A top Chicago prosecutor has dropped seven murder convictions against inmates who spent decades in prison – as a detective stands accused of framing suspects.
Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx vacated the sentencings on Tuesday due to the actions of Reynaldo Guevara between 1989 and 1996.
She also said she will no longer oppose post-conviction litigation in the cases after a 2019 review related to allegations of the cop’s police misconduct.
David Colon, Johnny Flores, Nelson Gonzalez, Marilyn Mulero, Jaime Rios, Carlos Andino and Alfredo Gonzalez had their convictions quashed.
Mulero, who had two toddlers when she was arrested, spent five years fearing for her life on death row before she was finally let out of prison.
An eighth case – that of Louis Robinson – remains pending ahead of further court proceedings.
Mulero was interrogated by Guevara and other cops where she said she was denied sleep for 20 hours before signing a confession
She burst into tears when she spoke to television cameras on the case earlier this year
Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx vacated the sentencings on Tuesday due to the actions of Reynaldo Guevara (pictured) between 1989 and 1996
Foxx (pictured) also said she will no longer oppose post-conviction litigation in the cases after a 2019 review related to allegations of the cop’s police misconduct
For his part, Guevara (pictured in 2013) did what he has done repeatedly in other cases: He refused to answer questions
David Colon, Johnny Flores, Nelson Gonzalez, Marilyn Mulero, Jaime Rios, Carlos Andino (right) and Alfredo Gonzalez (center) had their convictions quashed. An eighth case – that of Louis Robinson (left) – remains pending ahead of further court proceedings
The seven inmates released after spending decades in prison
David Colon: 26 years
David Colon, who now goes by David Lugo, was in jail for 26 years for the 1991 murder of 16-year-old Michael Velez in Chicago.
The youngster was shot multiple times but Colon always maintained his innocence.
He was released in 2017 on parole but was acquitted on Friday.
David Colon, who now goes by David Lugo, was in jail for 26 years for the 1991 murder of 16-year-old Michael Velez in Chicago
Nelson Gonzalez: 22 years
Nelson Gonzalez, now 53, was released from prison in 2013 after serving 22 years for a murder he says he did not commit.
He claimed he was set up b Guevara and other officers and called for charges to be brought against him.
He said he was going back to school to study criminal justice.
Nelson Gonzalez, 53, was released from prison in 2013 after 22 years
He told the Chicago Sun: ‘I would love to be a lawyer. I know what the journey is, so I can speak from both sides.
‘So, that’s what I’m gonna be focused on, and family, and making sure my mom’s OK, and continue to help the community.
‘I’m not going to give up just because I was vindicated.’
Marilyn Mulero: 28 years, five on death row
Marilyn Mulero spent 28 years behind bars for a shooting that left two men dead in 1992.
Five of these had been spent languishing on death row.
She had been charged with two other women with luring two gang members to a park where they were shot dead.
Mulero was interrogated by Guevara and other cops where she said she was denied sleep for 20 hours before signing a confession.
She told CBS after her conviction was dropped: ‘I did several years on Death Row for a crime I didn’t commit. I stayed strong. I maintained my faith in God.’
Marilyn Mulero spent 28 years behind bars for a shooting that left two men dead in 1992
Innocence Project co-director Lauren Kaeseberg said: ‘Marilyn was just 21 when she was ripped away from her two young sons, terrorized by a corrupt police detective, and then convicted and sentenced to die in prison for a crime she did not commit.
‘While former Det. Guevara is a real-life example of evil and terror, the exoneration of Marilyn and these other innocent men is a shining example of perseverance and a testament to the power of the human spirit.’
Jaime Rios: 18 years
Jaime Rios was convicted of the June 27, 1989 shooting of Luis Morales where the victim was blasted to death in an alleyway in Chicago.
He was arrested on suspicion of the murder but claimed Guevara hit him in the head with a flashlight.
Rios also alleges another cop pushed his head on the table and threatened to have his young son stripped from hi, if he did not confess.
He spent 18 years in prison before being released.
Carlos Andino: 28 years
Carlos Andino was arrested over the 1994 murder of a Polish immigrant.
It started when three siblings – Kathy, 10, Kimberly, 11, and Christopher Smith, 14, had been standing in their apartment doorway waiting for their mother to let them in.
