Attorneys for final defendant charged in murder of CPD Officer Clifton Lewis argue judge is biased, but fail in bid to replace him
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More than a month after prosecutors dropped charges against two men who were accused of murder in the 2011 shooting death of an off-duty Chicago police officer, attorneys for the final defendant in the troubled case made a bid to replace the Cook County judge overseeing it, arguing he has “consistently displayed prejudice” and “derided” evidence pointing to innocence.
But Cook County Judge Timothy Joyce on Thursday ruled against the defense, finding that Judge James Linn did not prejudge the matter, meaning the decadelong criminal case will remain with Linn while attorneys fight for the same outcome as that of the former co-defendants.
Officer Clifton Lewis was shot and killed by two masked men in December 2011 while working a second job as security at a West Side convenience store. Cook County prosecutors initially charged Tyrone Clay, Alexander Villa and Edgardo Colon in the case, which in recent years has been plagued with problems, including allegations that police and prosecutors buried evidence.
Alexander Villa, 35, appeared in court Thursday with his attorneys, who are seeking a new trial, arguing that new evidence has come to light pointing to Villa’s innocence. A jury convicted him of Lewis’ murder in 2019, but he has not been sentenced.
In a surprise move in June, prosecutors dismissed charges against Villa’s two co-defendants, Colon and Clay, after months of contentious hearings and a labor-intensive process by the city to try to comply with discovery obligations.
An assistant state’s attorney told a judge that “after a thorough and exhaustive review of evidence,” prosecutors did not believe they could meet their burden at trial.
Attorneys for Villa are seeking a similar resolution, but face a greater burden due to the fact that Villa has been convicted. Clay spent more than a decade awaiting trial and Colon’s conviction was reversed by an appellate court, which said his constitutional rights were violated when police continued questioning him after he indicated he wanted a lawyer.
Villa’s case has taken a different trajectory before a different judge, and his attorneys filed the motion last week to substitute another judge for Linn in Villa’s case.
The motion alleges that Linn has berated Villa’s lawyers and “instructed the State not to comply with discovery requests.”
The motion also argues that Linn has sought to shield his handling of the case from media scrutiny.
“Initially, Judge Linn had all matters related to Villa’s case on the record,” the motion said. “Once Villa’s case started getting widespread media attention, Judge Linn routinely had off-the-record meetings in his chambers to discuss substantive matters before having the parties appear on the record.”
A call to Linn’s chambers on Thursday was unanswered, and a spokeswoman for Chief Judge Tim Evans said judges can’t comment on pending cases.
During a hearing over the matter on Thursday, Jennifer Blagg, Villa’s attorney, said that Linn has played a “supervisor” role for the prosecutors, instructing them on what to do.
“That’s not the role of a neutral arbiter,” she said.
Assistant State’s Attorney Kevin DeBoni, though, contested many of the arguments in the motion, arguing among other things that the defense agreed to the meetings in his chambers.
“Overall, many of the complaints about Judge Linn date back to 2022 and no substitution of judge motion was made,” he said.
In ruling against the motion, Joyce said the defense appears to believe that Linn is wrong in his interpretation of the case, which doesn’t equate to being prejudiced.
“It strikes me that the defense wants me to conclude that Judge Linn is wrong on some of these issues so he must be prejudiced,” Joyce said. “It simply doesn’t follow.”
Joyce said he has not heard evidence in the case and does not know whether Linn is wrong, but drew a distinction between that and the question of being biased against a defendant.
“Judges are human beings and if you sit in the building long enough as judge, you not only will be wrong once in a while but identified by the appeals court as wrong,” Joyce said, though adding he doesn’t know whether that’s the case here.
Linn, though, intends to retire at the end of the month, meaning that the case would be reassigned if it isn’t resolved before then.
In 2021, Linn presided over the trial of Jussie Smollett, which attracted widespread international media attention. Last year, he sentenced Smollett to 150 days in jail after a jury convicted him on five of six counts of disorderly conduct alleging he’d falsely reported to police that he was a victim of a hate crime in 2019.
