Two men who were charged with the murder of Chicago Police Officer Clifton Lewis have filed lawsuits saying they were framed, while the lone man in prison for the murder says he has proof prosecutors hid evidence and lied to a judge.
Prosecutors dropped charges against Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay in June, nearly 12 years after the two men were arrested. The move to dismiss the cases was made just before a hearing was to be held on allegations that police and prosecutors failed to turn over evidence, including cellphone data indicating they were nowhere near the convenience store where Lewis was gunned down in 2011.
On Friday, lawyers for the two men held a press conference at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, announcing the filing of federal lawsuits against more than a dozen CPD officers, a Cook County judge and four assistant state’s attorneys, including Nancy Adduci, who until recently was in charge of a unit that reviewed wrongful conviction cases.
Adduci and veteran prosecutor Andrew Varga had been assigned to the Lewis case in 2011 but were pulled off in 2022 after a trove of emails and files were unearthed by lawyers for Alexander Villa, the third man charged in the Lewis murder who received a life sentence in August.
The material not only showed that police had failed to turn over FBI reports with the cell phone data, it documented how police had conducted a months-long dragnet to find evidence against Villa.
Also Friday, lawyers for Villa filed a petition to have his conviction overturned after prosecutors who took over the case from Adduci and Varga produced yet another file that contained evidence that should have been turned over before Villa’s trial or in a sweeping 2022 subpoena.
Prosecutors had been packing up files from the now-closed case against Colon and Clay and discovered a CD, according to the post-conviction petition.
A note in Varga’s handwriting stuck to the CD sleeve indicated he was aware of the files on the disk, which included cell phone mapping from an FBI report that showed the three were elsewhere when Lewis was gunned down during a robbery at M&M Quick Foods in Austin.
There was also phone data showing Villa was texting with his girlfriend while the shooting happened, the petition states.
Adduci and Varga had said repeatedly in court that they turned over all records in the case, according to the petition, even after Judge Erica Reddick ordered the prosecutors fulfill a sweeping request for records last year.
The new material “reveal an investigation that was rotten to its core,” the petition reads. “The amount of material, exculpatory evidence not tendered to Villa before his trial is nothing short of mind-blowing. The breadth of the CPD’s, the FBI’s, and CCSAO’s misconduct is staggering. With the revelations on the disk, the jig is up.”
The lawsuits by Colon and Clay also refer to those documents.
A spokeswoman for State’s Attorney Kim Foxx did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuits.
Foxx, who has made wrongful convictions a signature issue of her two terms in office, announced last week it was “rebranding” the Conviction Integrity Unit. Adduci, who had been head of the CIU since 2019, was announced as one of two co-deputies under new chief Michelle Mbekeani, a senior adviser to Foxx.
Lewis had been working off-duty as a security guard at M&M Quick Foods the night of Dec. 29, 2011, just days after proposing to his longtime girlfriend.
In a scene captured on surveillance video, two masked gunmen burst into the store and opened fire. Lewis took cover behind a store counter. One of the shooters hurdled the counter, shot Lewis and took the officer’s gun.
The case against the three men dragged on for years, in part because of allegations of misconduct by detectives.
Colon was convicted in 2017 and sentenced to 84 years in prison for acting as getaway driver, a case that rested heavily on a confession Colon said he made only after days of interrogation.
Colon’s conviction was overturned in 2019 after a judge ruled detectives obtained his confession after he had repeatedly asked for a lawyer.
Clay, charged as one of the gunmen, also maintained he was coerced into a false confession. An appeals court ruled that he, too, asked for a lawyer and his IQ of 66 left him unable to understand his right to remain silent.
Clay spent nearly 12 years in jail awaiting trial before the charges were dropped. Colon spent 10 years behind bars before his conviction was vacated. Villa, who was interrogated for days but never confessed, was convicted in 2019.
Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas is named as a defendant in both lawsuits, which allege she stepped outside her duties as a judge when she held a hearing in her chambers to extend the 48-hour window for detectives to hold Colon without charging him.
Judges have conducted so-called “Gerstein” hearings — held without a prosecutor or defense lawyer present — for years, a practice that defense lawyers have condemned as dubiously constitutional.
“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 lawsuit states.
“(Chiampas) surrendered her robe and her oath, instead taking up the investigative function of law enforcement to assist a coercive interrogation that resulted in a confession that was eventually suppressed as unconstitutional.”
