Cook County prosecutors on Friday reversed course and agreed that 44 convictions related to convicted ex-Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts should be thrown out.
Prosecutors initially filed paperwork opposing the effort to dismiss those cases, many of which involved officers who “had not previously been impugned in Watts’ nefarious conduct,” Assistant State’s Attorney Catherine Malloy said in court Friday.But upon further review, prosecutors decided that simply the potential of possible interference by Watts “raises concerns about the integrity of these cases,” Malloy said.
Watts and his team of tactical officers have been accused of orchestrating a decade of terror at the now-razed Ida B. Wells public housing complex on the South Side, systematically forcing residents and drug dealers alike to pay a “protection” tax and putting bogus cases on those who refused to do so.
Foxx’s office has been reviewing Watts-related convictions for years. In 2017, they announced the county’s first-ever mass exoneration, clearing out 18 Watts-related convictions and promising an ongoing assessment of similar cases. Prosecutors said they were committed to reviewing each case on an individual basis to determine if they can stand by the convictions. Five were thrown out in November, and dozens more were vacated earlier this year.
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