Three of CPD’s most notorious bad actors trigger $33.75 million in settlements

Three former police officers implicated in scores of wrongful conviction cases are coming to haunt back to haunt Chicago taxpayers yet again.

Former Detective Reynaldo Guevara and former Sgt. Ronald Watts took their place alongside Jon Burge and his midnight of Area 2 detective as CPD most notorious bad actors and legal liabilities.

Another round of costly proof is on Monday’s agenda for the City Council’s Finance Committee.

It includes $39.35 million in settlements for six cases. The three largest cases — for $33.75 million combined — are tied to Guevera, Burge and Watts.

The largest of the six settlements — for $17.5 million — goes to Thomas Sierra.

In 2018, Cook County prosecutors dropped murder charges against Sierra — the latest conviction to collapse that had been based on testimony by Guevara.

Jailed at 19, Sierra served 22 1/2 years in prison for the 1995 murder of Noel Andujar only to have prosecutors admit they could no longer “meet their burden” to support the charges against him.

“It’s unreal right now,” Sierra said on the day the charges were dropped. “I did all the time for something I didn’t do and now, here it is, two months after being home, State’s Attorney’s office did right.”

Prior to his release, Cook County Judge James Obbish ruled that Guevara lied on the witness stand when questioned in an unrelated case about allegations of abuse made by two men who had spent nearly 30 years in prison for a 1998 double-murder.

Testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecutors, Guevara said he did not remember even minor details about his investigation of that case for a double murder. He replied “I don’t know” to dozens of questions he was asked on the stand, including the address of his old police station.

Asked if he beat the two men, as they had claimed at trial and in subsequent post-conviction pleadings, Guevara answered, “that’s not something I would have done,” and, prodded by a judge, denied the abuse allegations with a flat “no.”

The judge subsequently ruled that Guevara’s testimony was “bald-faced lies,” and said the detective, who retired in 2005, could not be considered a credible witness in any case.

Without Guevara’s testimony, prosecutors grudgingly dropped that case case, and the two accused men were released from prison, though the two men were immediately taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

In March 2024, the Finance Committee had signed off on a $5.5 million settlement to another man who spent 22 years in prison in a case investigated by Guevera.

Ricardo Rodriquez accused Guevera and his investigative co-horts of bullying witnesses into identifying him as the shooter in a 1995 shooting in Belmont Cragin. At the time, another 33 remained pending against Guevera in the courts — cases that could trigger similar settlements.

The latest in a mountain of Burge-related settlements — for $8.75 million — goes to Mark Maxson.

Maxson claims he was beaten by detectives working under Burge until he confessed to a 1992 South Side murder. He served 22 years in prison before DNA evidence linked the killing to another man.

Burge was fired from CPD in 1993. Nearly 20 years later, he was sentenced to serve prison time on federal perjury charges for denying allegations of abuse raised in a civil lawsuit. He died in 2018.

The latest Watts-related settlement — for $7.5 million — goes to Ben Baker and Clarissa Glenn.

Watts led a tactical unit in the CHA’s now-demolished Ida B. Welles project until he slapped with federal charges for shaking down an FBI informant for cash.

He pleaded guilty in 2013 and, in the years since, more than 200 convictions tainted by the involvement of Watts or officers under his command were vacated by the state’s attorneys office.

Baker and Glenn were among the first to sue the city alleging abuse by Watts and his co-horts.

Baker spent 10 years in prison on a drug case that, he claims Watts pinned on him because Baker refused to pay a $1,000 bribe. He admitted to dealing drugs, but said he refused to pay “protection” money to Watts and his crew to allow him to deal drugs without interference from police.

Glenn was the mother of Baker’s three children. She was in the car when the couple were stopped by the Watts crew.

More than 200 other defendants have had their Watts-tainted cases thrown out by the state’s attorney’s office.