CHICAGO — JaJuan Nile was a joker, a picky eater and his mother’s only son. Growing up, he dreamed of starting a landscaping business.  

But he never got the chance. Instead, a run-in with a now-disgraced Chicago police officer put the 20-year-old behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. It changed the course of his life, his family said.  

Nile was charged with possession of cocaine in 2007 and sentenced to three years in prison. With a felony on his record, he was repeatedly denied jobs and apartments.   

Two years ago, just after he received his certificate of innocence and landed a job, the father of three young kids was fatally shot.  

“He never got to his full potential because of what happened to him. It definitely led him to do other things, led him to get discouraged,” his younger sister, Shawntell Nile, told USA TODAY.

Nile was among nearly 200 people who have been cleared of charges tied to former Sgt. Ronald Watts and his Chicago Police Department team. It’s the largest series of exonerations in the city’s history, said Joshua Tepfer, a lawyer with the University of Chicago Law School’s Exoneration Project, which has represented most of the victims.  

For almost a decade, Watts and his team preyed on innocent people at the Ida B. Wells Homes public housing project, where they extorted money and planted drugs and guns, knowing their victims – largely Black and low-income residents – wouldn’t be believed, said Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

“He was asking for people to pay a tax, if you will,” said Foxx, who has repeatedly sent written statements and held press conferences on the misconduct allegations and the steps her office has taken to rectify the harm Watts and his team caused. “He really carried himself as the top dog in that neighborhood, and people who didn’t comply had cases put on them.”  

Watts, an 18-year veteran of the department, had vendettas against some people, Foxx said. Other times he targeted people just because “he could,” she said.  

Local and federal law enforcement were investigating allegations of the team’s corruption as early as 2004, according to a recently unveiled report from the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability. That’s the same year Watts won “Officer of the Month,” according to court filings.  

But it wasn’t until 2012 that Watts and a member of his crew, Kallatt Mohammed, were arrested on federal charges of stealing $5,200 in government funds from an undercover informant. They pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 22 and 18 months, respectively.  

Despite the convictions, local officials did not take action for the hundreds of people who had been arrested by Watts. That is until one victim, Clarissa Glenn, pressed the issue.  

Spurred by Glenn, lawyers with the Exoneration Project and attorney Joel Flaxman began vetting victims’ cases and bringing them to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in 2016. The office launched a comprehensive review of cases the following year, and prosecutors have moved to vacate the convictions in batches through a patchwork of litigation and cooperation with attorneys working on behalf of the victims. 

Since then, prosecutors have moved to dismiss at least 226 convictions and juvenile adjudications connected to Watts and his team. Collectively, the wrongful prosecutions cost 183 people sentences of 459 years in prison (not including pre-trial detention), plus 57 probation and 10 boot camp sentences.

An Illinois Court of Claims judge described the scandal as “one of the most staggering cases of police corruption” in Chicago history and said “Watts and his team of police officers ran what can only be described as a criminal enterprise right out of the movie ‘Training Day.'” A Cook County Circuit Court judge said officers’ actions resulted in “wrongful convictions.” And an Illinois Appellate Court ruling detailed how “corrupt” officers fabricated a case to secure a false conviction.

Almost every exoneree has now filed a federal civil rights lawsuit arguing their constitutional rights were violated by Watts, his team and the city of Chicago, Tepfer said.

“It’s important to step back and just realize how incredibly awful this is, how sickening it is, and the impact it has not just on these individuals but on the community trust,” Tepfer said.

Asked about the exonerations, an attorney for Watts, Thomas Glasgow, said: “I do not believe Mr. Watts has any comment regarding this matter.” Watts, 59, is no longer an officer and lives in Arizona. 

In responses filed in court to the federal cases, Watts and other officers have denied they fabricated cases. 

As the city pours millions into legal battles, Watts’ victims are still searching for justice.  

Nile won’t get that chance. Instead, his sister and children are left with lockets filled with his ashes and an urn on the mantle when his family gathers for their monthly Sunday dinners.  

“I just want people to at least step in our shoes and see how it affected our lives — not only my brother, but us as well,” Shawntell Nile said. “It’s an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed.”

In January of 2003, Larry Lomax’s younger brother was battling thyroid cancer and needed money. So Lomax, then 45 and a father of four, finished up work at his factory job and took the train more than an hour from Zion, Illinois, to the Ida B. Wells housing project to bring him some cash.

But he never had the chance to give his brother the money.

Lomax was walking up the ramp of his brother’s building when officers grabbed him from behind, beat him, knocked out some of his teeth and took the money, according to Lomax’s affidavit – a written statement Lomax made to Cook County Circuit Court under oath in his exoneration case.

At the police station, Lomax asked an officer what he’d been charged with.

