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SecondVice President’s Report
Border wall would do what Chicago prosecutor won’t: Protect the public
Do Chicagoans need a wall on the southern bor- der?
With Kim Foxx running the Cook County Prose- cutor’s Office, the answer is a resounding “yes.”
After all, if the wall had existed years ago, the citizens of Chicago would not be saddled with the highly suspicious exoneration of two men for a 1998 double murder — an exoneration earlier this year that points to a near meltdown in the criminal jus- tice system in Chicago in the short time that Foxx has held the reins of the prosecutor’s office.
A wall could well have prevented Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes from crossing the border into the U.S. in the first place. It could well have prevented the two men from settling in Chicago and hatching a plan in 1998 with a third offender, Adriana Mejia, still in prison, to murder a couple and kidnap the couple’s new- born baby and another child.
But that’s exactly what the two men were convicted of doing. They were convicted of going to the home of Jacinta and Mariano Soto and repeatedly stabbing the couple in their own apartment for no real reason, save for the fact that the third offender, Mejia, wanted a baby of her own.
Their alibis quickly unraveled as detectives asked them simple questions that they could not answer. They began fronting each other out, then ultimately confessed and were sent to prison.
But this is Chicago, where no conviction is ever truly complete. Sure enough, Solache and Reyes were released earlier this year on the claim that they were coerced into confessing by a Chicago police detective who had worked the case, Ray Guevara.
New era in Chicago’s criminal justice system
The release of Solache and Reyes signified a new era in Chica- go’s criminal justice system. For many years, a collection of law firms has been building a claim against Guevara, making him the poster child for a police department supposedly intent on fram- ing innocent men for murders. Already law firms have been paid tens of millions in settlements and trials against Guevara.
The reason that their release from prison signified a new era is because the claims against Guevara — that Solache and Reyes are innocent — fell on deaf ears during the tenure of the previous Cook County State’s Attorney, Anita Alvarez.
Alvarez’s administration stood by Guevara’s investigations, in- cluding that of Solache and Reyes.
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
“The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has decided not to reopen any of six murder cases referred to it by City Hall involving allegations that the men convicted were framed by former Chica- go Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara.
“‘Prosecutors reviewed the cases and found no cause to reopen any of them,’ says Fabio Valentini, a top prosecutor for State’s At- torney Anita Alvarez.”
The flimsiest of claims
But everything changed when Foxx, bolstered by support from the likes of far-left activists like George Soros, beat Alvarez in the election. Almost immediately, Foxx began releasing inmates, particularly those tied to Guevara, on the flimsiest of claims. So bizarre has the criminal justice system become under Foxx that even when her staff decided to let Solache and Reyes out, they admitted before the media that they still believed the men were guilty.
10 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JANUARY 2019
From the Chicago Tribune:
“First Assistant State’s Attorney Eric Sussman said prosecutors still strongly believe Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes are guilty of the 1998 fatal stabbing of a couple in their Bucktown neighbor- hood home...”
What?
Adding to the absurdity of Foxx’s decision to release the two men was the fact that a third-party reinvestigation of the cases had also been requested by the City in the hysteria generated by advocates for Solache and Reyes. This reinvestigation was con- ducted by the law firm Sidley Austin LLP. Here’s what they con- cluded:
“In fact, we have concluded that evidence available to us leads us to reject their claims of actual innocence.”
Again, why were they released?
But there is another, equally macabre chapter to the Solache and Reyes story.
Federal court documents indicate that attorneys representing the two men in their quest to go from convicted murderers to mil- lionaire folk heroes hail from the People’s Law Office.
Formed during the violence and conflict of the most tumultu- ous days of the late 1960s, the PLO has an extensive record of rep- resenting groups advocating violent revolution — groups like the Weather Underground, Black Panthers and FALN terrorists, who were accused of setting off more than 140 bombs that killed four people and wounded scores of others.
Foxx kowtows to the PLO
Indeed, signs of Foxx kowtowing to this law firm abound. Consider the fact that prosecutors have twice pled down felo- ny charges against offenders represented by PLO attorney Joey Mogul, cases in which the offenders were accused of violently attacking the police. Those cases were arbitrarily reduced to mis- demeanors without the approval, and perhaps without even the knowledge, of the officers.
Consider, too, the landmark verdict against Mogul in a feder- al lawsuit over the police investigation of a child murder. Mogul represented Nicole Harris, who was released from prison in 2013, even though she had confessed to the 2005 strangulation of her own child in a fit of rage.
The detectives in Harris’ wrongful conviction lawsuit fought hard to take their case to trial. They won. Attorneys for the detec- tives argued not that the detectives were innocent of any wrong- doing, but that Harris was guilty of the murder. The detectives prevailed. Harris got nothing.
Shouldn’t this verdict on its own, let alone the abundant histor- ical evidence of the PLO’s intense anti-police platform, compel Foxx to contend with the PLO, not kowtow to them? On the con- trary, Foxx has not demonstrated any willingness to investigate abundant evidence that many other wrongful conviction claims are false. Only claims against the police seem to stir her admin- istration.
How can she release Solache and Reyes — bolstering the chances of the two men and the PLO to make millions — at the same time her office acknowledges their guilt?
The Solache/Reyes exoneration is a glaring, chilling example of why the wall should be built, not only to protect the public from criminal illegal aliens but also from public servants like Kimberly Foxx.
MARTIN PREIB