Thomas Sierra was 19-years-old when he was wrongly put behind bars for more than half of his life.
CHICAGO – The parade of once-young victims speaking out against gross Chicago police misconduct grew one stronger today as Thomas Sierra, a man who spent more than half his life wrongfully behind bars, sued the City of Chicago for its failure to rein in crooked cops.
Sierra is among dozens of Chicagoans wrongly convicted and thrown behind bars by disgraced Chicago Police officer Reynaldo Guevara, who abused his position as a police detective to manufacture false evidence and lie in court for decades.
Sierra and his lawyers are calling today for an immediate criminal investigation into Detective Guevara for his decades of misconduct, which has resulted in 100s of years of wrongful incarceration and has shattered the lives of countless Chicago families.
“The time has come for officials in Chicago and Cook County to hold Detective Guevara publicly accountable for his criminal conduct. For decades Detective Guevara and his colleagues railroaded dozens of innocent men like Mr. Sierra, sending them to prison for serious crimes they did not commit,” said Jon Loevy of Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law, one of Sierra’s lawyers.
“Detective Guevara’s years-long crime spree destroyed the lives of the dozens of people he wrongly convicted and their families, and tore at the fabric of the neighborhoods in which they lived. And while Detective Guevara sent the innocent to rot in prison, he let the guilty run free in the streets, compounding the tragedy for the victims and their families. There is no criminal more dangerous than a policeman who uses the power entrusted to him by the public to systematically destroy lives and to make our communities less safe.”
When questioned recently about their misconduct, Detective Guevara and a number of his former Chicago police colleagues have repeatedly pleaded the Fifth, including when asked about railroading Mr. Sierra. Cook County Judge James Obbish recently found that Detective Guevara had told “bald face lies” on the witness stand, and had “eliminated any possibility of being considered a credible witness in any proceeding.”
Mr. Sierra, his family, friends and attorneys will speak at a 2 pm, Monday, April 30th press conference at the offices of Loevy & Loevy Attorneys at Law, 311 N. Aberdeen Street, 3rd floor, Chicago. In addition to Mr. Loevy, Mr. Sierra is represented by Loevy & Loevy attorneys Anand Swaminathan and Steve Art. Copies of Mr. Sierra’s suit, Thomas Sierra v. Reynaldo Guevara, et al., No. 1:18-cv-03029, can be found here.