Jimmy Soto speaks at a news conference on Oct. 22, 2024. (WTTW News)
Jimmy Soto was 20 years old in 1981 when he was given a life sentence for a crime he has long said he did not commit.
Soto said Chicago police officers framed him and his cousin, David Ayala, for a Little Village double murder for which they spent 42 years in prison. Last December, all charges against the two cousins were dropped. They’re believed to have served the longest wrongful conviction sentences in Illinois history.
Soto, 62, on Tuesday filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against dozens of Chicago police officers, three Cook County assistant state’s attorneys, the city of Chicago and Cook County.
“The psychological and physical toll it took on me, I don’t know if we can actually put a metric to that,” Soto said. “What would be the just compensation? Are those who are accountable really going to be held to that responsibility of putting me into prison? I don’t know. But I hope people understand this is just one step towards trying to get justice for me.”
Soto’s attorney Jon Loevy said the right thing for the city to do is quickly seek a resolution, but he’s not expecting that to happen.
“What they do is hire defense firms who make millions and millions of dollars in attorney’s fees to protract the thing for three, four, five years,” Loevy said. “And then they lose anyways.”
Soto made the announcement about the lawsuit from the Pritzker School of Law, where he had been part of the inaugural class of Northwestern University’s Prison Education Program. One month before his exoneration, he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree. He’s now working as a paralegal and plans to get his law degree.
Soto’s attorney Meg Gould praised his resilience.
“Even when the criminal legal system repeatedly denied Mr. Soto his freedom, he never stopped advocating for himself, advocating for everyone around him, and really defying the odds in every way that he could,” Gould said.
Though the lawsuit doesn’t ask for a specific monetary amount, Soto advocated for himself at Tuesday’s news conference.
“What is just compensation?” Soto asked. “What does it look like? A hundred million? A hundred fifty million? Two hundred million? I would say I’m deserving of 200-plus million for what I’ve been through. I hope that whatever happens, as far as a settlement or award, it would be equal to me being the longest serving. If we use that simple metric, it should be the highest award or settlement in the history of Chicago.”
In all, between January 2019 and June 2024, Chicago taxpayers spent a total of $200 million to resolve lawsuits brought by more than three dozen people who were wrongfully convicted based on evidence gathered by the Chicago Police Department, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
As police misconduct settlements add up for the city and its taxpayers, Loevy argues there is a solution.
“Stop wrongfully convicting people,” Loevy said. “Stop police abuse. Spend the political capital and resources necessary to fix the problem. Some police departments don’t have this problem.”
A spokesperson for the Chicago Law Department said the city has not been served with the complaint and that the office does not comment on pending litigation.
Note: The law firm Loevy and Loevy has done legal work for WTTW News.