“Watts told me that if I would say that the guys I was arrested with had been selling drugs and that I had seen them with the drugs, they would let me go,” Lomax said in the affidavit.

He refused and was charged with possession of heroin. He told his public defender he had been framed, but the attorney recommended he take a plea deal, Lomax said. He spent two months in jail and was sentenced to two years probation.

Lomax’s brother died of cancer less than a year after the arrest. He lost his job. He couldn’t afford his car or rent. And when his youngest daughter was born in 2006, a family member had to take custody of her.

Lomax, who now lives in Waukegan, Illinois, said he eventually found work through Catholic Charities. He joined a therapy group and went every Friday for years.

“This ruined my life,” he said. “The thing that hurt me most is I didn’t have nothing to do with this.”

Lomax’s conviction was vacated in 2018, and he received a certificate of innocence. He hopes to see Watts and his team brought to court someday.

“They got off with a slap on the wrist,” he said.

Derrick Mapp still feels the pain in his side from the day in April 2006 that Watts and another officer punched his ribs over and over again, causing his left lung to collapse.

Mapp was returning to his mother’s apartment when Watts and another officer grabbed him, started questioning him about “where the stuff was” and dragged him to the incinerator room, according to an affidavit in his exoneration case.

“They punched on me, punched on me,” said Mapp, 49, who still lives on Chicago’s South Side. “I told them I didn’t know, so they cuffed me.”

Mapp, then 33, was struggling to breathe when he was taken to county jail, the affidavit said. He was later diagnosed with the collapsed lung and spent more than two months in the hospital, according to hospital records.

Mapp was charged with a felony drug crime. He took a plea deal, was sentenced to four years and was detained about 18 months, leaving his girlfriend alone with their two sons, 11 and 12.

Mapp had been the breadwinner of his family, and he’d worked since he was a kid. But when he got out of jail, he couldn’t find a job.

“People didn’t trust me,” he said, adding, “everything just went backward.”

Mapp’s conviction was vacated in 2020, and he received a certificate of innocence in 2021.

Now, Mapp said he gets by on “a little side work” in his neighborhood. He still can’t sleep some nights. He tosses and turns.

He’s married and has two grandkids. He loves to take them to the park to ride their bikes and throw a baseball. But he doesn’t travel too far from home — he’s constantly looking over his shoulder and listening for sirens.

“I still haven’t physically recovered,” Mapp said. “I still get scared when I see the police, and that happens often.”

Pregnant and with a 2-year-old daughter at home, Crystal Allen had to trudge through the snow and travel over an hour to get to her probation officer in Chicago. 

She was framed by Watts on felony drug charges in 2007 – not once, but twice, according to affidavits in her exoneration cases – and was sentenced to two years of probation in a city where she no longer lived.

“It was a whole nightmare,” Allen recalled, crying. “… And he was getting away with it.”

In April 2007 when Allen was 22, she was at a relative’s apartment to get some belongings for her move to Indiana. She heard a knock on the door, and Watts and another officer barged in, according to an affidavit. When the officers began questioning her, Allen said she gave them the receipt of a clothing store she had just visited to show she had not been in the building long.

“I still ended up going to jail,” said Allen, now 37. “I didn’t even know what the charges were.”

Watts and his team arrested Allen again that July while she was out on bond. She pleaded guilty to both charges. “My family didn’t really have money for me to fight it,” she said.

The felony convictions destroyed her relationship with her grandmother and caused her to lose her housing assistance and food stamps, Allen said.

“A lie ruined me – my whole life, my children’s lives,” she said

Last year, Allen’s convictions were vacated, and she received certificates of innocence. She rarely returns to Chicago. At home in Lafayette, Indiana, Allen feels more at peace. She has five kids and got married in 2019. She’s largely a stay-home mom and works for DoorDash and Walmart delivery to make ends meet.

She thinks about how more than a dozen members of Watts’ crew still receive a paycheck from the Chicago Police Department. “I don’t think that that’s fair,” she said. 

Theodore “Ed” Wilkins, 42, still wakes to cold sweats after nightmares about the first time Watts put drugs on him. He was 23 in June 2003 and preparing to testify to the innocence of a man Watts had framed.

That’s when Watts fabricated a heroin case against Wilkins, according to an affidavit in his exoneration case.

Wilkins was falsely arrested by Watts and his crew two more times through 2007 and cumulatively spent nearly four years in custody. He had two kids at the time, and his girlfriend left him, he said.

Later, Wilkins pled guilty to separate charges unrelated to Watts. Due to his prior convictions, prosecutors were able to charge Wilkins with a more serious class of felony that carries harsher punishment. He was sentenced to nine years in prison and three years mandatory supervised release.

“I didn’t know they were gonna use the Watts cases to upgrade the charges against me,” he said. “It’s a doubling effect, a trickling down of nothing good.”