Man wrongfully imprisoned is suing the city and detectives for 'abusing him into false confession' 

A Chicago man who was exonerated after he was wrongfully imprisoned for a 1991 murder he did not commit is now suing the city and detectives for framing him.

Daniel Rodriguez spent 17 years behind bars after he was convicted in the shooting death of Jose 'Junito' Hernandez, Jr. 

A civil suit was filed on Monday against the city of Chicago, Guevara, and several other detectives involved in the case. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Rodriguez always maintained his innocence alleging former Chicago Police Department Detective Reynaldo Guevara physically abused and threatened him into a 'false confession.' 

'I woke up every day believing that one day the cell door was going to open and they were going to say we made a mistake. You're free,' he told the Chicago Sun-Times.  'But it never happened.'

Cook County Judge Sophia Atcherson vacated Rodriquez's conviction based on allegations of misconduct by Guevara. It would be the twenty-first time a case by the disgraced detective had been overturned, ABC7 News reported.   

Rodriguez became a free man in April 2022 and was granted a certificate of innocence from the court. 

He said on Monday with his family and lawyers by his side: 'My family and my daughters were robbed of a father. My girlfriend at the time was robbed of a husband,' he said. 'She's been with me 33 years, during my incarceration and, still by my side. She's kept me going.'

Daniel Rodriguez (pictured)  spent 17 years behind bars after he was convicted in the shooting death of Jose 'Junito' Hernandez, Jr. in 1991, after being framed by Chicago detectives.  In April, he was exonerated 

Disgraced former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara. Rodriguez alleged that Guevara physically abused and threatened him into a 'false confession'

Rodriguez (pictured) with his family is now suing the city and the detectives involved in his wrongful conviction

Rodriguez's lawyers said the city has already spent more than $75 million of taxpayer money paying for wrongful convictions caused by Guevara. 

'The city's approach to these cases is a tremendous failure of leadership. There have been 34 overturned convictions involving Guevara, more than a half dozen court decisions finding Guevara was engaged in egregious misconduct, and Guevara is pleading the Fifth in response to every question about his misconduct,' Rodriguez's attorney, Anand Swaminathan told DailyMail.com.

'Yet, rather than acknowledge the harm and try to resolve these cases early on, the City chooses to enrich private defense firms--to the tune of tens of millions of dollars--to defend the indefensible. Meanwhile, Guevara's victims continue to suffer, and the taxpayers end up paying far more than they should have.'

Swaminathan said that currently there are more than a dozen lawsuits pending against Detective Guevara, his colleagues, and the city of Chicago in federal court with many more to come.'

'We already litigated two cases through trial regarding Detective Guevara and those two cases resulted in large jury verdicts against Guevara, and two other additional settlements over $10 million each after the close of discovery,' he said.

Guevara - a former member of a police department dogged by decades of scandal, cover-ups and brutality - has never been charged with a crime.

A sign of the men who were intimated and threatened by the infamous Chicago detective 

David Colon, Johnny Flores, Nelson Gonzalez, Marilyn Mulero, Jaime Rios, Carlos Andino (right) and Alfredo Gonzalez (center) had their convictions quashed. An eighth case - that of Louis Robinson (left) - remains pending ahead of further court proceedings

Foxx (pictured) also said she will no longer oppose post-conviction litigation in the cases after a 2019 review related to allegations of the cop's police misconduct 

Last year, the city paid out $20.5 million to Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez, who each spent 23 years in prison after being framed by Guevara, the news outlet reported.

For years Guevara refused to answer questions about his investigations, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at numerous hearings.

In August, Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx vacated seven murder convictions against inmates who spent decades in prison due to the actions of former detective Reynaldo Guevara between 1989 and 1996.

Foxx said she will no longer oppose post-conviction litigation in the cases after a 2019 review related to allegations of the cop's misconduct.

David Colon, Johnny Flores, Nelson Gonzalez, Marilyn Mulero, Jaime Rios, Carlos Andino, and Alfredo Gonzalez had their convictions quashed.

 'We no longer believe in the validity of these convictions or the credibility of the evidence of these convictions,' Foxx said.

