A federal judge has ordered former Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx to answer questions under oath about why she ordered deputies not to oppose efforts by two women to get their murder convictions tossed out, opening the door for them to pursue wrongful conviction prosecution lawsuits against the city.
Attorneys for the city and a former CPD detective at the center of the case are expected to probe a series of high-level meetings allegedly held between Foxx, her aides, and lawyers who simultaneously ran the Exoneration Project while representing clients suing the city over wrongful prosecution claims.
The ruling, issued February 20 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Young B. Kim, came in consolidated civil rights lawsuits filed by Madeline Mendoza and Marilyn Mulero, who are seeking potentially millions of dollars from the city and former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara over their alleged wrongful convictions in the 1992 murders of Hector Reyes and Jimmy Cruz in Humboldt Park.
Double duties
At the heart of the dispute is what lawyers for the city and Guevara describe as a troubling overlap between Foxx’s official prosecutorial decisions and her alleged private dealings with the Exoneration Project, a non-profit organization whose staff lawyers are drawn almost entirely from the firm of Loevy & Loevy, one of the most active and prominent firms suing the city of Chicago over wrongful conviction claims.
The Exoneration Project bills itself as a non-profit legal organization affiliated with the University of Chicago School of Law. But according to court filings and the organization’s website, eight of its attorneys are Loevy & Loevy staff members, including the group’s executive director, Josh Tepfer. Loevy & Loevy has represented plaintiffs in scores of wrongful conviction lawsuits against the city, many of them involving allegations against Guevara.
The Exoneration Project website also states, “we often collaborate with our clinic students, interns, and attorneys from the civil rights law firm Loevy & Loevy.”
Attorneys representing the city and Guevara allege that beginning in 2020 and continuing through at least 2022, Tepfer and other Exoneration Project representatives met privately with Foxx and senior members of her staff on multiple occasions. Those meetings, according to court filings, ultimately led to the creation of a formal internal protocol at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO), dubbed the “Guevara Case Review Protocol,” governing how the office would handle post-conviction claims in cases where Guevara was alleged to have engaged in misconduct.
At one point, the city and Guevara’s attorneys claim, Tepfer sent an email to Foxx, thanking her for agreeing to no longer contest any certificate of innocence petitions in cases involving accusations against Guevara. Foxx subsequently announced her office was seeking to vacate murder convictions in eight cases, including Mulero’s, allegedly on the basis that Guevara had been involved in the investigations.
According to briefs filed in federal court, lawyers for the city and Guevara noted that “until late 2022, the CCSAO stood by the validity of both Mulero’s and Mendoza’s convictions and fought them at every step.” The reversal, they argued, came swiftly and without a clear public explanation.
When Foxx made her public announcement, she attributed the decision to vacate the convictions to an internal investigation conducted by the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit and other staff and made no mention of the Exoneration Project meetings.
Certificates of innocence opened door to lawsuits
With the CCSAO declining to oppose their petitions, both women obtained certificates of innocence from a Cook County court, a legal threshold generally required before a person can sue for wrongful prosecution. Mendoza received her certificate in 2023, Mulero in 2024.
Mulero and Mendoza had both been convicted of first-degree murder in 1993 after pleading guilty to the killings. Prosecutors and police alleged that Mulero, Mendoza, and a 15-year-old girl murdered rival gang members. But Mulero and Mendoza claimed the girl acted alone, which the girl allegedly confirmed, according to court filings.
Mendoza received a 35-year prison sentence and was released in 2009. Mulero was initially sentenced to death; her sentence was commuted by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2020 after she had served 28 years.
Both women filed suit against the city and Guevara in 2023, alleging they were coerced into confessing and into their guilty pleas through illegal interrogation tactics. Guevara has been the subject of scores of misconduct allegations across dozens of cases. To date, lawsuits involving accusations against him have resulted in $159 million in payments from the city of Chicago, with many more cases still pending.
In his February 20 ruling, Judge Kim ordered Foxx to submit to at least four hours of questioning by lawyers for the city and Guevara, with an additional hour reserved for follow-up questions from Mulero’s and Mendoza’s own attorneys. The judge also rejected the CCSAO’s request to bar video recording of the session, though he restricted use of any video footage to the litigation itself, citing concern about the potential for misuse of recordings.
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