State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, with little over a year left as Cook County’s top prosecutor, is revamping the office that handles wrongful conviction cases, one of the signature issues of her often embattled administration.
Since Foxx won election as a reform candidate in 2016, her office has overturned more than 200 cases based on allegations of misconduct or new evidence that cast doubt on convictions.
On Wednesday, her office announced a “rebranding” of the Conviction Integrity Unit, which she launched soon after taking office. It will now be called the Conviction Review Unit and will be headed by Michelle Mbekeani, a senior policy adviser to Foxx.
Foxx said in a statement that the new unit would “operate under the principle of participatory justice” by engaging with community members and criminal justice advocates.
“It represents a shift in our approach towards rectifying the wrongs of the past, ensuring fairness in our justice system, and incorporating community voices in our decisions,” Foxx said in the statement. “This move further symbolizes our promise to the people we serve that we will continue to review, rectify, and restore justice, especially in cases marred by historical injustices and misconduct.
“The Conviction Review Unit stands as a beacon of hope and a testament to our dedication to turning the tide against systemic inequities and rebuilding trust in our legal system,” she added.
Mbekeani has never worked as a line prosecutor handling criminal cases in the courtroom. She joined the state’s attorney’s office as a senior legal and policy adviser in 2018 after a stint as a staff attorney at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.
Her predecessor as head of the unit, Nancy Adduci, will remain as one of two deputy supervisors working under Mbekeani.
In recent months, Adduci has come under fire from attorneys representing three men charged in the 2011 killing of Chicago Police Officer Clifton Lewis. Adduci had been assigned to the prosecution team in Lewis’ murder from the start, but was pulled off the case early this year, after lawyers for Tyrone Clay, Alexander Villa and Edgardo Colon claimed to have discovered a trove of evidence that was not turned over to the men’s trial attorneys.
Charges against Clay and Colon were dropped, and Villa has appealed the guilty verdict in his 2018 trial.
Foxx increased staffing for the Conviction Integrity Unit upon taking office, beefing up a unit that under her predecessors often seemed to have only one or two lawyers evaluating cases.
Advocates for the wrongfully convicted continue to complain about the slow pace of investigations into misconduct allegations, but nearly all agree that Foxx’s administration has been far more willing to investigate cases and move to reverse troubled convictions.
“There is no doubt that, in this county, because of the sheer number of wrongful convictions that we’ve seen, that this has to be a priority for the state’s attorney,” said Josh Tepfer, an attorney who represented dozens of people convicted in cases linked to corrupt Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts.
Foxx’s office has thrown out convictions in more than 200 cases that were based on arrests made by Watts and his unit, a move that Tepfer said was unprecedented in Cook County.
“I would hope that they would continue to become more proactive in the office, because there is still a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said.
