A man who earlier this year was exonerated in a 1989 double homicide has filed a federal lawsuit against Cook County and the city of Chicago, alleging he was framed by detectives participating in a “culture of misconduct within the Chicago Police Department.”
Francisco Benitez, 53, served 34 years in prison for the shooting deaths of two 14-year-old boys, Prudencio Cruz and William Sanchez, at the corner of Potomac and Harding avenues on the West Side. But his convictions were overturned in August after evidence surfaced pointing to his innocence, including signed witness statements indicating that other people shot the boys.
Benitez later secured a certificate of innocence from a judge.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Chicago, alleges that Detectives Jerome Bogucki and Raymond Schalk, along with other defendants, manufactured evidence against Benitez, who was 18 when he was arrested.
The detectives also obtained a false confession from Benitez through a “psychologically abusive interrogation,” the complaint alleges. It also says they falsified reports, lying about various aspects of the investigation.
The suit alleges that misconduct by Bogucki and Schalk has resulted in two other wrongful convictions, including one that resulted in a multimillion dollar jury verdict in a civil trial. The detectives worked in Area 5 along with other detectives accused of misconduct, the suit says, including Reynaldo Guevara, who has been the subject of many overturned convictions due to allegations he framed defendants throughout his career with the Police Department.
Bogucki and Schalk were found liable by a jury in the infamous case of Thaddeus Jimenez, who was 13 years old when he was arrested for a murder he would later be exonerated of. He won a $25 million award, but was later sentenced to more than nine years in federal prison for shooting and wounding an ex-gang member.
“These Area 5 detectives are collectively responsible for approximately 50 wrongful convictions — so far — resulting in more than 400 years of wrongful incarceration of innocent Chicagoans,” the complaint says.
Benitez, who has long maintained his innocence, had argued in court filings that he was with family friends at the time of the shooting, and that witnesses came forward to point the finger at different suspects, members of a gang that controlled the street. The witnesses signed sworn statements that said they were sitting on a radiator in the front window of their apartment and watched the men, whom they knew, walk toward the boys and kill them.
The boys who were killed were described in documents as “churchgoing kids who were steps from their home on the way to the corner store.”