'Today was a wonderful day:' Brothers free after years in prison on false drug charges linked to corrupt CPD Sgt. Ronald Watts
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A total of 44 more people now have a clean record, after Cook County prosecutors agreed to vacate more convictions connected to corrupt former Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts.
This brings the total number of thrown-out cases tied to Watts to 212. Two of them involve brothers form Chicago's South Side, one of whom talked with CBS 2's Marissa Perlman Friday.
Tyrone and Joey Fenton were outside the George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building when found out their names were in the clear. They say they can finally start living their lives after being wrongfully convicted, and wasting years of their lives behind bars.
"I'm just enjoying life – and today was a wonderful day," said Tyrone Fenton.
It was one of the first good days for Fenton, who has been fighting for a clean record after spending almost three years in the Illinois correctional system on a drug charge. It involved drugs he didn't even have.
"Being incarcerated for something you didn't do makes it 10 times worse," Fenton said.
Watts resigned from the force before pleading guilty in 2012 to stealing from a homeless man who posed as a drug dealer as part of an undercover FBI sting. He admitted to regularly extorting money from drug dealers, and was sentenced to 22 months in prison. He has been accused of frequently planting evidence and fabricating charges.
Dozens of men and women have said Watts and his team terrorized them in or near the former Ida B. Wells housing project in Bronzeville between 2003 and 2008. Watts and his officers have been accused of planting drugs on suspects and falsifying police reports.
Prosecutors have said Watts and the officers under his command time and again planted evidence and fabricated charges in order to further their own gun and drug trade.
In some cases, Watts' victims refused to pay him money or did something that angered him; in others, there appears to be no reason for why he targeted them.
"He'll pat us down. 'Y'all got anything on y'all?' You know: 'Where are the drugs at? Where are the guns at?'" Fenton said.
Watts is accused of planting heroin on Fenton at a police station in January 2006.
"They used to have dices on them sometimes, and they'd tell us to roll the dices, and just say, 'Whoever crapped out, you go to jail,'" Fenton said.
Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx's office has vacated 212 Watts-related cases since 2017. The office vacated 26 cases in 2017, 38 in 2018, 17 in 2019, 19 in 2020, 14 in 2021, and a total of 98 so far this year alone.
Tyrone Fenton's brother, Joey, was also convicted of a drug conviction. Both learned Friday that they were among those 98 people whose records are now officially clean.
"They're both individuals who grew up in poverty, you know, grew up on the fringes so to speak – and the justice system did not serve them," said attorney Sean Starr of Loevy & Loevy and the University of Chicago Law School's Exoneration Project.
Starr has represented many of the Watts victims, and says there are still more cases that will move forward.
"Eventually, if you're innocent and you're wrongfully convicted, somebody will listen," Starr said.
For Tyrone Fenton, it took more than 10 years.
"I thought about it every day," he said.
He was stuck behind bars for years of his life to clear his name.
"I missed this birthday. I missed that holiday. You think about all those little things, and then you be like - I can never get it back," Fenton said.
But Tyrone Fenton says this means a fresh start for a new life.
"I'm going to live with a smile on my face," he said.
Together, those who have been wrongly accused related to Sgt. Watts have served mor than 274 years in prison. But Watts served less than two years, and his partner, Kallat Mohammed, served 18 months for a 2013 federal conviction.
No other officer on their team has faced charges.