The family of slain Chicago Police Officer Clifton Lewis have asked to weigh in on a potential decision to release the last of three defendants charged with his 2011 murder, the latest wrinkle in a troubled prosecution.
Cook County prosecutors spoke with members of Lewis’ family two weeks ago, leaving them with the impression that the state’s attorney’s office was considering dropping its case against Alexander Villa, according to attorney Tim Grace, who is representing Lewis’ mother and sister in a request to be heard before any moves are made in the case.
Villa is set for a hearing Wednesday in front of Judge Carol Howard.
“We don’t have any standing to prosecute the case, that’s the state’s attorney’s job,” Grace said. “I hope they’re going to at least sit down with us and explain to the family why a Chicago police officer was murdered and his family is not going to get justice, if they decide to dismiss charges.”
Grace and James McKay, his co-counsel representing the Lewis family, are both former prosecutors. In a motion to make a formal appearance in the case, they said Lewis’ family “is in need of private counsel to protect their interests, to ensure that justice is served, and that Officer Lewis’ murderer is properly and fairly prosecuted.”
Villa has asked a judge to overturn his conviction and life sentence based on allegations that prosecutors hid crucial evidence that would have showed he was innocent. The alleged misconduct, largely unearthed by Villa’s lawyers, prompted prosecutors last year to drop charges against Villa’s co-defendants, Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay.
State law requires prosecutors to contact the families of murder victims when considering plea deals and decisions to sentence or release a defendant. It also gives families the ability to “be heard” in related court proceedings. But in a Monday court filing, Villa’s lawyers said the law doesn’t give victims’ relatives any say in prosecution decisions.
Wednesday’s hearing on a motion to toss Villa’s case is based on evidence turned over weeks after he was sentenced last year, when prosecutors identified more records that his attorney, Jennifer Blagg, believes should have been given to the defense. Blagg noted in a Monday court filing that the case hinges on allegations that prosecutors violated Villa’s rights.
In an interview, Blagg said Lewis’ family’s effort to intervene amounts to an attempt to pressure State’s Attorney Kim Foxx not to drop the case before she leaves office in December.
“The family is just as much a victim of what happened with this case as Alexander Villa, Clay and Colon,” Blagg said. “You don’t get to use the family as a mouthpiece to bash Kim Foxx.”
Murder case has fallen apart
The action in Villa’s case comes just weeks after Andrew Varga, a veteran prosecutor who was co-lead on Villa’s prosecution, abruptly retired from the office. John Maher, another veteran prosecutor, retired the same day.
Varga’s co-lead, Nancy Adduci, was demoted after Villa’s lawyers found a trove of emails they claim showed that prosecutors held back key evidence, including cellphone data that showed the three defendants weren’t at the crime scene when Lewis was shot.
McKay was a top prosecutor in the major crimes unit that handled the Lewis case until he retired from the office in 2015. As a private attorney, McKay frequently represents police officers accused of wrongdoing.
Since she was fired in December, Adduci has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against Foxx. Adduci, who is white, claims she was demoted from her position as head of the office’s conviction integrity unit and was replaced in favor of a younger, Black prosecutor. Aducci claims a supervisor told her that Foxx wanted someone “more representative of the community” in the role.
Charges against Colon and Clay were dropped the same day that relatives held a wake for Lewis’ fiancé, Tamara Latrice Tucker, who died of cancer at age 49. Lewis had taken a part-time job as a security guard at a convenience store to save up for thier wedding, having proposed just days before he was gunned down in a robbery.
Colon was convicted for his role as a lookout and was handed an 84-year sentence, only to have an appeals court throw out his confession and grant him a new trial because detectives continued questioning him after he requested a lawyer. Clay remained in jail for nearly 12 years without going to trial, with an appeals court also tossing his confession.
Villa was arrested nearly two years after Clay and Colon and was the only defendant who didn’t confess. Emails and other records showed that police carried out a dragnet trying to tie him to Lewis’ murder, questioning hundreds of Spanish Cobra gang members but never disclosing those interviews and tips to the defense.