‘Stunning misconduct’: Cook County prosecutors, Chicago police, judge sued in botched prosecution of police officer’s murder
Two men who fought a 12-year battle for exoneration after they were accused of killing a Chicago police officer filed sweeping lawsuits against the city, Cook County prosecutors, police officers and a judge, alleging large-scale misconduct committed in a quest to close a police officer’s murder case.
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 quickly charged Tyrone Clay and Edgardo Colon, and later charged a third defendant, Alexander Villa.
But the case dragged on for more than a decade, plagued by accusations that police and prosecutors coerced confessions and hid evidence that could have pointed to the defendants’ innocence. In a surprise move, prosecutors in June dropped all charges against Clay and Colon, following months of tussling over evidentiary issues and allegations of prosecutorial and police misconduct.
Villa was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison, but he continues to fight for his release. On Friday, his attorneys filed a petition to vacate his convictions and order a new trial based on recently uncovered evidence. That petition also alleges misconduct, arguing that prosecutors hid the potentially exculpatory evidence from Villa’s defense team.
“This case is not about a rogue detective,” said Paul Vickrey, an attorney who represents Colon. “This case is about a stunningly broad 12-year effort to hide, distort, destroy evidence.”
The suits, filed Thursday in federal court, name as defendants the city of Chicago as well as Assistant State’s Attorneys Nancy Adduci and Andrew Varga, who handled the prosecutions until they were reassigned earlier this year, Judge Peggy Chiampas, who is accused of holding a “sham” probable cause hearing, and a number of current or former police officers, among other defendants.
Adduci’s role in the case has drawn particular scrutiny because she was head of the state’s attorney’s office’s Conviction Integrity Unit as the allegations of misconduct unfolded. She was recently replaced as head by Michelle Mbekeani, who joined the office in 2018 as a legal and policy adviser. Adduci remains a deputy in the unit, which was renamed the Conviction Review Unit.
Jennifer Bonjean, one of Clay’s attorneys, said the case exhibits “stunning misconduct at every level of the criminal justice system.”
A request for comment from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office was not immediately returned. A spokeswoman from the chief judge’s office said judges are barred from commenting on pending litigation, and the city’s Law Department said it had not been served with the complaint and “will have no further comment as the matter is now in litigation.”
Colon and Clay joined their attorneys for a news conference Friday morning at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, where they spent years fighting their charges. Clay’s case, in particular, drew consternation from the judge handling the matter and civil rights advocates because he was held in Cook County Jail for more than a decade without going to trial. Colon served more than 10 years in prison. He was convicted by a jury, but his case was later overturned by an appeals court.
“We’re not human to them,” Colon said, growing emotional. “We’re not people. We’re just a number.”
Colon said his father died while he was incarcerated.
Clay said he’s still adjusting to life outside the jail, often struggling with the pain of his long incarceration.
“It hurts real bad,” he said. “I have feelings. This is my life.”
The two men filed separate lawsuits, but detailed a similar slate of allegations. In the complaints, they accused police and prosecutors of being so desperate to quickly close Lewis’ murder case that they seized on an easy theory, then hid evidence that disproved it or pointed to other suspects.
The complaint alleges that police put Clay and Colon through a grueling and coercive interrogation until Colon confessed. The suit says police threatened to have his child taken away by the state, and take away his mother’s government housing.
When police didn’t get a confession after two days, the suit says, they brought him before Chiampas to extend the time period they could hold Colon, though without prosecutors, defense counsel or a court reporter.
“The entire proceeding was a charade conducted in secrecy for the sole purpose of aiding the investigation and prolonging Colon’s interrogation without access to counsel,” the suit says.
Colon eventually confessed, telling police, “I’m implicating myself because I wanna get out of here,” according to an appeals court opinion that overturned his conviction.
The lawsuits allege that as police were trying to secure confessions from Colon and Clay, they ignored or hid other evidence or theories of the case.
Before approving the charges, prosecutors knew that cell tower evidence did not place the defendants at the crime scene, the suit alleges, though prosecutors have disputed that this is what the evidence shows. The complaints say Clay had an “airtight” alibi playing video games, with his voice captured talking to other games, but accuse prosecutors of concealing or destroying the play station and cell tower evidence.
“Simply put, (officers and prosecutors) knew that plaintiff and his criminal co-defendants could not have committed the crime, almost from the start,” Colon’s suit says. “But instead of acknowledging that they had coerced confessions from Colon and Clay, they doubled down and spent the next 12 years destroying and/or concealing any evidence that contradicted those confessions.
In another twist in the case on Friday, attorneys for Villa, the only defendant still serving time, filed a petition for a new trial, saying they received a call last month from Cook County prosecutors who informed them they found evidence, a disc with the cell tower analysis, that had not been passed on to defense counsel. The petition says that Varga, one of the original prosecutors on the case, confirmed that his handwriting was on the disc.
The prosecutors happened upon the disc while packing up the Villa file to be shipped off to the warehouse, the petition says.
The petition contends that Varga and Adduci knew of the cell tower analysis, which the defense attorneys say points to Villa’s innocence.
The matter is up for a hearing on Jan. 8.
