City attorneys are recommending aldermen approve a $13 million taxpayer-funded settlement for a man allegedly tortured by Chicago police into a false confession that landed him in prison for 26 years.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Law Department plans to urge the City Council’s Finance Committee to advance the deal Monday for Arnold Day, who confessed to two separate 1991 slayings.
Day, acquitted of one killing, but convicted of the other in 1994, has long alleged Chicago police tied to disgraced former police Cmdr. Jon Burge coerced the confession. By framing him, police forced Day to “live in a cage” for a crime he did not commit in a life “marked by a steady stream of human rights abuses,” his lawsuit said.
“Mr. Day is an unfortunate member of the legion of people who have been victimized by certain members of the Chicago Police Department,” the lawsuit said. “He missed out on the ability to share holidays, funerals, and other life events with loved ones, and was deprived of the fundamental freedom to live his life as an autonomous human being.”
The Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission reported that, during Day’s interrogation, Det. Kenneth Boudreau stood by as another detective choked and threatened to throw Day out the window. He was released after 26 years in prison when special prosecutors dropped charges against him in December 2018, and won a certificate of innocence four months later.
Day’s lawsuit alleges detectives coerced then-15-year-old Anthony Jakes into implicating Day in the killing of Rafael Garcia during an attempted armed robbery in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
Arnold Day speaks at a news conference in Loevy & Loevy’s law office in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood on Nov. 5, 2019, to announce his lawsuit against the City of Chicago for his imprisonment and torture by former Cmdr. Jon Burge. (Camille Fine/Chicago Tribune)
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Arnold Day speaks at a news conference in Loevy & Loevy’s law office in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood on Nov. 5, 2019, to announce his lawsuit against the City of Chicago for his imprisonment and torture by former Cmdr. Jon Burge. (Camille Fine/Chicago Tribune)
Jakes confessed to acting as the lookout during the killing, but prosecutors threw out his charges in 2018 after the torture commission found credible evidence of coercion by Boudreau and Det. Michael Kill.
The City Council approved a settlement for over $11 million for Jakes in 2024.
Day was acquitted for Garcia’s murder, but convicted for the 1991 murder of Jerrod Irving in the New City neighborhood. His lawsuit argues police sought to unfairly pin another unsolved case on him after “resolving” the Garcia killing by using a fabricated witness statement.
City attorneys are also recommending aldermen approve a $3.5 million settlement for the family of Jose Almanza-Martinez, who died three days after he was run over by a car pursued by Chicago Police in August 2020.
Almanza-Martinez, 67, hadn’t seen his two sons in Mexico for two decades before his death. In the days after the crash, flowers adorned the table outside a Little Village restaurant where he long sold his garapiñados, caramelized peanuts and pecans.
Police broke department rules and should be held responsible for Almanza-Martinez’s death, the family’s lawsuit said.
The officers “engaged in an unwarranted and reckless high-speed chase through the City of Chicago in a highly dense residential neighborhood precipitated by a suspected minor traffic violation, contrary to police procedures governing high speed chases,” the lawsuit said.
The city is once again blowing past its budget for police-related lawsuits, set this year at $82.5 million. The City Council approved nearly $300 million in such deals last year — to say nothing of a $90 million “global settlement” reached for nearly 100 other cases to be paid out this year, several costly trial losses and mounting legal costs.