For Immediate Release: December 6, 2024
Soto is one of nearly 50 people exonerated since notorious cop’s crimes came to light. “Every one of these cases deserves our outrage,” his attorney says.
CHICAGO – Today, attorneys for Oscar Soto, 52, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on his behalf against the City of Chicago and ten officers of the Chicago Police Department, including notorious retired detective Reynaldo Guevara. The suit asks a jury to award damages and relief for Mr. Soto’s wrongful arrest, his wrongful incarceration, and the more than a quarter century he spent attempting to clear his name.
Mr. Soto was framed by Det. Guevara and his associates for two drive-by shootings that occurred in July 1997: the attempted murder of a man named Oscar Arroyo on July 5, and the murder of Miguel Salas on July 17. The lawsuit contends that the defendant officers created false evidence to pin the crimes on Mr. Soto. Det. Guevara and his associates invented a supposed “confidential informant” that identified Mr. Soto as Arroyo’s shooter; they fabricated a report—with no supporting evidence—that the two shootings were connected; and they manufactured false witness identification in line-ups and photo array procedures. One of the fabricated identifications used a witness who told police at the Arroyo crime scene that she did not get a good look at the shooter. The defendant officers deliberately chose not to conduct an array or lineup with another witness who had described someone who bore no resemblance to Mr. Soto.
At no point during either investigation was there any real evidence that tied Mr. Soto to the shootings. Nevertheless, instead of attempting to locate the people actually responsible for these crimes—and ignoring alternative suspects—Det. Guevara and his fellow officers decided to pin both shootings on Mr. Soto, a family man working two jobs to support his girlfriend and two young children.
There was never any physical or forensic evidence linking Mr. Soto to the crime. Based entirely on these fabricated reports and manipulated identifications, Mr. Soto was charged with murder and attempted murder for the shootings of Salas and Arroyo in 1997. At trial for the Salas murder, Mr. Soto was found not guilty on all counts. Mr. Sotos steadfastly maintained his innocence in the attempted murder of Arroyo. However, due to the defendant officers’ manufactured evidence, he feared that he would be found guilty and taken away from his family for decades. Mr. Soto reluctantly accepted a plea deal that guaranteed he would only remain in custody for nine more months.
In February 2024, after the wider scope of Guevara’s corruption had come to public light, Mr. Soto filed a petition for relief from the court, and the State did not oppose it. Mr. Soto’s conviction was vacated in July, and all charges dropped, almost exactly 27 years since they were manufactured by Guevara and his colleagues.
Mr. Soto is estimated to be the 46th individual who has been exonerated due to evidence of Guevara’s corrupt tactics, which have come to constitute 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,” and that her office could no longer believe in “the validity of these convictions or the credibility of the evidence.”
To date, Chicago has not successfully defended a single Guevara case in court, usually paying out eight-figure jury verdicts to the victims. Guevara has never defended his conduct on the stand. During Mr. Soto’s exoneration process, Guevara—when asked under oath whether he manufactured evidence—invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, as he has done in every such instance before or since.
Guevara is currently retired, living in Texas, and drawing a pension on the City of Chicago.
“Detective Guevara’s crimes are so numerous, and they have become so notorious, that there’s a danger they will lose their power to outrage the people of Chicago,” says Steve Art, partner at Loevy + Loevy. “But the opposite should be true: every single one of these cases just further proves how deep the pattern of corruption went in the Chicago Police Department, and how long it was allowed to go unchecked. Every one of these cases deserves our outrage, and every single one of these individuals, including Mr. Soto, deserves justice and accountability.”
In addition to Mr. Art, Mr. Ortiz is represented by attorneys Jon Loevy, Anand Swaminathan and Israa Alzamli of Loevy + Loevy.
Today’s lawsuit asks a jury to rule on and provide damages for ten different counts of violations of Mr. Ortiz’s constitutional rights, including violation of due process, malicious prosecution, failure to intervene, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy.
In addition to Det. Guevara, the suit names as defendants his fellow detectives Barbara Healy, John Boyle, Victor Gutierrez, John Trahanas, John Howard, Barney Graf, and John Pallohusky. Additionally, the suit names the supervisors of these defendants, Joseph Salemme and Robert Biebel, who participated in the misconduct and also “facilitated, condoned, approved, and turned a blind eye” to it. Finally, the suit names the City itself, for policies and practices that allowed its employees’ illegal actions to go unchecked and uncorrected.
“It is apparent that Guevara engaged in such misconduct because he had every reason to believe the City of Chicago and its police department condoned his behavior,” the complaint states.
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A copy of the complaint in this lawsuit, Case 1:24-cv-12554, can be found here.
