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Friday, January 3, 2025

Are hoped for reforms under Burke as Cook County State’s Attorney fading?

Law oneill burke eileen justice

Hope may be fading among some former prosecutors and law enforcement that the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office under Eileen O'Neill Burke would return to a strict adherence to the law, and not continue advancing the progressive agenda that Kim Foxx championed for eight years. 

Doubts center on Burke’s commitment to reversing Foxx’s mass exoneration of convicted murderers based on questionable claims of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Burke was sworn-in on Dec. 2.


Former Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) spokesman Martin Preib, who has followed and written about many of Foxx’s more than 250 exonerations, recently wrote in his "Crooked City" column:

“There are now troubling signs Burke will join the wreckage of other Democratic politicians in Chicago and Illinois who paid too much attention to the rantings of a militant media that has lost its credibility outside its own incestuous echo chamber.

“Rumors abound that Burke will not uphold the prosecution of key cases,” Preib wrote, “like the 2011 murder of an off-duty police officer, nor will she stand by many of the prosecutors sacrificed at the altar of Foxx’s revolution at the state’s attorney office. In other words, Burke will stand by as the media pushes a narrative that will make police killers wealthy and her former prosecutors tortured through a lawfare that reverberates throughout the nation.”

Preib added that "reports indicate that several of the tried-and-true prosecutors who once jumped on the Eileen Burke bandwagon have already decided not to work under her, before Burke (was) sworn in."

In October, Foxx exonerated Alexander Villla, convicted in 2019 of the 2011 murder of off-duty police officer Clifton Lewis. The move by Foxx was expected; in 2023, she dropped charges against two others charged with Lewis's murder.

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 motion cited the protections in the Illinois Rights of Crime Victims and Witnesses Act.

The attorneys, Timothy Grace and James McKay, recounted the events of Dec. 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 exoneration went ahead anyway. 

Before the election, the FOP demanded that Burke retry Villa or “else lose any chance of support from the police union.”

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