Chicago City Wire

A video posted on Cook County State’s Attorney’s website celebrates exonerations during Kim Foxx’s tenure with interviews featuring three convicted in murder cased. One interview with Jose Cruz, convicted of the 1993 murder of 16-year-old Antwane Douglas, tells of a chance encounter in June of 2022 with Foxx at Stateville prison where Cruz was serving a 90-year sentence. Foxx was at the prison that day to speak to graduates of the North Park University School of Restorative Arts.

Cruz said that he gained access to the ceremony with the help of a prison chaplain and happened to meet Foxx by a water fountain.

Foxx told Cruz that just the day before, her office had discussed his post-conviction review case.

Cruz said he met Foxx again by the door at the conclusion of the ceremony.

“She called me over,” Cruz said. “Gave me a hug and said, ‘God bless you; you’re going home.’”

A month later Cruz walked out of Stateville a free man. Cruz also served a 15-year-sentence concurrently for an unrelated shooting case.

Foxx’s discussion of the case with Cruz was a violation of Illinois Supreme Court rules covering communications with another attorney’s client, former assistant prosecutors said about the meeting.

Supreme Court Rule 4.2 states:

“In representing a client, a lawyer shall not communicate about the subject of the representation with a person the lawyer knows to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the consent of the other lawyer or is authorized to do so by law or a court order.”

Cruz’s journey to freedom was initiated by Gregory Swygert, a professor of law at Northwestern University. In 2018 Swygert filed Cruz’s post-conviction petition; he was still representing Cruz upon his release from prison.

Swygert did not respond to Chicago City Wire's request for comment about whether he had given Foxx permission to discuss the post-conviction petition with Cruz.

The State’s Attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In his blog “Crooked City,” Martin Preib, former spokesman for the police union Chicago FOP, called out the Chicago media for not looking further into “ an astonishing coincidence” as one Chicago Tribune reporter characterized the chance meeting between Foxx and Cruz.

“That’s quite a euphemism for something that may very well be an egregious violation of attorney conduct act by the county’s top prosecutor, especially if that attorney is the top prosecutor promising a murder offender that he will soon be out of prison,” Preib wrote.

“Why wasn’t Foxx grilled about the potential violation of this rule?” Preib added. “Why is Foxx running around a state prison telling an offender convicted of murder he will soon be out?”

Foxx has exonerated over 250 in the seven and a half years she’s held office.

Last April, the two-term State's Attorney announced that she would not seek re-election. This past April, Eileen O’Neill Burke defeated Clayton Harris III, a Foxx endorsed candidate, in the Democratic primary. Burke faces Republican opponent Bob Fioretti and Libertarian Andrew Charles Kopinski in the November General Election.