Nearby a thug approached a man using a payphone and demanded his pager and cash.
The man, Polish immigrant Matt Dibicki, refused and he was shot dead from point-blank range.
Alfredo Gonzalez had been serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill for a 1990 murder
Police claimed Andino was named in an anonymous tip off as the killer.
But two of the Smith children had said the shooter had a teardrop tattoo under his eye, which Andino did not have.
Despite this, the claimed he was the murderer.
Kathy later revealed Guevara had visited their home and showed them a photo of him and said he was the killer.
Andino was arrested on August 18, 1994, and handed a lawyer who also represented Guevara in a range of civil cases.
Alfredo Gonzalez: 32 years
Alfredo Gonzalez had been serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill for a 1990 murder.
He spent 32 years of his 64 years of life behind bars and missed his daughter’s wedding.
Alfredo Gonzalez had been serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill for a 1990 murder
Ahead of his release, she told the Chicago Tribune: ‘We’ve been waiting for a very long time.
‘My dad got taken away from us when I was 3, my brother was 7.
‘We are just ready to drive over there and pick him up.’
Gonzalez said ‘I’m free’ as he cried and embraced his daughter outside the prison. He added: ‘I had a broken heart, because I wasn’t attentive.’
Johnny Flores: 20 years
Johnny Flores was released from prison after his conviction was dropped following 20 years behind bars.
He was convicted despite a key witness at the time admitting he had been high and drunk at the time.
Johnny Flores was released from prison after his conviction was dropped following 20 years behind bars
Foxx said: ‘We no longer believe in the validity of these convictions or the credibility of the evidence of these convictions.’
The seven cases dismissed Tuesday involved slayings committed between 1989 and 1994.
Five defendants – Colon, Flores, Nelson Gonzalez, Mulero and Rios – already have completed prison sentences and are no longer in custody.
Andino and Alfredo Gonzalez are expected to be released, while Robinson remains in custody pending further court proceedings.
Colon, who now goes by David Lugo, was in jail for 26 years for the 1991 murder of 16-year-old Michael Velez in Chicago.
The youngster was shot multiple times but Colon always maintained his innocence.
He was released in 2017 on parole but was acquitted on Friday.
Nelson Gonzalez, now 53, was released from prison in 2013 after serving 22 years for a murder he says he did not commit.
He claimed he was set up b Guevara and other officers and called for charges to be brought against him.
He said he was going back to school to study criminal justice.
He told the Chicago Sun: ‘I would love to be a lawyer. I know what the journey is, so I can speak from both sides.
‘So, that’s what I’m gonna be focused on, and family, and making sure my mom’s OK, and continue to help the community.
‘I’m not going to give up just because I was vindicated.’
Marilyn Mulero spent 28 years behind bars for a shooting that left two men dead in 1992.
Five of these had been spent languishing on death row.
She had been charged with two other women with luring two gang members to a park where they were shot dead.
Mulero was interrogated by Guevara and other cops where she said she was denied sleep for 20 hours before signing a confession.
She told CBS after her conviction was dropped: ‘I did several years on Death Row for a crime I didn’t commit. I stayed strong. I maintained my faith in God.’
Rios was convicted of the June 27, 1989 shooting of Luis Morales where the victim was blasted to death in an alleyway in Chicago.
He was arrested on suspicion of the murder but claimed Guevara hit him in the head with a flashlight.
Rios also alleges another cop pushed his head on the table and threatened to have his young son stripped from hi, if he did not confess.
He spent 18 years in prison before being released.
Andino was arrested over the 1994 murder of a Polish immigrant.
It started when three siblings – Kathy, 10, Kimberly, 11, and Christopher Smith, 14, had been standing in their apartment doorway waiting for their mother to let them in.
Nearby a thug approached a man using a payphone and demanded his pager and cash.
The man, Polish immigrant Matt Dibicki, refused and he was shot dead from point-blank range.
Police claimed Andino was named in an anonymous tip off as the killer.
But two of the Smith children had said the shooter had a teardrop tattoo under his eye, which Andino did not have.
Despite this, the claimed he was the murderer.
Kathy later revealed Guevara had visited their home and showed them a photo of him and said he was the killer.
Andino was arrested on August 18, 1994, and handed a lawyer who also represented Guevara in a range of civil cases.
