Crime & Law
Pay $17.5M to Man Who Spent More Than 21 Years in Prison After Being Framed by Disgraced Ex-Detective, City Lawyers Recommend
Thomas Sierra leaves court in 2018 after being exonerated of charges he killed a 24-year-old man. (WTTW News)
Chicago taxpayers should pay $17.5 million to a man who spent more than 21 years in prison after he was framed by a disgraced former Chicago police detective for a 1995 murder, city lawyers recommended.
Thomas Sierra was convicted after being investigated by Reynaldo Guevara, a former Chicago police detective accused of routinely framing suspects.
Sierra left prison in 2017, was exonerated in 2018 and received a certificate of innocence in 2022. Sierra and 44 other Chicagoans who were convicted based on evidence gathered by Guevara have been exonerated by Illinois judges, records show.
Sierra was convicted of killing 24-year-old Noel Andujar, who was fatally shot in the head as he rode through Logan Square in May 1995.
No physical evidence linked Sierra to Andujar’s killing. The only person to identify Sierra as the killer testified that Guevara and his partner told him the picture of the gunman was included in a photographic lineup the officers showed him.
Another witness testified at Sierra’s trial that he identified Sierra as Andujar’s killer after Guevara pointed to Sierra’s photograph and told him to pick it.
The proposed $17.5 million settlement is set to be considered Monday by the City Council’s Finance Committee. A final vote of the City Council could come on Wednesday.
If approved, it would be the seventh lawsuit filed by Chicagoans who said they were the victims of Guevara’s misconduct to be resolved, at a cost of $78 million to Chicago taxpayers.
Another 34 federal lawsuits are pending, records show.
City officials paid at least $35.7 million between 2018 and July to hire private attorneys to defend Guevara, despite his well-documented misconduct that sent nearly four dozen now-exonerated Chicagoans to prison for decades, including one woman who was sentenced to death before her conviction was overturned.
That includes $2.8 million to defend Guevara in the lawsuit filed by Sierra, records show.
In all, it has already cost Chicago taxpayers more than $98 million to defend the disgraced former detective, investigate his conduct and resolve lawsuits that allege Guevara violated dozens of Chicagoans’ civil rights, according to WTTW News’ analysis.
Guevara, 80, now lives in Texas. WTTW News was unable to reach him, and an emailed request for comment sent to the Chicago-based lawyers listed as his representatives in federal court records received no response.
During a 2018 trial, Guevara invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 200 times, refusing to answer questions about whether he falsified police reports, framed suspects or coerced witnesses into identifying criminals.
Most of the people Guevara is accused of framing in the 1980s and 1990s are Latino and lived in Humboldt Park, which was home to many working-class Chicagoans long before the Northwest Side neighborhood began to gentrify, a process accelerated by the construction of the 606 Trail along a defunct rail line.
Despite his extensive record of misconduct, Guevara has banked more than $1.4 million in pension payments since he retired in 2005, according to records obtained by WTTW News through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Guevara was never disciplined for any of his conduct as a detective, nor did he face criminal charges. That means he will collect his pension for the rest of his life. Illinois law allows the boards overseeing pension funds to strip employees of their pensions only if they are convicted of a felony “relating to or arising out of or in connection with” their job committed while employed by a state or local government agency.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
