Chicago Pays Exonerated Prisoners $7.5 Million, Bringing Total to $33.75 Million for Wrongful Convictions
by Chuck Sharman
The Chicago City Council voted on January 15, 2025, to pay $7.5 million to Clarissa Glenn and her husband, Ben Baker, who spent 10 years in state prison on drug convictions obtained with planted evidence. Former Chicago Police Department (CPD) Sgt. Ronald Watts was the third CPD officer whose corrupt misconduct imprisoned them and two other innocent people, costing three of them 46 years of their lives, for which the City has now paid a total of $33.75 million.
Baker was 32 in 2005 and nearing the end of probation for an earlier drug-dealing conviction when Watts attempted to shake him down for a bribe. Because he had gone clean, Baker refused. But Watts retaliated by planting drugs in the car Baker owned with Glenn, his then-34-year-old wife, filing false reports that led to the couple’s arrest and convictions. Because she was raising three children in the City’s Ida B. Wells housing project, Glenn’s sentence was largely probated. But Baker was sentenced to an 18-year prison term, later reduced to 14 years.
The trial court refused to release a key piece of exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys representing Baker and Glenn: that Watts was already under investigation by CPD Internal Affairs for shaking down two drug dealers in the same housing project for $17,000 in bribes. In 2012, after the FBI got involved, Watts and fellow CPD Off. Kallatt Mohammed were caught stealing money from a drug courier who was serving as a confidential informant; they were tried, convicted and sentenced, Watts to 22 months in prison and Mohammad to 18 months.
Then-Gov. Pat Quinn (D) pardoned Glenn in 2015, and her charges were expunged. Three years later, on appeal to the state Appellate Court, she won a certificate of innocence, collecting $97,000 from the state’s wrongful conviction fund. Meanwhile, in 2016, Both Baker and Glenn successfully sued to withdraw the guilty pleas coerced from them with the phony evidence. Acting on the recommendation of her office’s Conviction Integrity Review Unit, Cook County’s then-State Attorney, Anita Alvarez, agreed to vacate Baker’s conviction, dropping the charges against him.
That same year, with the aid of attorneys Jon Loevy, Scott Rauscher, Josh Tepfer, Sean Starr, Therea Kleinhaus and Wallace Hilke of Loevy & Loevy, Baker and Glen filed a suit for damages in the U.S. District Court for the Northen District of Illinois. Under the terms of an agreement fully executed in December 2024, they agreed to settle their claims for a $7.5 million payment from the City, inclusive of costs and fees for their attorneys. See: Baker v. City of Chicago, USDC (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:16-cv-08940.
At the same Council meeting where it approved this payout, the City also gave the green light to settle two other claims brought by innocent people wrongfully convicted and imprisoned due to the misconduct of corrupt CPD cops. As PLN reported, $8.75 million was paid to Mark Maxson, 63, who spent 24 years in state prison for the 1992 murder of six-year-old Lindsey Murdock, Jr., based on a false confession tortured from him by CPD Cmdr. Jon Burge. Maxson also obtained a certificate of innocence and collected $220,000 from the state’s wrongful conviction fund. [See: PLN, Sep. 2025, p.30.] Another $17.5 million went to Thomas Sierra, 49, who spent 22 years in prison for killing Noel Andujar, 24, based on misidentifications from photo lineups tainted by Det. Reynaldo Guevara. [See: PLN, Oct. 2025, p.60.]
More than 200 convictions have been thrown out so far in cases investigated by Watts. Before Burge died in 2018, he was blamed for torturing false confessions from 118 people. He was fired from CPD and completed a four-year federal prison term for obstruction of justice and perjury. The City has so far paid $78 million to settle cases brought by victims of Guevera’s misconduct, plus over $38 million in legal fees. But Guevara, now 81, was never charged and is enjoying retirement in Texas on a $91,000 annual City pension.
Additional sources: CBS News, National Registry of Exonerations
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Related legal case
Baker v. City of Chicago
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (N.D. Ill.), Case No. 1:16-cv-08940 |
| Level | District Court |