Taxpayers face $9.5M settlement tied to alleged coerced confession by onetime CPD detective

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In 2015, an investigation by the Guardian newspaper accused Chicago police detective Richard Zuley of using unorthodox and often violent interrogations to coerce false confessions, and of taking part in interrogations involving military torture at Guantanamo Bay.

Now Chicago taxpayers could be on the hook for a $9.5 million settlement tied to Zuley’s alleged interrogation tactics — the second in two years involving Zuley's actions.

The $9.5 million settlement would go to Carl Reed, a mentally disabled man who spent nearly 19 years in prison for the 2001 fatal stabbing of a North Side neighbor, after allegedly being coerced by Zuley and now-deceased Det.

Timothy Thompson into confessing to a murder he claimed he did not commit.

Reed claims that during “at least 55 hours” in a police interrogation room, he was handcuffed to a ring on the wall and forced to sit and sleep on a metal bench 18 inches wide.

Deputy Corporation Counsel Jessica Felker told the Finance Committee Monday that the city’s case against Reed was further undermined by the fact that Reed’s DNA was not found on the knife used to stab 66-year-old Kim Van Vo, or in the victim’s apartment.

Equally damaging, she said, was the fact that Reed was “mentally deficient” and that Reed was diabetic, but denied access to insulin by police.

“Plaintiff further alleges that his years in custody at the Illinois Department of Corrections ended in him receiving inadequate care for his diabetes.

It caused him to suffer from related chronic kidney disease requiring dialysis and eventually the amputation of both his feet,” Felker said Monday.

Felker urged the Finance Committee to authorize the $9.5 million settlement to “avoid the financial exposure that may result from a jury trial.”

“Reed may seek damages at trial of $40 million or more… Plaintiffs’ counsel will also be entitled to attorneys’ fees if he is successful at trial, which could be in the range or $3-to-$5 million,” Felker said.

In 2020, Gov. JB Pritzker granted Reed a compassionate release citing “COVD-19 concerns” and Reed’s own claims of innocence.

A Cook County Circuit Court judge later granted and vacated Reed’s conviction.

Ald.

Bill Conway (34th) agreed with the proposed settlement, even after being told that Cook County continues to litigate Reed’s claims.
Two main witnesses in the case — neither of whom witnessed the murder — have recanted their testimony claiming that Reed had the victim’s car and tried to sell it to one of the alleged witnesses.

“I wrestled with this one noting the certificate of innocence was not granted [and] the issues with the witnesses,” said Conway, a former prosecutor and candidate for Cook County state’s attorney who routinely opposes settlements tied to allegations of police wrongdoing.

“But after sort of thinking about the facts on balance — the I.Q. of 65 of the plaintiff, the fact the plaintiff has no feet today, which makes him sympathetic to say the least, no DNA on the murder weapon despite it being a stabbing and 44 hours, nearly the maximum time before a confession — all of those facts together lean toward settlement.”

The $9.5 million settlement is the second in two years tied to Zuley’s alleged interrogation tactics.

In October, 2024, the City Council agreed to pay $4 million to compensate the son of a man who claimed he was framed for the murder of 24-year-old Gold Coast resident Dana Feitler.

Under intense pressure to solve the case, Chicago police charged Lee Harris, a convicted burglar-turned-police informant.

Harris was later wrongfully convicted of Feitler’s murder.

He spent more than 33 years in prison before being exonerated eight months before his death.

The Finance Committee also signed off on a $470,000 settlement to a husband and wife who were seriously injured after their motorcycle hit a pavement buckle on Lake Shore Drive near McCormick Place that had been the subject of 27 complaints to the city's 311 emergency system in the prior two years before the 2023 accident.

The husband, who suffered a fractured skull, concussion and brain bleed, was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash and did not have a license to drive either after dusk or with a passenger on the motorcycle.

But Deputy Corporation Counsel Margaret Mendenhall-Casey told alderpersons that state law would not allow the city to present any of those mitigating factors as evidence if the case went to trial.

The 27 prior complaints about the pavement buckle — including warnings that the roadway condition was an "accident waiting to happen" — did not result in permanent repairs because the city was still awaiting funding, she said.