Chicago’s Wrongful-Conviction Scandal Needs an Investigation, Not a Buy Now, Pay Later Plan

The City Council finally seems to realize something is terribly wrong with Chicago’s multi-million dollar settlement machine. Unfortunately, its proposed solution solves the wrong problem.

Chicago aldermen have finally noticed there may be something seriously wrong with the way this city hands out millions of taxpayer dollars to people whose criminal convictions have been overturned. That is progress, I suppose. Unfortunately, their proposed solution amounts to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Twelve aldermen have demanded changes after the latest embarrassing development involving Francisco Nanez, one of three men who shared a $48 million city settlement arising from a 1986 arson and murder case. Nanez received $8 million. He subsequently pleaded guilty to traveling to meet someone he believed to be a 13-year-old for sex. More remarkably, when the city recommended his settlement, Nanez was already in custody awaiting trial on child-sex charges.

The aldermen are understandably outraged. Their solution? Don’t give future recipients all their money at once. Pay large settlements in quarterly installments, suspend payments if recipients are arrested on felony charges, and cancel the remaining payments if they are convicted.

Really? That’s the lesson we’re supposed to learn from this?

Whether Chicago pays someone $8 million on Monday morning or parcels it out every three months isn't relevant to the obvious question: Why did we give him $8 million in the first place? And why has Chicago paid hundreds of millions of dollars resolving police misconduct and overturned conviction cases without somebody taking a much harder look at the machinery producing those settlements? The aldermen’s proposal looks forward to the recipient’s next crime. It does nothing to examine what may have gone wrong before the check was written.

The Nanez case ought to be the catalyst for something much bigger: An independent investigation of Chicago’s entire wrongful-conviction industry — and I deliberately use the word industry. There are defendants, plaintiffs’ attorneys, prosecutors, defense attorneys, police officers, judges, Certificates of Innocence, and ultimately Chicago taxpayers, who are expected to pay the bill. When hundreds of millions of dollars begin moving through any system, particularly one controlled by Chicago and Cook County government, asking who benefits and how the decisions are being made isn’t cynicism. It’s common sense.

Consider what may soon come before the City Council involving Gabriel Solache and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes. The two men were convicted in the 1998 murders of Mariano and Jacinta Soto and spent nearly two decades in prison before their convictions were overturned after a judge concluded that former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara had told “bald-faced lies” under oath. There was no physical evidence connecting either man to the murders. Those facts cannot simply be brushed aside.

But neither can what happened afterward. Former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx indicated in a deposition that prosecutors could continue to believe Solache and DeLeon-Reyes guilty despite her office’s decision not to oppose their Certificates of Innocence. Her former first assistant, Eric Sussman, was considerably less ambiguous when the charges were dismissed in 2017: He said there was “no doubt” in his mind or those who had worked on the case the men were guilty.

Stop right there and consider the extraordinary nature of that situation. Prosecutors could believe defendants committed the crime while their office nevertheless stopped opposing Certificates of Innocence that materially strengthened the defendants’ ability to seek compensation. Whatever one thinks of Solache and DeLeon-Reyes, that contradiction cries out for explanation.

City lawyers reached agreements this spring to settle both men’s federal lawsuits, although the amounts have not yet been publicly disclosed. There is another politically uncomfortable fact: Both men were in the United States illegally when arrested and were ultimately deported to Mexico after their convictions were overturned. Their immigration status does not establish their guilt, of course, nor does it determine whether their constitutional rights were violated. But aldermen preparing to vote on these settlements owe taxpayers something more substantial than another rubber stamp.

The numbers involved in the larger Chicago problem are staggering — and, unfortunately, they really are this bad. By June 17, Chicago had spent more than $225 million resolving more than 200 police misconduct lawsuits in just the first six months of 2026, despite budgeting only $82.5 million for such settlements. In all of 2025, taxpayers spent $252 million resolving 136 lawsuits. Nearly 60 percent of the 2026 money went to resolve cases involving people whose convictions had been reversed. Fourteen lawsuits alleging misconduct by Guevara alone have resulted in approximately $142 million in payments.

At some point this stops looking like an occasional unfortunate expense and begins looking like a major municipal enterprise. Every dollar comes from taxpayers. Every settlement should therefore receive the same scrutiny we would demand if City Hall were handing hundreds of millions to contractors.

That is why the aldermen’s proposal is so frustrating. Suppose it had been in place when Nanez received his settlement. Chicago might have saved some money by stopping future installments after his subsequent criminal conduct. Fine. But we still wouldn’t know whether the original settlement was justified, whether the evidence was properly evaluated, whether Certificates of Innocence were warranted, or whether anyone participating in this extraordinarily lucrative process had conflicts of interest. The installment plan protects us against what a recipient might do tomorrow. It does nothing to tell us what government officials did yesterday.

