CHICAGO — A veteran Cook County prosecutor is suing Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and the county itself, alleging that Foxx wrongly removed her as head of the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) and later fired her based on her race and age.
Nancy Adduci, who is White, claims she was wrongly replaced as head of the office’s CIU by a young attorney with little experience and a “blatantly obvious conflict of interest” who is Black: Michelle Mbekeani.
Mbekeani’s appointment raised eyebrows because she appeared to operate an outside organization that offered to, for a fee, connect inmates with attorneys interested in handling their innocence claims.
In late December 2023, two months after being removed as head of the CIU, Adduci was ordered to come into the office while on vacation to be fired, according to the lawsuit. She was 53 years old and 22 months short of retirement eligibility.
Decades of experience
Adduci joined the office in 1996, rose to supervisory positions in its criminal division, and handed hundreds of cases, including capital cases, before Illinois eliminated the death penalty, the lawsuit states. She became supervisor of the CIU, which investigates wrongful conviction claims, in 2014, under Foxx’s predecessor. According to the lawsuit, Foxx promoted Adduci to director of the unit in 2019.
Adduci “personally conducted scores of investigations resulting in post-conviction relief in over 200 criminal cases,” the lawsuit states. In 2021, she received a fellowship with the American College of Trial Lawyers, an honor earned by only 1% of attorneys, the lawsuit stated.
Demoted
But, in October 2023, she was called into a meeting with Foxx’s two top assistants. They told her she would be removed as head of the CIU because, the lawsuit claims, Foxx “wanted someone in the position who was ‘more representative of the community.'”
During the meeting, Foxx’s top assistant allegedly told her that the decision “had nothing to do with” her job performance.
“Ms. Adduci was shocked that she was not sufficiently ‘representative of the community,’ after serving almost three decades in the [Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office], living in Cook County, getting married in Cook County, and sending her kids to public school in Cook County,” the lawsuit states.
Around Thanksgiving last year, Foxx’s top assistant revealed to Adduci that her replacement at CIU would be “a much younger black [assistant state’s attorney] who had been serving as Foxx’s policy advisor on matters of criminal justice reform and had no practical criminal experience,” said the lawsuit.
Despite demoting her and cutting her pay, Foxx’s top assistant asked Adduci to keep performing the same duties, effectively acting as the CIU’s director, she alleges. Adduci allegedly asked the office’s human resources division about her rights and for help filing a discrimination complaint.
Fired
Adduci was on vacation on December 27, 2023, when she was “summarily ordered” to appear at the state’s attorney executive offices in the Loop the next day, according to the suit. Adduci allegedly reminded the office that she was on vacation and, in addition, was scheduled to attend her friend’s funeral the next day.
“Ms. Adduci was told that her appearance was needed in person as soon as the funeral had concluded,” the lawsuit states.
On December 29, she went to the executive offices and was fired by Foxx’s chief of staff, who, via video conference, “read a prepared script from the comfort of her own home,” the lawsuit states. Adduci claims she didn’t receive a reason for her dismissal.
The lawsuit accuses Foxx of discriminating against Adduci because of her age and race and retaliating against her for opposing those actions.
A separate lawsuit
Federal court records show that Adduci, the state’s attorney’s office, and others were named in a wrongful conviction lawsuit filed on December 29, 2023, the same day Adduci states she was fired.
In that lawsuit, Carl Reed, who spent 19 years in prison before his conviction was vacated in May 2023, seeks compensation from the city of Chicago, Chicago police officers, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and Adduci.
In a lengthy filing, Reed’s attorney claims Adduci, relying on information provided by Chicago cops, wrote “a purported ‘confession’ that… directly contradicted the physical evidence at the scene.” It also states that Reed never learned to read and couldn’t have read the confession.
Adduci’s lawsuit indicates that she would have been the director of the CIU when the state’s attorney’s office agreed to vacate Reed’s conviction.
Whether Reed’s lawsuit had anything to do with Adduci’s dismissal is unknown.
A spokesperson for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said on Tuesday that they could not comment on pending litigation or personnel matters.
Mbekiani resigned from the state’s attorney’s office in June. Earlier in the year, Cook County Judge Michael McHale barred her from ever practicing in his courtroom after he concluded that she lied to him about whether she operated a business designed to link convicts to attorneys for a fee.
The Cook County Record was the first to report on Adduci’s lawsuit.
