Vallas: In police misconduct mess, trial lawyers holding taxpayers hostage

Kim Foxx’s policy of issuing mass exonerations without case-by-case scrutiny has invited a flood of costly litigation.

The biggest driver of Chicago police misconduct costs is a process that converts mass exonerations into high-value lawsuits on a scale unmatched across the country.

The city is not facing a typical misconduct problem. It is confronting the combined effect of prosecutorial policy leading to expensive litigation.

Kim Foxx’s Cook County state’s attorney’s office created a pipeline of mass conviction reversals and certificates of innocence leading to civil claims that have already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions and threaten billions more.

Chicago’s litigation landscape cannot be explained by claims that the city simply has more police misconduct than others. Chicago has led the nation in exonerations for years. In 2022 alone, Cook County recorded 124 overturned convictions — more than half the national total of 233. Michigan had 16 and Texas 11.

Often overlooked is how many of these exonerations weren’t fully tested in court. Under Foxx, convictions tied to certain officers were often vacated through broad administrative processes rather than case by case. That approach did more than address what was of course injustice to those wrongfully convicted — it created the legal foundation for large lawsuits even when innocence had not been rigorously established.

A clear pattern has emerged: A conviction is overturned. A certificate of innocence is granted. Then the same plaintiffs attorneys sue for tens of millions of dollars.

In 2024, Chicago paid $45.25 million to resolve seven reversed-conviction cases, following $49.5 million paid across 41 cases from 2019 to 2023. That doesn’t include at least $210 million more in recent and pending payouts for wrongful convictions.

This reflects a systemic problem.

Recent attention has focused on the cost of outside lawyers the city hires to handle these cases, but that’s downstream of the central issue: how many cases are created — and why. When a single law firm can secure tens of millions in payouts annually, the city is no longer dealing with routine litigation.

The scale is evident in cases tied to former Sgt. Ronald Watts. Chicago committed nearly $90 million to resolve 176 lawsuits linked to him. Another wave tied to Detective Reynaldo Guevara has exposed the city to further liability.

Any serious analysis of the wrongful-conviction problem of course must examine police misconduct and prosecutorial overreach, but Foxx’s office has been criticized for issuing large numbers of reversals and certificates of innocence without individual scrutiny. That critique goes to the core of why Chicago became the national center of wrongful-conviction litigation.

Recent developments deepen the concerns. A federal judge has ordered Foxx to testify about meetings with lawyers who allegedly operated an exoneration nonprofit while also suing the city. If that’s true, it raises questions about the intersection of public authority and private financial incentives.

The city cannot manage this risk through police reform alone. It needs an approach grounded in evidence and case-by-case review.

The new Cook County state’s attorney, Eileen O’Neill Burke, has signaled a break from Foxx’s model, insisting that innocence claims be tested individually in court rather than swept through in bulk administrative deals. That is the right way to handle them. Justice should not be grounded in the assumption that every conviction linked to a criticized officer is invalid.

The stakes are clear. Chicago has committed hundreds of millions to settlements, with more liability looming.

Large settlements are the predictable result of prosecutorial overreach, mass exonerations and the resulting flood of litigation.

Until that changes, taxpayers will continue to bear the cost.