Man Who Won $25 Million Over Wrongful Conviction Has Been Charged In Shooting

By Margaret Paulson in News on Aug 19, 2015 4:38PM

A reputed gang leader who was awarded $25 million by the city after wrongfully serving 16 years in prison for murder was just charged in a Northwest Side shooting Tuesday after his Mercedes getaway vehicle crashed, authorities say.

Following the overturning of his murder conviction in 2009, Thaddeus Jimenez, 36, was awarded millions of dollars in a settlement from the city. He has since led a lifestyle that has afforded him at least a dozen luxury cars—BWMs, Lamborghinis and a Bentley, according to the Tribune. He’s reputedly a gang leader of the Simon City Royals.

Jimenez has now been accused of shooting someone in an alleged gang dispute Monday on the Northwest Side. Jimenez, accompanied by another reputed gang member, Jose Roman, 22, allegedly shot a man in both legs and drove away. But the pair were quickly stopped by police after their Mercedes was seen speeding through Albany Park and crashing half a mile away from the shooting. Police recovered a handgun and rifle from Jimenez and Roman, who were caught after they fled on foot from the crashed vehicle.

Jimenez has actually faced several arrests since his $25 million award, including a DUI charge.

What's the explanation for his continued gang connections and trouble with the law?

“He was raised, essentially, by the penitentiary system, which, I think, is the equivalent of being raised by wolves,” his defense attorney, Scott Frankel, said at a 2012 court hearing.

In 1993, when he was 13, Jimenez—already an alleged gang member since the age of 11 with a lengthy rap sheet—was arrested and sentenced to 45 years in prison for shooting another teenager, Eric Morro, to death. After 16 years in state prison, Jimenez was exonerated in May 2009. Two witnesses recanted their stories of seeing Jimenez shoot Morro.

Jimenez’s case was taken on by lawyers and students at the Bluhm Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern in order to secure his release. The team was successful, and in January 2012 Jimenez was awarded $25 million in one of the biggest wrongful conviction settlements in Chicago at the time, and the city had to pay up.

Jimenez is charged with aggravated battery and weapons offenses and is set to appear in the county's bond court Wednesday afternoon.