The seven cases that were dismissed involved slayings committed between 1989 and 1994.

Andino and Alfredo Gonzalez were released and the other five defendants - Colon, Flores, Nelson Gonzalez, Mulero, and Rios - already completed prison sentences and are no longer in custody.

The Facebook post that circulated the day Rodriguez was exonerated 

Johnny Flores (right) and Daniel Rodriguez (left) greet each other during a gathering to celebrate seven murder convictions overturned because of misconduct by former Chicago police Detective Reynaldo Guevara, at a restaurant on Aug. 9, 2022, in Schiller Park

Guevara - a former member of a police department dogged by decades of scandal, cover-ups, and brutality - has never been charged with a crime.

Retired since 2005, he was reportedly receiving a city police pension and a Chicago Park District pension.

At the time, Foxx said her office was reviewing possible charges against Guevara stating that 'We looked at these cases with a careful lens to ensure that we got it right.'

She added: 'While we focused on the allegations of misconduct, we did not want to lose sight that lives were lost and the impact that our decision could have on the families of victims who believed that justice had been served by these convictions.

Guevara helped inmates win freedom by repeatedly invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination or insisting he could not remember facts, thus forcing prosecutors to dismiss charges in several cases.

In one case, after he was granted immunity by prosecutors, he answered repeatedly he did not remember confessions he elicited from two men convicted of murder.

The judge characterized his comments as 'bald-faced lies' and threw out the confessions.

Foxx said: 'Could we try these cases again today without the work of Detective Guevara? Based on our review, we are not able to retry these cases.'

She added additional investigations could be conducted 'to see if, in fact, someone else committed these crimes.'

Last September, Chicago´s City Council agreed to pay $20.5 million to two of at least a dozen men whose murder convictions were dismissed due to Guevara.

The lawsuits were filed on behalf of Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez who spent 23 years in prison before they were released in 2016.

Serrano, claimed Guevara and then-assistant state's attorneys Matthew Coghlan and John Dillon collaborated to pressure a key witness into pinning the 1993 murder of Rodrigo Vargas on Serrano.

He and co-defendant Jose Montanez were released from incarceration in July 2016, after more than two decades in prison, when prosecutors dropped the charges.

Serrano was wrongfully convicted of Vargas' murder in Cook County, Illinois, in 1993 and spent 23 years behind bars.

Francisco Vicente was a key witness in the murder trial. He faced four felony charges at the time that he allegedly told Guevara that Serrano and Montanez had confessed to him that they fatally shot Vargas in his vehicle in 1993.

Vicente recanted his account of the admissions in 2004 after several interviews with students from the Medill Innocent Project, according to the Chicago Tribune. He said that Guevara had fed him the story.

In 2009, a jury awarded $21million to a man who spent 11 years in prison before he was retried and acquitted because witnesses testified Guevara intimidated them into falsely identifying the man as the killer. The city later agreed to pay $16.4million.

Another jury awarded $17million in 2018 to a man who made similar allegations. Foxx said she would not discount the impact each case had on the defendants. 

During the trial, Jacques Rivera's attorneys alleged that Guevara coerced a 12-year-old boy, the only witness in a 1988 slaying, into identifying Rivera as the killer. He walked free from jail in 2011.

You can't just go around making up identifications and sending people to prison,' Rivera's lead attorney, Jon Loevy, told the jury. 'That's not right. That's as dangerous as a bullet.'

Referring to the investigation, Loevy said 'the whole thing was dirty,' citing missing detective reports and 'rigged lineups' designed to incriminate his client, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Rivera spent 21 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2011 and released.

For his part, Guevara did what he has done repeatedly in other cases: He refused to answer questions.

When he took the stand in federal court in the Rivera lawsuit, Guevara invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 200 times.

'This is a big case, this is an important case, this is a staggering case,' Loevy said during closing arguments. 'The things we have seen in this courtroom are unprecedented.'

The seven inmates released after spending decades in prison

David Colon: 26 years

David Colon, who now goes by David Lugo, was in jail for 26 years for the 1991 murder of 16-year-old Michael Velez in Chicago.

