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The murder of 16-year old Felix Valentin on a sweltering afternoon in 1988 barely caused a ripple amid a summer of rising gang violence on Chicago’s West Side.

But three decades after Valentin was gunned down in West Humboldt Park, his killing is about to make waves in a federal courtroom, where a notorious Chicago police detective is going on trial Tuesday in a wrongful conviction lawsuit alleging he helped frame a onetime Latin Kings gang member for the crime.

The lawsuit filed by Jacques Rivera accuses former Detective Reynaldo Guevara of coercing the only eyewitness to Valentin’s shooting - a 12-year-old boy into identifying Rivera as the gunman. The boy, Orlando Lopez, recanted his testimony years later, saying police and prosecutors ignored him when he told them he’d identified the wrong man.

The trial before U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall, expected to last three weeks, comes amid mushrooming allegations that the now-retired Guevara for years ran a widespread corruption racket in predominantly Hispanic.  So far, 18 men have had their convictions thrown out over allegations of misconduct by Guevara, including Rivera. There are eight other pending federal lawsuits against the ex-detective, and others still in prison are pushing prosecutors to have their cases reheard, records show.

Rivera’s trial comes with enormous stakes for both the city and taxpayers and is expected to be hotly contested. If the jury finds in Rivera’s favor, the payout could be in the multimillions of dollars, putting pressure on the city to try to limit further damage by negotiating settlements in the remaining cases.

As he has done in other cases, Guevara himself is expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he takes the witness stand later this week. While doing so could protect Guevara from future criminal prosecution, jurors in the civil case will be allowed to draw a “negative inference” from his refusal to answer questions.

Among other key witnesses is Lopez, now 39, who so far has fought a subpoena to come from Ohio to Chicago to testify. If he does not appear at trial, Rivera’s attorneys from the Loevy and Loevy law firm are expected to play a recent video recorded deposition given by Lopez in the case, court records show.

Also on the witness list is an Ohio pastor who said Lopez brought up during a marriage counseling session in 1998 how bad he felt about sending an innocent man to prison.

In addition to wrongdoing by Guevara, the lawsuit alleges that the Chicago Police Department’s failure to investigate or discipline Guevara as well as an ingrained “code of silence” allowed him to act with impunity.

Nearly a dozen former Chicago cops were named as defendants in the suit along with Guevara, including several from his gang crimes unit as well as former Grand Central Area detectives who worked the case.

By Lokesh