Chicago City Wire

Former leaders of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) are urging federal prosecutors and Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill-Burke to bring charges against three members of the Spanish Cobras street gang in the 2011 murder of Officer Clifton Lewis.

Lewis, an off-duty officer working as a security guard at a West Side convenience store, was shot during an attempted robbery.

Alexander Villa, Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay were indicted in connection with the murder but had their charges dropped by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

Martin Preib | Substack

Former Chicago FOP President Mark Donahue and former Second Vice President Martin Preib contacted National FOP President Patrick Yoes to request federal involvement and urged O’Neill-Burke to refile capital murder charges.

“A long investigation by detectives and prosecutors followed [the December 29 murder], with the three gang members indicted. Two were convicted and one was awaiting trial before a familiar travesty took shape in Chicago,” Donahue and Preib wrote in a July 10 letter to Yoes obtained by Chicago City Wire. “Relying on bogus media reports alleging misconduct by police and prosecutors, charges were eventually dropped by Kimberly Foxx, one of the worst George Soros supported prosecutors in the nation. The decision shocked prosecutors and police alike.”

In a July 24 letter to O’Neill-Burke, Preib wrote that federal assistance is being sought because the State’s Attorney has shown no indication of filing new charges.

“To say that FOP members familiar with this case are disappointed with your decision not to recharge these men for the murder despite the fact that there appears to be overwhelming evidence against them would be a gross understatement,” Preib wrote.

The State’s Attorney’s media office did not respond to a request for comment on whether it plans to file new charges.

O’Neill-Burke, sworn in December 2024, could refile charges even though Foxx dropped them, a former Cook County prosecutor told Chicago City Wire.

“There is no statute of limitation for murder,” the former prosecutor, who asked not to be identified, said. “And Foxx didn’t exonerate them. She dropped the charges. She never said that they didn’t do it. She said the process by which they were convicted was flawed.”

Federal charges could be pursued on constitutional grounds.

Since the charges were dropped, all three men have filed civil rights lawsuits in federal court. Villa’s attorneys at Loevy & Loevy, working with Jennifer Blagg, filed his lawsuit in February.

The Villa complaint “alleges police and prosecutors conspired to hide and suppress evidence that would have proven his innocence,” according to a post on Loevy & Loevy’s website.

“Cell phone tower maps provided by the FBI showed that the three men were nowhere near the scene of the crime at the time of the shooting, and nowhere near each other,” the post states. “But, instead of introducing this evidence, Assistant State’s Attorneys named in the complaint hid it from the court and instead fabricated phony maps that implicated Mr. Villa and the other two men.”

However, Cook County Judge James Linn reviewed these claims in 2023 and ruled that Villa received a fair trial, rejecting allegations of misconduct related to the cell phone evidence.

“There is little to no evidence for Foxx to justify her actions [her exoneration of Villa],” Preib wrote in his “Crooked City" column last October on Substack. “A central issue, for example, in the Villa case was the parading of cell phone records by Villa’s attorneys in front of the press and the courts, despite the fact that the records were already rejected as legitimate evidence exonerating Villa and two other Spanish Cobras. Villa’s advocates continue to claim the cell records prove one of the offenders could not have been on scene at the time of the crime. But that so-called evidence was based on using an incorrect time zone, a difference of two hours.”

Additional evidence against Villa includes the testimony of a witness who was in a car with the two shooters and getaway driver before, during and after the murder. The witness testified before a grand jury that Villa was the first shooter and identified the second shooter and getaway driver. 

At trial, the witness’s testimony was impeached with prior grand jury testimony.

On the night of the crime, Villa spoke to a friend in the presence of a witness who later testified that Villa said he had been involved in a robbery and murder and was gloating about killing a “pig.”

A week after the murder, Villa attempted to erase his entire Facebook account after learning police were near his home.

A few weeks later, Villa spoke to a friend in the presence of a witness about disposing of the weapons used in the murder. That witness later testified before a grand jury and at trial about Villa’s involvement.