Chicago City Wire

In a surprise move, U.S. District Court Judge Steven Seeger blocked the deposition of First Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Risa Lanier in the wrongful conviction cases of two found guilty in the 1998 savage murders of a husband and wife, and the kidnapping of their children.

It was Lanier who made the final decision not to challenge the awarding of Certificates of Innocence (COIs) last November to Gabriel Solache and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes. This, while the office had earlier opposed the COIs for the two. COIs are a near guarantee for cash awards in a wrongful conviction trial.

Solache and Reyes were exonerated on claims that the lead detective in the case, Reynaldo Guevara, forced them into confessing.

Judge Seeger quashed the Lanier deposition at the behest of plaintiffs’ attorneys for the two men, Loevy & Loevy for Reyes, and the People’s Law Office for Solache.

In mid-May, the judge asked the CCSAO, headed by Kim Foxx, to explain thousands of emails discussing the COIs.

“As an aside, this Court does not understand why the CCSAO has 20,000 emails about the Certificates of Innocence in question,” Seeger wrote. “Is that right? Are all of those emails external? How many emails does the CCSAO have with Plaintiffs' counsel, or members of his team? Has CCSAO talked with the custodians in question, and asked them if they ever told anyone why the CCSAO was dropping its opposition to the Certificates of Innocence? That's a good place to start.”

Loevy & Loevy had earlier presented an explanation for at least some of the communications that took place between their office and the CCSAO. It’s unclear the scope or the content of additional communications.

In the same filing granting the motion to quash the deposition, the judge said that the parties in the case will continue to discuss a possible declaration by the CCSAO’s office that its dropping the opposition to the COIs had nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the two men.

“At this point, the Court is not compelling the production of a declaration,” the judge wrote, “but the Court does encourage the parties and the CCSAO to talk it over.”

Earlier, the CCSAO said it’s willing to admit in a court declaration that its reversal on the COIs “did not reflect a final determination that either Petitioner Solache or Petitioner Reyes was innocent.”

The CCSAO offered the declaration in lieu of having Lanier deposed. Attorneys representing the defendants in the case -- the city of Chicago, Guevara and others – balked. They said that the declaration offered by the CCSAO did not get to the bottom of why the office reversed itself.

In a status report, defendants said they have a right to know “what facts were known to First Assistant State’s Attorney Lanier up to and at the time she made the decision regarding intervention in the COI proceedings; who First Assistant State’s Attorney Lanier spoke to regarding the COIs; and the reason(s) for the final decision to withdraw the CCSAO as intervenors in the COI proceedings, and because the CCSAO was not agreeing to these topics in the proposed declaration, that Defendants wished to proceed with the deposition of ASA Risa Lanier.”