Alfredo Gonzalez had been serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill for a 1990 murder.
He spent 32 years of his 64 years of life behind bars and missed his daughter’s wedding.
Ahead of his release, she told the Chicago Tribune: ‘We’ve been waiting for a very long time.
‘My dad got taken away from us when I was 3, my brother was 7.
‘We are just ready to drive over there and pick him up.’
Gonzalez said ‘I’m free’ as he cried and embraced his daughter outside the prison. He added: ‘I had a broken heart, because I wasn’t attentive.’
And Johnny Flores was released from prison after his conviction was dropped following 20 years behind bars.
He was convicted despite a key witness at the time admitting he had been high and drunk at the time.
Two dozen cases already have been vacated and action on three additional cases is expected in the coming weeks.
Guevara – a former member of a police department dogged by decades of scandal, cover-ups and brutality – has never been charged with a crime.
Foxx said her office is reviewing possible charges against Guevara, who retired in 2005 and is receiving a city police pension and a Chicago Park District pension.
She added: ‘While we focused on the allegations of misconduct, we did not want to lose sight that lives were lost and the impact that our decision could have on the families of victims who believed that justice had been served by these convictions.
‘We looked at these cases with a careful lens to ensure that we got it right.’
Guevara helped inmates win freedom by repeatedly invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination or insisting he could not remember facts, thus forcing prosecutors to dismiss charges in several cases.
In one case, after he was granted immunity by prosecutors, he answered repeatedly he did not remember confessions he elicited from two men convicted of murder.
The judge characterized his comments as ‘bald-faced lies’ and threw out the confessions.
Foxx said: ‘Could we try these cases again today without the work of Detective Guevara? Based on our review, we are not able to retry these cases.’
She added additional investigations could be conducted ‘to see if, in fact, someone else committed these crimes.’
Last September, Chicago´s City Council agreed to pay $20.5million to two of at least a dozen men whose murder convictions were dismissed due to Guevara.
The lawsuits were filed on behalf of Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez who spent 23 years in prison before they were released in 2016.
Serrano, claimed Guevara and then-assistant state’s attorneys Matthew Coghlan and John Dillon collaborated to pressure a key witness into pinning the 1993 murder of Rodrigo Vargas on Serrano.
He and co-defendant Jose Montanez were released from incarceration in July 2016, after more than two decades in prison, when prosecutors dropped the charges.
Serrano was wrongfully convicted of Vargas’ murder in Cook County, Illinois, in 1993 and spent 23 years behind bars.
Francisco Vicente was a key witness in the murder trial. He faced four felony charges at the time that he allegedly told Guevara that Serrano and Montanez had confessed to him that they fatally shot Vargas in his vehicle in 1993.
Vicente recanted his account of the admissions in 2004 after several interviews with students from the Medill Innocent Project, according to the Chicago Tribune. He said that Guevara had fed him the story.
In 2009, a jury awarded $21million to a man who spent 11 years in prison before he was retried and acquitted because witnesses testified Guevara intimidated them into falsely identifying the man as the killer. The city later agreed to pay $16.4million.
Another jury awarded $17million in 2018 to a man who made similar allegations. Foxx said she would not discount the impact each case had on the defendants.
During the trial, Jacques Rivera’s attorneys alleged that Guevara coerced a 12-year-old boy, the only witness in a 1988 slaying, into identifying Rivera as the killer. He walked free from jail in 2011.
‘You can’t just go around making up identifications and sending people to prison,’ Rivera’s lead attorney, Jon Loevy, told the jury. ‘That’s not right. That’s as dangerous as a bullet.’
In another, earlier case, Rivera (pictured in 2018) spent 21 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2011 and released
Serrano is seen here waving to reporters after his release in July 2016
The lawsuits were filed on behalf of Armando Serrano (left) and Jose Montanez (right) who spent 23 years in prison before they were released in 2016
Demonstrators hold a sign showing what are supposedly the faces of men Guevara helped to wrongfully convict in photo from a July 2016 ABC News Chicago report
When he took the stand in federal court in the Rivera lawsuit, Guevara invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 200 times
Referring to the investigation, Loevy said ‘the whole thing was dirty,’ citing missing detective reports and ‘rigged lineups’ designed to incriminate his client, according to The Chicago Tribune.
Rivera spent 21 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2011 and released.