And Chicago doesn’t even have to invent a mechanism for dealing with these questions. Look at Philadelphia.

In June, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of intervening in the way Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office handles post-conviction cases. The court said the office had conceded relief well over 100 times since 2018, mostly in murder cases, and cited “numerous instances of untrustworthy concessions, lack of candor, misrepresentations of fact, lack of adequate investigation, and avoidance of hearings.” It ordered that when Krasner’s office concedes post-conviction relief, Pennsylvania’s attorney general must receive notice and an opportunity to intervene.

In other words, Pennsylvania imposed an independent set of eyes on the process. Chicago proposes an installment plan, as if paying $100,000 in four installments of $25,000 is any less than paying it in one lump sum — and as if trial lawyers cannot count. It is the kind of boneheaded finance logic characteristic of a county that has to borrow money because it cannot get the property tax bills out on time.

Former Chicago Public Schools CEO and mayoral candidate Paul Vallas has already argued in Chicago Contrarian the circumstances surrounding Cook County’s wrongful conviction system justify a federal investigation. He specifically pointed to Foxx’s handling of Certificates of Innocence and the enormous financial consequences flowing from overturned convictions. Whatever one thinks about any individual defendant or police officer, Vallas is asking the right institutional question: Who is independently examining this system? As it stands, it appears Foxx was watching the henhouse.

That question became even more timely this weekend with Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general. If Chicago’s political establishment cannot credibly investigate a system in which Chicago and Cook County officials themselves have participated, perhaps the Department of Justice should. This doesn’t require assuming beforehand that anybody committed a crime. That’s what investigations are for. Follow the evidence. Follow the Certificates of Innocence. Follow the settlements. Follow the relationships among prosecutors, plaintiffs’ attorneys, and government officials.

And above all, follow the money.

Which brings us back to the 12 aldermen who demanded reform: Brian Hopkins, Anthony Beale, Marty Quinn, Raymond Lopez, Derrick Curtis, Silvana Tabares, Felix Cardona Jr., Gilbert Villegas, Nicholas Sposato, Anthony Napolitano, Brendan Reilly, and Debra Silverstein. They may not be in the Hall of Fame, but at least they are not in the Hall of Shame. They deserve a round of applause for recognizing what happened in the Nanez case is unacceptable.

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But take another look at that list. Not at who’s on it, but who’s not.

There is not one member of the City Council’s six-member Democratic Socialist Caucus on it. They are 100 percent AWOL. Six aldermen may represent only 12 percent of the Council, but six out of six failing to sign is still a perfect score.

Chicagoans may also be learning the cruelest lesson of all: There are worse things than the personal corruption that plagued us in the past. While we were governed by crooks, at least they abided by the first law of a parasite: Don’t kill the host. They understood that public safety and prosperity were prerequisites to having something worth preying upon. The old machine wanted its cut of a functioning city. The new radicals increasingly question the legitimacy of the system that made the city function in the first place.

Now, back to the plot of this particular movie. There is an uncomfortable possibility. Perhaps the City Council doesn’t want anyone looking too closely because an investigation wouldn’t stop with Kim Foxx, convicted defendants, or controversial former detectives. It would examine the Corporation Counsel’s office, the State’s Attorney’s Office, Certificates of Innocence, the attorneys collecting fees from these settlements, and sooner or later the City Council itself, which has approved settlement after settlement as the bills climbed into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

How many aldermen voted for them? How much scrutiny did they receive? How many questions were asked before taxpayers’ money was committed? And if some of those settlements now deserve another look, who wants to admit the City Council itself helped create the problem? Might the politically — and perhaps criminally — unpalatable conclusion be, in the immortal words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and it is us?” Might this not be the political equivalent of calling in an airstrike on one’s own position?

Those are considerably harder questions than deciding whether to mail somebody four checks instead of one.

Some Chicago settlements undoubtedly compensated people who suffered terrible injustices and deserved just compensation. But precisely because legitimate victims deserve compensation, the integrity of the system matters. If questionable cases are mixed with genuine miscarriages of justice, everybody loses — taxpayers, police officers, and the truly innocent alike.

Philadelphia’s problems became serious enough that Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court imposed outside oversight. Chicago has already spent more than $225 million resolving police misconduct cases in half a year. If our own institutions are unwilling or unable to investigate themselves, somebody outside them should.

Attorney General Todd Blanche, welcome to Chicago.

And this time, somebody needs to follow the money.