPD reform has now been in effect for seven years, but the department had fully met just 25 percent of its requirements as of the most recent monitor's report, WTTW found. Mary Richardson-Lowry delivered the Guevara settlement to the council as one of her final acts while retiring as the city's corporation counsel, the Sun-Times reports, closing out a case that has come to define her tenure — and the department's reckoning with one of its most prolific alleged framers.