For his part, Guevara did what he has done repeatedly in other cases: He refused to answer questions.
When he took the stand in federal court in the Rivera lawsuit, Guevara invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 200 times.
‘This is a big case, this is an important case, this is a staggering case,’ Loevy said during closing arguments. ‘The things we have seen in this courtroom are unprecedented.’
In 2017, a Cook County judge dismissed another case involved Guevara, against Roberto Almodovar and William Negron.
The two men were convicted of a double homicide in 1995 on the strength of witness testimony obtained in part by Guevara.
Almodovar was granted his freedom while Guevara was once again held civilly liable for a wrongful conviction.
Exoneration Project attorney Russell Ainsworth said after the latest batch of court hearings: ‘This is a community who will not stop until every other Guevara victim has been released.
He added: ‘Today is a start, and we are not done until everyone is brought home.’
Inmates who spent DECADES behind bars… only to be freed when it emerged they were innocent: US’s biggest miscarriages of justice
Boxer who spent 26 years in jail for murder her didn’t commit
Dewey Bozella spent 26 years in New York’s notorious Sing Sing prison for a murder he did not commit.
For more than a quarter of a century he knew daily despair as he battled to clear his name over the brutal killing of a 92-year-old woman.
He could have become a free man four times if he had pleaded guilty. Each time he refused, maintaining his innocence.
Born in Brooklyn, Bozella was nine years old when he saw his father beat his pregnant mother to death. Later one brother was killed in a stabbing and another shot in the head.
Bozella became a petty criminal, but tried to start a new life by moving to upstate Poughkeepsie and taking up boxing at a gym run by former heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson.
But at 18 he was arrested for a local woman’s murder. Seven years later he was convicted of the killing.
Bozella said he had been bicycling far from the scene, but two convicts claimed he was the murderer in return for their own freedom. He received a sentence of 20 years to life.
‘Every day I had to ask myself, ‘How do I survive this nightmare, Sing Sing,’ a place where hate and anger are the order of the day,’ Bozella told ESPN in 2011.
‘I didn’t merely want to survive, I wanted to thrive. Boxing awakened me. I felt free during my workouts for the first time. I was no longer a prisoner.’
In 1990, Bozella won a second trial. The prosecutor offered him a deal – admit the crime and go free. Stubbornly, Bozella refused. And then the jury convicted him.
He said: ‘I’d die before I would tell you I did it. I can’t, I can’t. You are not going to make me say something I didn’t do. I’m not a murderer.’
Bozella had to spend 19 more years at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining where he became the prison’s light-heavyweight boxing champion.
He fell in love with a woman who was visiting another inmate, and got married.
He said: ‘I learned to take myself from the bad position and make it a better position. If I have to die in prison, that’s just the way it is.’
Bozella wrote the same letter to the Innocence Project week after week, asking them to take up his case.
Five years after receiving the first letter, the Innocence Project agreed, but police had destroyed all of the physical evidence in the case.
The law firm WilmerHale eventually took on the case and tracked down the senior detective who investigated the murder. It was to be a vital breakthrough.
Arthur Regula had kept the only copy of the case file and had taken it home with him after he retired.
He told ESPN: ‘I had figured some day someone would come knocking on my door. There were certain things in the case that made me have doubts. I just could never throw it away.’
The file revealed that prosecution witnesses had lied, and that another suspect had confessed to the crime – information withheld from Bozella’s lawyers all those years.
Bozella prepared for his first professional fight in 2011 and then-President Barack Obama telephoned him.
Dewey Bozella, who was freed after 26 years in prison, prepared for his first professional fight in 2011 and then-President Barack Obama telephoned him
Mr Obama said: ‘I heard about your story and wanted to call and say good luck in your first professional fight.
‘Everything you have accomplished while you were in prison and everything you have been doing since you got out is something that I think all of us are very impressed with.’
Bozella told ABC New York station WABC-TV about the dream that kept him going through the years.
He said: ‘My message is to never let fear define who you are, and never let where you came from determine where you are going.
‘When I was in prison, they were telling me, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that, it’s never going to happen.’ And now look. It was something I believed in my heart would happen.’
Man spent 19 years in jail after wrongfully convicted of murder
Darryl Hunt was 20 when he was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Deborah Sykes, a copy editor at the Sentinel, a former afternoon newspaper.
