Crime & Law
Lawsuit Involving Disgraced Ex-Detective Set for Trial, As Lawyers Reach Settlement With Wrongfully Convicted Man Sent to Death Row
(WTTW News)
A federal jury is set to decide whether disgraced former Chicago Police Department Detective Reynaldo Guevara coerced a man into confessing he committed a gruesome double murder and kidnapping in 1998, records show.
In the trial set to start May 11, the jury will be asked to decide whether Guevara coerced Arturo DeLeon-Reyes into confessing to a 1998 Bucktown double murder by striking him repeatedly in the head and lying about what he said during an interrogation that lasted nearly two days. DeLeon-Reyes’ confession was overturned in 2017 after a judge determined the former detective told “bald-faced lies” while under oath.
DeLeon-Reyes, who was sentenced to life in prison, was convicted alongside Garbriel Solache, who was sentenced to death in 2000, records show.
Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentences of all inmates on death row, including Solache, to life in prison without parole in 2003. Ryan said the exoneration of 13 people sent to death row indicated the system was “broken.”
Solache’s attorneys, with the People’s Law Office, and lawyers for the Chicago Department of Law reached a settlement to resolve his lawsuit against Guevara on April 28, court records show. Ben Elson, Solache’s lawyer, declined to comment to WTTW News.
In response to an inquiry by WTTW News, Chicago Department of Law spokesperson Kristen Cabanban declined to reveal how much it would cost taxpayers to resolve Solache’s lawsuit until the agreement is presented to the Chicago City Council.
That indicates the agreement is for more than $100,000. Settlements of less than that amount can be authorized by Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson Lowry, according to city rules.
The separate lawsuits filed by DeLeon-Reyes and Solache had been set to be tried simultaneously, records show.
No physical evidence tied either DeLeon-Reyes or Solache to the slaying of Mariano and Jacinta Soto and the kidnapping of their children, 2-month-old Maria Guadalupe and 3-year-old Santiago, but both confessed after being interrogated by Guevara.
Mariano Soto was stabbed 39 times. Jacinta Soto was stabbed 20 times, records show.
The same day that the Sotos were killed, Adriana Mejia, then 23, told her husband that she had given birth to a baby girl, and agreed to watch the son of another woman whom she met at the hospital while giving birth.
DeLeon-Reyes, then 25, and Solache, then 23, lived in the same home as Mejia, her husband, his brother, Rosauro, and his sister-in-law, Guadalupe.
Guadalupe Mejia recognized the two children from pictures released by the Chicago Police Department as the kidnapped children of the slain couple and insisted on taking the boy to a nearby police station. Solache and DeLeon-Reyes accompanied Guadalupe and Rosauro Mejia to the police station.
After police searched the Mejias’ home, they identified the baby as 2-month-old Maria Guadalupe Soto and arrested Adriana Mejia, who told police she pretended to be pregnant for nine months, records show. Blood on her clothes was identified as belonging to Mariano Soto, and Adriana Mejia’s blood was found at the Sotos’ home.
Adriana Mejia in 2001 pleaded guilty to killing the Sotos and kidnapping their children and was sentenced to life in prison. Adriana Mejia implicated Solache and DeLeon-Reyes in her statement to police.
After being interrogated for more than 40 hours, Solache and DeLeon-Reyes confessed to killing the Sotos for Mejia, saying she had paid them $600 to abduct the baby she planned to pass off as her own after battling infertility for several years, records show.
DeLeon-Reyes said he confessed to the killings and kidnappings after Guevara slapped him in the head five times and threatened him with execution, records show. DeLeon-Reyes, who spoke only Spanish, said Guevara asked him questions in Spanish that were unrelated to the crime. Once translated into English, those statements included an admission that he and Solache killed the Sotos and kidnapped their children.
Solache said that after he answered questions posed by Guevara in Spanish, Guevara typed up a statement in English and ordered Solache to sign it, even though he could not read English, records show. In that purported confession, Solache said Mariano Soto was killed after he answered the door and Jacinta Soto was killed in her bed. In fact, Mariano was killed in bed and Jacinta was killed at the doorway, records show.
Solache said he signed the statement because Guevara repeatedly hit him in the head hard enough to cause him to suffer hearing loss in his left ear.
The two men were convicted in separate trials in 2000. An appellate court ordered their convictions to be reviewed by a Cook County judge in 2006, after Guevara had been accused by dozens of Chicagoans of coercing witnesses into making identifications, falsifying police reports and framing people for crimes they did not commit.
During a December 2017 hearing, Guevara testified that he did not physically abuse DeLeon-Reyes or Solache after being given immunity by Cook County prosecutors.
The judge in the case called Guevara’s denials “bald-faced lies,” and tossed out both men’s confessions. Both men were released after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to retry them for the murders and kidnappings.
DeLeon-Reyes and Solache, who were not in the United States legally at the time of their arrest, were deported to their native Mexico after their release from prison, records show.
Solache was granted a certificate of innocence in 2022, and DeLeon-Reyes was granted a certificate of innocence in 2023, records show.
DeLeon-Reyes and Solache sued the city more than eight years ago, according to court records.
Lawyers representing Guevara and the city fiercely fought the lawsuits filed by DeLeon-Reyes and Solache, drawing a rebuke from U.S. District Court Judge Steven Seeger in May 2024.
“So far, the parties have filed 109 pages of briefs, supported by 7,041 pages of exhibits,” Seeger wrote. “This Court has started to calculate whether that number is greater than the number of windows on the Dirksen Federal Building. Before that number goes up, the parties need to put their pencils down.”
Chicago taxpayers have paid more than $6 million to attorneys to defend the city, Guevara and the other officers he worked with during the investigation into the murder of the Sotos and the kidnapping of their children.
Fourteen lawsuits naming Guevara have now been resolved by paying Chicagoans who had been wrongfully convicted of murder a total of $141.9 million, records show. It cost more than $25.4 million to defend the city, Guevara and the other officers named in those lawsuits, according to records obtained by WTTW News through the Freedom of Information Act.
Thirty-eight federal lawsuits naming Guevara remain pending, and the city has already spent more than $25.3 million to defend those lawsuits, records show.
In all, the city has paid private lawyers more than $49.9 million to defend lawsuits alleging Guevara and other officers sent them to prison for crimes they did not commit, records show.
That means the total cost of defending and settling lawsuits naming Guevara has topped $191.8 million, according to a WTTW News analysis.
Guevara is set to collect a pension of at least $91,000 every year for the rest of his life, and has already banked nearly $1.5 million, records show.
Despite Guevara’s well-documented misconduct that sent more than three dozen now-exonerated Chicagoans to prison for decades, his pension cannot be revoked, since he was not charged with criminal wrongdoing, much less convicted, while working as a Chicago police officer. In fact, Guevara was never disciplined for misconduct.
City officials did not probe Guevara’s conduct until 2013, eight years after he retired and began collecting his pension. That report, which was commissioned by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, cost the city $1.9 million but has never been released by city officials.
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.
Note: Loevy and Loevy, the firm representing DeLeon-Reyes, has done legal work for WTTW News.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
