County to consider $7.25M settlement for wrongfully convicted ‘Marquette Park Four’ member

On the heels of the Chicago City Council approving a record $50 million settlement to a group of men once known as the “Marquette Park Four,” the Cook County Board will consider a $7.25 million settlement for one of those men who accused county prosecutors of wrongful incarceration and detention.

The Charles Johnson deal is one of several costly settlements the county’s Finance Committee approved unanimously Wednesday, the others related to county-run Stroger Hospital. All of them, totaling $24 million, will be considered by the full board Thursday.

In 1995, Johnson was one of the group of teenagers convicted of a double murder at a used car dealership, Elegant Auto. Johnson was identified by a witness as one of the gunmen and sentenced to life in prison.

But Johnson was exonerated in 2017 along with Lashawn Ezell, Troshawn McCoy and Larod Styles and certified as innocent after new fingerprinting technology implicated a different person.

In a recent federal suit, the four alleged police threatened them and that an assistant state’s attorney “tricked” Johnson “into signing a false confession” related to the shooting and robbery of the two men at the dealership, Khaled Ibrahim and Yousef Ali.

Johnson believed he was signing routine paperwork attesting that certain photos matched the prosecutor’s description, the suit claimed. The attorney’s hand was covering the writing on the pages, which Johnson did not know “contained a confession attributed to him,” the suit said. Johnson also claimed police questioned him for more than 10 hours and prosecutors denied his requests for a lawyer.

The four sued both the city and county. The Chicago City Council approved a $50 million settlement earlier this month, a record sum. Johnson is represented by the Illinois office of the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit focused on civil rights.

“This represents a step toward accountability for the injustices that cost two decades of Mr. Johnson’s life. While this settlement offers him a chance to rebuild, it cannot undo the trauma and lost time he endured,” Alexa Van Brunt, Johnson’s lawyer, said in a statement.

Several other settlements are also up for a full board vote Thursday, including $3.4 million to the family of Rocio Santa Maria, who died of complications from a pelvic surgery roughly six months after surgeons severed arteries during a pelvic surgery at Stroger Hospital in 2017.

Also on the agenda: a $4.5 million settlement to the family of Jose Lopez for his wrongful death. Lopez was doing repairs on staff elevators at Stroger Hospital when the elevator car dropped, pulling Lopez down with it, according to a suit. The suit claims he was not warned the elevator car was not locked.

The committee is also expected to consider an $8.1 million settlement to the family of Christian Garcia Salas for medical malpractice. Salas reported to Stroger a couple days after a car crash and complained about shoulder and abdominal pain in the fall of 2022, according to the suit his family filed. Doctors determined he had an injured spleen, but the lawsuit claimed staff failed to check whether he was bleeding into his abdomen, to closely monitor him, or remove his spleen. He died the day after he checked into the emergency room.

aquig@chicagotribune.com