Chicago City Wire

Special prosecutor Dan Webb's attacks on Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx for her handling of the Jussie Smollett case could equally apply to scores of additional cases in which adherence by her office to even rudimentary standards of criminal justice comes second to a political agenda. Foxx is playing politics, not prosecuting bad guys, and the cost in dollars and public safety is far too high.

Here's one of those costly, and particularly menacing, cases.

Foxx inexplicably dropped a petition opposing a certificate of innocence against two men convicted for their role in a 1998 brutal double stabbing of a couple and the kidnapping of their two children. Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes along with a third offender, Adriana Mejia, were convicted of the murders of Jacinta and Mariano Soto in their Bucktown apartment. The couple was repeatedly stabbed to death by the three offenders.

Foxx’s actions in the case were suspicious from the beginning. Her predecessor, Anita Alvarez refused to go along with the claims that one of the detectives who worked the case, Reynaldo Guevara, coerced confessions from Solache and Reyes in this case and many other cases.

But in a chilling sign of what the George Soros prosecutor would mean for Chicago’s criminal justice system, Foxx reversed course from the Alvarez administration and embraced the misconduct allegations made by the law firms against Guevara, allegations which stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars in civil lawsuits against Guevara and the city after Foxx vacates the convictions.

But what makes Foxx’s actions particularly troubling is the fact that Foxx took these actions despite the fact that her top attorneys at the time stated under oath and in the media that they believed the men were guilty of the crimes.

In a recent Chicago City Wire article, former State's Attorney Eric Sussman also said he “certainly didn't believe that he [Guevara] coerced confessions in that case."

After Foxx vacated the conviction, her administration still contested granting a certificate of innocence to the two men, in large part because her attorneys still maintained they were guilty. Then Foxx simply withdrew from contesting it, forcing a judge to grant it.

Foxx’s walking away from contesting the certificate of innocence in the Solache/Reyes case – a nightmare for the citizens in Chicago who need a prosecutor willing to seriously combat the epidemic of violent crime in the city – is a great gift for the attorneys representing the men in their quest to go from convicted murderers to millionaires through a federal lawsuit against the city. The reason is that once “exonerated” offenders like Solache and Reyes are granted a certificate of innocence, the case becomes that much more complicated for the city to contest in federal court.

Just as Foxx was criticized for giving Smollet a sweetheart deal despite the overwhelming evidence that he concocted the entire story of being a victim of a crime, so too is the evidence that Foxx’s refusal to fight the certificate of innocence a sweetheart deal for Solache and Reyes.

Foxx’s decisions in the Solache/Reyes case echo Dan Webb’s attack on Foxx in the Smollet case when Webb claimed Foxx’s actions were “abnormal” and “unfamiliar” to “those who practice law” in Illinois. Her actions in the Solache/Reyes case also echo Webb’s claim that Foxx and “her representatives have fundamentally misled the public on the law and the circumstances surrounding the dismissal” of charges in both the Smollet and Solache/Reyes murder case.

Last week, city attorneys asked the Judge in the federal lawsuit to reopen discovery in the lawsuit to see all “communications between the CCSAO (State’s Attorney) and third parties including Plaintiffs, their counsel and other advocates on topics relating to Solache’s and Reyes’s COIs.”

Such an action is an important first step to see the how and why behind Foxx’s actions, which, taken together, paint an absurd and dire condition of her administration: Her top prosecutors say Solache and Reyes are guilty and detectives did not coerce a confession, but they toss the conviction anyway. They contest the certificate of innocence, then months later simply abandon that contest.

If the Solache/Reyes were the only case. Since taking office, Foxx has released a host of offenders in other cases on equally absurd basis, draining the city coffers in defending them. What is emerging in her administration is men not only getting away with murder, but becoming rich through murder.

Foxx has a powerful ally in Chicago’s mainstream media, which covers the exoneration narratives with a near frenzy, then drops the story when the evidence of a false exoneration or other corruption in the Foxx administration emerges.

The city attorneys should very well reopen discovery and compel Foxx to explain herself. Top prosecutors throughout the country are being challenged in various cities and states. Some have been removed, but Foxx, foisted to power in a one-party system, seems to remain untouchable.  

The reopening of discovery in the Solache/Reyes mess is a good starting point to bring some accountability to Cook County’s criminal justice system. It requires more than just reopening discovery in one case. The city council, for example, needs to admit the fact that Chicago’s crime epidemic is in large part rooted in the pro- criminal policies of Kim Foxx, and they should hold her accountable.

They should focus on Kimberly Foxx’s decisions not just in Solache/Reyes, but all the exonerations that have taken place since she came into office.

Now that would truly be criminal justice reform.