Crime & Law
Pay $9.5M to Man Who Spent 19 Years in Prison After Being Wrongfully Convicted, City Lawyers Recommend
Chicago City Hall. (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
Chicago taxpayers should pay $9.5 million to a man who spent 19 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of murdering a man in a North Side assisted living facility, city lawyers recommended.
Carl Reed was sentenced to 27 years in prison for murdering 66-year-old Kim Van Vo, who had been stabbed 11 times in his studio apartment, records show.
The proposed $9.5 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 April 15.
The lead detective investigating Van Vo’s murder was Richard Zuley, who was later found to have lied “in police reports and to his supervisors, physically abusing suspects and omitting exculpatory evidence from police reports,” according to court records.
Reed, who suffered from diabetes, seizures and learning disabilities, confessed after being interrogated for at least 55 hours, according to his lawsuit. Reed, who had a history of substance abuse, could not read or write, according to his lawsuit.
Reed said Zuley and other police detectives threatened him with violence and struck him, according to his lawsuit.
Reed said he believed the document he signed would allow him to be released and get medical treatment. Instead, it was a confession based on information provided by the police, according to his lawsuit.
Zuley testified that he did not physically or psychologically abuse Reed.
No physical evidence linked Reed to Van Vo’s murder, including hair and blood found at the scene. In addition, Reed had no injuries to his hands, even though Van Vo was stabbed repeatedly with a knife that did not have a handle, records show.
Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Reed.
After four years in jail, Reed pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in return for a promise he would not be sent to death row or sentenced to life in prison, records show.
In 2017, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office agreed to test blood evidence collected from the scene of Van Vo’s murder. Tests found blood from two people: Van Vo, and another person who was not Reed, records show.
Gov. JB Pritzker commuted Reed’s sentence in April 2020, at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2023, former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx agreed to vacate Reed’s conviction.
The City Council agreed in October 2024 to pay $4 million to the family of Lee Harris, who spent 33 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of murdering Dana Feitler in 1989 in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. Zuley was the lead investigator in that case as well.
Circuit Court Judge Adrienne Davis is weighing whether to overturn the conviction of Anthony Garrett in connection with the murder of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, who was shot and killed by a sniper at Cabrini-Green in 1992 as he and his mother walked to school. Zuley was the lead investigator in that case.
Garrett said he confessed to killing Davis after he was beaten on at least two occasions with rubber hoses and a phone book on his torso, genitals and legs, court records show.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who was held for 14 years, without charge or trial, in the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, testified that Zuley tortured him, nearly killing him.
Zuley was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve who was sent to Guantánamo after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The U.S. Senate report on torture at Guantánamo Bay identified Zuley as the official responsible for ordering the tactics designed to make Slahi confess to participating in terror attacks, including “hooding, sensory deprivation (and) sleep deprivation.”
In 2023, the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission found that there was “sufficient, credible evidence” that Garrett was tortured by Zuley, and urged that a Cook County judge review his conviction.
Zuley testified in February and earlier this month that he did not torture Garrett.
Zuley served at the same time as disgraced former CPD Commander Jon Burge, who city officials admit tortured and beat more than 100 Black men during his career. Chicago taxpayers have now paid more than $155 million in lawsuit settlements and judgments related to Burge’s conduct, including $5.5 million in reparations for torture survivors, approved in 2015 by the Chicago City Council.
Returning from military service in 2004, Zuley retired from CPD in 2007 and worked as the director of emergency management for the Cook County Department of Public Health until 2010. Zuley served as a security administrator for the Chicago Department of Aviation until 2017.
Zuley, who joined CPD in 1970, collects an annual city taxpayer-funded pension of $94,580. Despite his extensive record of misconduct, Zuley has banked more than $1.3 million in pension payments since he retired, according to records obtained by WTTW News through a Freedom of Information Act request.
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. Zuley, who has never been charged with a crime, could not be reached for comment by WTTW News.
A 2024 lawsuit filed by David Wright, who spent 27 years in prison, alleges that he was wrongfully convicted of a 1994 murder based on evidence developed by Zuley and other CPD detectives. A trial date has not yet been set in that case.
Zuley served on the task force investigating the 1993 murder of seven employees at a Palatine Brown’s Chicken and Pasta and identified an informant who Zuley said identified the killer. That evidence was discredited after DNA evidence identified two other men in the slayings, and they were convicted.
In 2025, Chicago taxpayers spent $204.6 million to resolve lawsuits brought by 22 people wrongfully convicted based on evidence gathered by the Chicago Police Department, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
Since the start of the year, the City Council has agreed to spend an additional $29.2 million to resolve four wrongful conviction lawsuits. In another case, a federal jury ordered the city to pay $750,000 to a Chicago man who was wrongfully convicted and spent 17 years in prison.
Note: Loevy and Loevy, the firm representing Reed, 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]
