Chicago City Wire

Lawyers for Jose Cruz, convicted of a 1993 gang murder but freed by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, are asking a judge to reject a motion by a defendant in Cruz’s wrongful conviction lawsuit to dismiss Cruz’s charges against him.

The defendant is Edward Maloney, an Assistant State’s Attorney at the time of Cruz’s arrest for the murder of 16-year-old Antwane Douglas, a member of a rival gang. Maloney is now a Cook County judge.

The Cruz motion notes that a U.S. District Court Judge George Alexakis failed to dismiss all charges against Maloney in a prior motion he filed, charges including “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” The latest attempt by Maloney to get the charges dropped was filed on March 3, and is in response to an amended complaint filed by Cruz.

The wrongful conviction case, as the criminal trial in 1996 when Cruz convicted of murdering Douglas, centers around the testimony of Vernon Meadors, an eyewitness to the murder at North and Kedzie in the early morning hours of October 6. Meadors, married and father of four, was waiting for a bus to take him to work as a head janitor when he testified that he saw Cruz and three others exit a car and shoot Douglas after identifying him as a member of a rival gang. Meadors, who dropped to the ground when the shooting began, was shot in the arm.

“Plaintiff [Cruz] was identified by Vernon Meadors in three separate investigatory identification procedures and identified Plaintiff under oath in open court as the shooter,” the Maloney motion states. “Meadors is deceased [died in 2020] and never recanted his testimony.”

“Plaintiff’s Complaint deliberately misconstrues Meadors testimony regarding his opportunity to view the shooters,” the motion continues.

“Meador’s own sworn trial testimony directly refutes Plaintiff’s Complaint that Meadors did not have the opportunity to view the shooters. As such, Plaintiff’s allegations regarding victim Meador not having an adequate chance to view the shooter and testifying as such are deliberately misleading and not entitled to the presumption of truth when evaluating this motion.”

Cruz was sentenced to 90 years but was released in 2022 by Foxx, after she visited him in Stateville Correction Center and told him he was getting out.

In the Cruz case, Foxx may have violated a Supreme Court rule covering communications with another attorney’s client when she discussed the case with Cruz at Stateville.

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 was one of more than 250 exonerated in Foxx's eight years in office, most on claims of police and prosecutorial misconduct.