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Willie Martin

Other Cook County Drug Exonerations
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/PublishingImages/Cook_County_seal.jpg
On September 12, 2006, 24-year-old Willie Martin was leaving the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago, Illinois when he was stopped by Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts and other officers under his command.

A month earlier, Watts had stopped Martin and stolen $916 from him. And on a previous occasion, Watts tried to force Martin to tell him who was dealing drugs by threatening to arrest Martin’s brother.

On this occasion, Martin refused to provide information on other drug dealers and said he had no money. As a result, the officers beat Martin and handcuffed him.

Officer Kallatt Mohammed drove Martin to the police station at 51st Street and Wentworth Avenue. On the way, Mohammed told Martin he could save himself by giving the police something. Martin said he had nothing to give.

Martin was charged with possession of heroin. On May 30, 2007, Martin pled guilty in Cook County Circuit Court to possession of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to three years and six months in prison. He was released on October 9, 2008.

In 2012, Watts and Mohammed were caught on tape stealing money from a man they believed was a drug courier, but who was in fact working as a confidential FBI informant. In 2013, Watts and Mohammed pled guilty in U.S. District Court to taking money from the informant. Mohammed was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and Watts was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

Federal prosecutors said Watts “used his badge and his position as a sergeant with the Chicago Police Department to shield his own criminal activity from law enforcement scrutiny. He recruited another CPD officer into his crimes, stealing drug money and extorting protection payments from the drug dealers who terrorized the community that he [Watts] had sworn to protect.”

In 2006, Ben Baker was convicted twice—once alone and a second time with his wife, Clarissa Glenn, on charges of narcotics possession based on false testimony from Watts. In 2015, Joshua Tepfer, an attorney at the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, filed a petition to vacate Baker’s first conviction, citing the corruption of Watts and his unit. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit agreed in January 2016 that Baker’s first conviction should be vacated, and the petition was granted. Later in 2016, a petition filed on behalf of Baker and Glenn also was granted.

In December 2016, Tepfer and attorney Joel Flaxman filed a motion for a new trial on behalf of Lionel White Sr., another defendant who claimed he had been falsely convicted based on the corruption of Watts and his team. “The full known scope of the corrupt, more-than-decade-long criminal enterprise of Sergeant Watts…shows that Sergeant Watts led a tactical team of Chicago police officers that engaged in systematic extortion, bribery, and other related crimes…from as far back as the late 1990s through 2012,” the motion said.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit agreed that White’s conviction should be vacated and dismissed the charge.

On September 24, 2018, the Cook County State's Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit dismissed Martin’s conviction. Martin was subsequently granted a certificate of innocence and was awarded $80,000 in compensation from the state of Illinois.

Martin filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Chicago in February 2019.

By 2018, more than 50 convictions tainted by Watts and members of his unit had been dismissed.

– Maurice Possley

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Posting Date: 12/9/2018
Last Updated: 6/5/2020
State:Illinois
County:Cook
Most Serious Crime:Drug Possession or Sale
Additional Convictions:
Reported Crime Date:2006
Convicted:2007
Exonerated:2018
Sentence:3 years and 6 months
Race/Ethnicity:Black
Sex:Male
Age at the date of reported crime:24
Contributing Factors:Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct
Did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration?:No