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CHICAGO — A woman who spent nearly three decades in prison for murders she did not commit has filed a federal lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department and several individual officers, including a disgraced former detective accused of framing dozens of innocent people.
The 13-count civil complaint filed Monday on behalf of Marilyn Mulero, 52, alleges that detectives Reynaldo Guevara and Ernest Halvorsen and other officers engaged in a “number of unconstitutional and egregious acts” and coerced a false confession from Mulero.
She is one of at least 38 men and women exonerated after being convicted on murder charges due to the actions of the officers, according to the complaint.
“I stand here today because, unlike myself, there’s many other innocent people incarcerated,” Mulero said at a press conference Tuesday, adding, “There are many women that are innocent. And these women are not spoken of.”
What happened to Marilyn Mulero?
In May 1992, Mulero was 21 years old with two young children. She was in a park on Chicago’s West Side when another woman shot and killed two people. Mulero “did not participate in the shootings or have any knowledge they were going to occur,” her attorneys said.
Yet Mulero was “subjected to brutal and unconstitutional interrogation tactics” to force a confession, including being told she would receive a lethal injection if she did not confess, her attorneys said. She was incarcerated for 28 years, including five years on Death Row.
“It took many long, long years of writing letters to get support,” said Mulero, who estimated writing 3,000 letters to try to gain attention to her case. She added: “Every day I’d wake up wondering what it’d be like for me to take my children to school.”
In 2020, after investigations and lawsuits uncovered evidence that Guevara, Halvorsen and other officers had framed dozens of people, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker commuted Mulero’s sentence, and she was released from prison. In 2022, a Cook County judge granted motions filed by State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to dismiss all charges against Mulero.
“She was the first Latinx woman ever sentenced to death in Illinois, the first woman to be exonerated in a Guevara-related case, and she is the first and only woman exonerated from death row in Cook County, Illinois,” Mulero’s attorneys said in a press release.
Mulero said there were many times while incarcerated when she wanted to “give up.” She said it’s been hard to rebuild her relationships with family.
“I struggle every day because I’m a broken woman. I’m trying to rebuild myself, but it’s not easy,” she said.
The attorneys called Mulero’s exoneration “a step in the right direction” but said her exoneration “can never give her back the nearly thirty years that she spent in prison, nor the opportunity to raise her two children, who grew up with a wrongfully incarcerated mother.”
800 years served by innocent people, attorneys say
Innocent men and women have served more than 800 years behind bars as a result of the actions of Guevara and Halvorsen, Mulero’s attorneys said.
The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., has accused Guevara of framing defendants of murder in more than 50 cases.
“The pattern and practice of police misconduct by Guevara and Halvorsen is unthinkable,” attorney Brian Eldridge said in a press release. “Their modus operandi was to use physical and psychological torture to elicit false confessions, fabricate evidence, and manipulate witnesses into giving false statements. And they were able to do this because – for two decades – the Chicago Police Department enabled their misconduct.”
The attorneys estimated the City of Chicago has spent $26 million defending Guevara in court.
The Chicago Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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