The youngster was shot multiple times but Colon always maintained his innocence.

He was released in 2017 on parole but was acquitted on Friday.

David Colon, who now goes by David Lugo, was in jail for 26 years for the 1991 murder of 16-year-old Michael Velez in Chicago

Nelson Gonzalez: 22 years

Nelson Gonzalez, now 53, was released from prison in 2013 after serving 22 years for a murder he says he did not commit.

He claimed he was set up b Guevara and other officers and called for charges to be brought against him.

He said he was going back to school to study criminal justice.

Nelson Gonzalez, 53, was released from prison in 2013 after 22 years

He told the Chicago Sun: 'I would love to be a lawyer. I know what the journey is, so I can speak from both sides.

'So, that's what I'm gonna be focused on, and family, and making sure my mom's OK, and continue to help the community.

'I'm not going to give up just because I was vindicated.' 

Marilyn Mulero: 28 years, five on death row

Marilyn Mulero spent 28 years behind bars for a shooting that left two men dead in 1992.

Five of these had been spent languishing on death row.

She had been charged with two other women with luring two gang members to a park where they were shot dead.

Mulero was interrogated by Guevara and other cops where she said she was denied sleep for 20 hours before signing a confession.

She told CBS after her conviction was dropped: 'I did several years on Death Row for a crime I didn't commit. I stayed strong. I maintained my faith in God.'

Marilyn Mulero spent 28 years behind bars for a shooting that left two men dead in 1992

Innocence Project co-director Lauren Kaeseberg said: 'Marilyn was just 21 when she was ripped away from her two young sons, terrorized by a corrupt police detective, and then convicted and sentenced to die in prison for a crime she did not commit.

'While former Det. Guevara is a real-life example of evil and terror, the exoneration of Marilyn and these other innocent men is a shining example of perseverance and a testament to the power of the human spirit.'

Jaime Rios: 18 years

Jaime Rios was convicted of the June 27, 1989 shooting of Luis Morales where the victim was blasted to death in an alleyway in Chicago.

He was arrested on suspicion of the murder but claimed Guevara hit him in the head with a flashlight.

Rios also alleges another cop pushed his head on the table and threatened to have his young son stripped from hi, if he did not confess.

He spent 18 years in prison before being released.

Carlos Andino: 28 years

Carlos Andino was arrested over the 1994 murder of a Polish immigrant.

It started when three siblings - Kathy, 10, Kimberly, 11, and Christopher Smith, 14, had been standing in their apartment doorway waiting for their mother to let them in.

Nearby a thug approached a man using a payphone and demanded his pager and cash.

The man, Polish immigrant Matt Dibicki, refused and he was shot dead from point-blank range.

Alfredo Gonzalez had been serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill for a 1990 murder

Police claimed Andino was named in an anonymous tip off as the killer.

But two of the Smith children had said the shooter had a teardrop tattoo under his eye, which Andino did not have.

Despite this, the claimed he was the murderer.

Kathy later revealed Guevara had visited their home and showed them a photo of him and said he was the killer.

Andino was arrested on August 18, 1994, and handed a lawyer who also represented Guevara in a range of civil cases.

Alfredo Gonzalez: 32 years

Alfredo Gonzalez had been serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill for a 1990 murder.

He spent 32 years of his 64 years of life behind bars and missed his daughter's wedding.

Alfredo Gonzalez had been serving a life sentence in Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill for a 1990 murder

Ahead of his release, she told the Chicago Tribune: 'We've been waiting for a very long time.

'My dad got taken away from us when I was 3, my brother was 7.

'We are just ready to drive over there and pick him up.'

Gonzalez said 'I'm free' as he cried and embraced his daughter outside the prison. He added: 'I had a broken heart, because I wasn't attentive.'

Johnny Flores: 20 years

Johnny Flores was released from prison after his conviction was dropped following 20 years behind bars.

He was convicted despite a key witness at the time admitting he had been high and drunk at the time.

Johnny Flores was released from prison after his conviction was dropped following 20 years behind bars