Sykes was found dead in 1984 on a grassy slope close to her office with 16 stab wounds to her body.
Hunt barely escaped the death penalty, and was convicted again at a second trial in 1990.
In February 2004, DNA evidence led police to Willard Brown, who confessed to the killing.
Following his release, Hunt was awarded more than $1.6 million from the city of Winston-Salem, and dedicated the remainder of his life to fighting for justice for the wrongfully convicted.
Hunt worked with the Innocence Project and started his own organization, The Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice Inc.
‘[Hunt] was very determined to do his best to right wrongs and to help those leaving prisons have a better life with his project,’ said the Reverend Carlton Eversley of Dellabrook Presbyterian Church.
‘He emerged from prison a man of grace and forgiveness with a remarkable lack of anger and bitterness,’ Jim O’Neill, district attorney of Forsyth county, told the Winston-Salem Journal.
He was released from prison aged 51 in 2004 but was found dead in his car in North Carolina in 2016.
Police in Winston-Salem, North Carolina said Hunt was found unresponsive inside a car on University Parkway near the College Plaza shopping center after he was reported missing the previous day.
A person who knew Hunt told the newspaper he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer about 18 months earlier.
‘The burdens he had had become more intensified recently; they were constantly with him. He had been through so much,’ said Jet Hollander, an activist who worked with Hunt.
A close friend of Hunt’s told the Journal he was struggling with depression and that he was hurt by the 2014 separation from his wife April, whom he married in 2000.
‘Darryl had a lot of pride, dignity and didn’t put himself out there for his own care,’ said the Reverend John Mendez of Emmanuel Baptist Church. ‘He was trying to make some sense out of his life.’
Teenager, 18, locked away for 15 years after witness said she was ’65 percent sure’ he was rapist
Jimmy Ray Bromgard was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the brutal rape of an eight-year-old girl in 1987 – a crime he did not commit.
He was convicted after a witness who said she was ’65 per cent sure’ pointed to him as the perpetrator.
Hair fibers taken from the victim’s bed at her home in Billings, Montana were found to be indistinguishable from Bromgard’s hair.
But an inept forensic analyst told a jurythat there was less than a one-in-ten-thousand chance that the hairs did not belong to Bromgard.
This was based on a complete lie as no standard exists to match hair to that microscopic level.
Bromgard, who was 18 at the time and also burdened by a useless defense attorney, told the court that he was at home and asleep when the crime occurred.
He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 1987. He spent almost 15 years in prison before he was turned down for release by the parole board because he refused to take part in a sex offenders’ program in jail.
DNA testing of semen samples from the victim’s underwear were found not to belong to Bromgard.
He was freed in 2002 and has received compensation for the miscarriage of justice.
Man who wrongfully got 20 years for robbing and sexually assaulting woman in her Wisconsin home
Anthony Hicks was stopped for a traffic violation in 1991 when he was charged with robbing and sexually assaulting a woman in her Wisconsin home.
Another inmate thought he looked similar to a police sketch of the suspect leading to the charge – before hair fibers were found at the scene.
Forensic testing revealed that they were ‘consistent’ with Hicks. An analyst also said that a Caucasian hair found in his pants was ‘consistent’ with the victim’s hair.
He was sentenced to 20 years in jail.
After serving five years, Hicks was allowed access to his evidence and had it DNA tested.
He was exonerated in April 1997 after the genetic tests proved he could not have committed the crime. Hicks received $25,000 in compensation.
Man sentenced to DEATH for kidnap, rape and murder of young girl in Idaho was released after 18 years
Charles Irvin Fain was given the death penalty for the kidnap, rape and murder of a young girl in 1982 in Nampa, Idaho.
Fain was originally questioned after he was reportedly seen near a river where her body was found.
He was asked to submit hair samples – which the FBI found were similar to those found at the crime scene.
A hair analyst later testified that Fain’s hair shared an uncommon trait as that found at the scene – despite there not being scientific evidence on the frequency of varying characteristics in hair.
Fain has always maintained his innocence – and in 2001, DNA proved he was telling the truth.
Mitochondrial DNA testing conducted on appeal showed that pubic hairs found in the girl’s underwear did not belong to Fain.
He was released in 2001 – having served 18 years for heinous crimes he did not commit.