Chicago City Wire

A man sentenced to life for the 2011 murder of off-duty police officer is about to go free after Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said she would not prosecute the case in a new trial ordered by Cook County Judge Carol Howard on Wednesday. 

The move by Foxx was expected; in 2023, she dropped charges against two others charged with the murder police officer Clifton Lewis. In all three cases, her office cited claims of prosecutorial misconduct.

The allegations aimed at the prosecutors were hyped by a corrupt media that sold the public on the men's innocence, according to former Chicago Police FOP spokesman Martin Preib.

“In what has now become a kind of legal and political machine in the city, allegations of misconduct arose against the detectives and prosecutors, along with claims they had the wrong guys,” Preib wrote in his Substack posting “Crooked City.” “These allegations were embraced and manically driven by the press goons of the Chicago media, all of them clearly coveting the highest journalism prize in Chicago: the freeing of a police killer.”

The soon-to-be-freed Alexander Villa, 37, was convicted in 2019 of the murder of Lewis, who was shot will working security in his off hours at a West Side convenience store. He was earning extra money to pay for his upcoming wedding. The other two freed by Foxx in 2023 were Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay. All three were members of the violent street gang, the Spanish Cobras.

In a preemptive move to block Foxx, lawyers for the FOP filed a motion on behalf of Lewis’s mother, Maxine Hooks, and his sister, Nicole Johnson. The motioned cited the protections in the Illinois Rights of Crime Victims and Witnesses Act.

In the motion, the attorneys, Timothy Grace and James McKay, recounted the events of December 29, 2011 at M&M Quick Foods located at 1201 North Austin Boulevard.

Villa, they said, entered the store with a “known and fellow Spanish Cobra gang member," and announced their intention to commit an armed robbery.

Lewis announced that he was a Chicago Police Officer and ordered them to stop. Lewis then opened fired and Villa and his accomplice returned fire.  

“Officer Lewis was shot a total of four times by Villa and his co-defendant, that being three to the right back and one to his abdomen,” the attorneys said. “Officer Lewis was brought to Stroger Hospital where he passed away due to Villa's actions.”

Citing the protections in the Crime Victims Act, the attorneys said “it is these protected victims’ position that the Cook County State’s Attorney is not honoring the statutory rights that are given and that they are in need of private counsel to protect their interests, to ensure that justice is served, and that Officer Lewis’s murderer is properly and fairly prosecuted.”

The Chicago Tribune reported that after Wednesday’s hearing, members of the FOP demanded that Eileen O’Neill Burke, a Democrat who will almost certainly win the November election for Cook County State’s Attorney, retry Villa or “else lose any chance of support from the police union.”