Chicago police officers perpetrated a “wide-ranging scheme to manufacture evidence,” a federal lawsuit alleges, in order to convict three people in the 2011 slaying of Chicago police Officer Clifton Lewis, whose controversial murder case has been beset with allegations of misconduct.
Alexander Villa, 36, filed the complaint nearly five months after a Cook County judge ordered a new trial during a heated hearing in October at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to re-try the case, acknowledging that it had discovered potentially exculpatory evidence that had not been turned over to the defense, a violation of the defendant’s rights.
Villa, who is represented by the civil rights firm Loevy + Loevy, had spent eight years in prison.
Villa was among three people charged in the case that has spawned a separate lawsuit and led to fallout in the state’s attorney’s office. Prosecutors previously dropped charges against the other two defendants, Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay, who are pursuing their own claim.
The allegations of misconduct led to the resignation of one prosecutor and the firing of another. The former prosecutors, Andrew Varga and Nancy Adduci, are named in the suit, along with the city, county and a number of police officers and investigators.
The complaint alleges that police officers, aided by the prosecutors, fabricated evidence and suppressed information that pointed to Villa’s innocence in order to frame him after they were not able to coerce a confession. They did this as part of an investigative team called “Operation Snake Doctor” convened to target the Spanish Cobras street gang, according to the complaint.
“No one can pay Mr. Villa back for what he has been through, and Officer Lewis’s family may never find justice for their loss,” said Jennifer Blagg, one of Villa’s attorneys, in a statement. “And the City of Chicago taxpayers continue to pay for the CPD’s refusal to change a well-documented pattern of misconduct that goes back decades.”
A spokeswoman with the city’s Law Department declined to comment citing the pending litigation.
Around 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 29, 2011, Lewis was working security at a West Side convenience store when two masked men shot and killed him.
“The death of Lewis was a tragedy and solving the crime immediately became a top priority for law enforcement in Chicago,” the complaint said.
Villa was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but his attorneys in 2023 filed a motion for a new trial, alleging that the state’s attorney’s office stumbled on evidence that should have been released to them earlier by Varga and Adduci.
The motion said that the state’s attorney’s office unearthed a disc as staff boxed up the case materials to send to a warehouse after Villa’s sentencing. The disc, which was misfiled in a folder of recorded jail calls, contained an FBI cell tower analysis that showed Villa was texting his girlfriend at the time of the shooting.
The shooting was caught by surveillance footage that did not indicate that one of the shooters was texting, according to the motion.
The disc had handwriting on it that Varga confirmed was his, the motion said, even though Varga and Adduci had previously maintained to a judge that they were unaware of the analysis, which was not turned over to the defense and was only obtained through a subpoena to the FBI after Villa had already been convicted.
When the evidence came to light, the prosecutor’s office did not oppose Villa’s motion for a new trial. At the time, the office said in a statement that Lewis “deserves to be remembered for his dedicated service to the Chicago Police Department and the City of Chicago rather than for procedural errors that have marred our pursuit of justice and accountability.”
But police officers and family members of Lewis were angry at the decision, causing the hearing to be delayed for two hours after attorneys for Lewis’ mother and sister asked that family members be heard on the matter, resulting in an out-of-court phone call with then-Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
“I know you are disappointed and the family is disappointed, but if there is not enough evidence, there is not enough evidence,” Judge Carol Howard said as she delivered her ruling.
