“There were a lot of things I didn’t get to do as a child,” says man whose youth was stolen by notorious detective Reynaldo Guevara.
CHICAGO – Today, attorneys for Gage Park resident Edwin Ortiz, 51, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on his behalf against the City of Chicago and nine officers of the Chicago Police Department, including notorious retired detective Reynaldo Guevara. The suit asks a jury to award damages and relief for Mr. Ortiz’s wrongful arrest and the more than 20 years he spent in prison.
On the evening of July 31, 1988, a man approached three men named Jose Morales, Santiago Pagan, and Marvin Taylor outside Taylor’s house in Humboldt Park. The man pulled out a gun and opened fire on the friends. Taylor and Morales were hit, and Morales died from his wounds. The surviving victims described the assailant as 18–20 years of age, 120 lbs., and between 5’6” and 5’8” in height.
At the time of the crime, Edwin Ortiz was only 14 years old. Barely five-feet tall, he was known as “Pee Wee” due to his diminutive stature. He had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting, he did not match the victims’ description, and no physical evidence ever linked him to the crime. In fact, Taylor later identified another man to police as the assailant, one who fit the description he and the other eyewitness provided.
Nevertheless, more than a year after the shooting, infamous Chicago police detective Reynaldo Guevara and other defendant officers inserted themselves into the investigation. According to the complaint, they re-interviewed Taylor and Pagan, and pressured the victims to falsely identify Ortiz as the shooter.
Pagan later testified under oath that—among other coercive tactics—Guevara paid him money to falsely identify Ortiz. Based entirely on the fabricated identifications, Ortiz—just 16—was arrested and made to stand trial for murder and attempted murder. He was convicted in 1993 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Ortiz was wrongfully imprisoned until his release on parole in 2010. His conviction was thrown out in July 2024, 35 years after he was arrested for a crime he had nothing to do with.
“I was framed by Detective Guevara,” Mr. Ortiz said, upon his exoneration earlier this year. “I was 15 years old. I never graduated high school. I didn’t get to go to prom. There were a lot of things I didn’t get to do as a child.”
Mr. Ortiz is the 45th man exonerated due to evidence of Guevara’s corruption, which has become one of the darkest scandals in the history of the Chicago Police Department. In 2022, in her ruling vacating another victim’s conviction, one judge described Guevara’s “pattern of behavior,” saying that “he would select random men as suspects in unsolved cases” and “engaged in a pattern and practice of intimidating, threatening, and influencing witnesses in prior homicide investigations.” Other Illinois courts have called Detective Guevara “a malignant blight on the Chicago Police Department and the judicial system,” and condemned his “bald-faced lies” on the stand. In 2022, Attorney General Kim Foxx said the actions of officers like Guevara left “a significant stain on the justice system that we can no longer afford to ignore.” She said her office would not oppose the exonerations of one group of Guevara victims, stating they could no longer believe in “the validity of these convictions or the credibility of the evidence.”
Ret. Det. Guevara has never defended his conduct, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination when asked about his tactics on the stand. He is currently retired, living in Texas, and drawing a pension on the City of Chicago.
“It’s time the City of Chicago takes full responsibility for Reynaldo Guevara’s actions and delivers long-overdue justice to his victims,” says Alison Leff of Loevy + Loevy, one of Mr. Ortiz’s attorneys. “By now it’s obvious that Guevara’s convictions can’t be trusted, and it’s absurd that the City spends millions of dollars of taxpayer money on outside counsel defending these cases, and many millions more when it loses.”
Today’s lawsuit asks a jury to decide and provide damages for eleven different counts of violations of Mr. Ortiz’s rights, including violation of due process, malicious prosecution, wanton and willful behavior, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy.
In addition to Ms. Leff, Mr. Ortiz is represented by attorneys Steve Art, Anand Swaminathan, Israa Alzamli, and Madison Irene of Loevy + Loevy.
In addition to Det. Guevara, the suit names as defendants his fellow officers Aubrey O’Quinn, Steven Gawrys, Ralph Vucko, Kriston Kato, Ricardo Abreu, Edward Mingey, William Rooney, and Ronald Rewers, along with the City itself for policies and practices that allowed its employees’ illegal actions to go unchecked and uncorrected.
“They engaged in such misconduct because they had no reason to fear the City of Chicago and its police department would ever discipline them for doing so,” the complaint states.
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Media Inquiries: Contact Michael McDunnah, Director of Communications, at 312.371.5871 or mcdunnah@loevy.com.
A copy of the complaint can be found here.