New Evidence and Legal Breakthrough

This is the Guardian. By August 2023. When Judge Lynn denied Alex a new trial? Jennifer and Eric had been obsessively working on his case for more than three years. But it hadn't been enough. Order to be successful in this job. You have to have a tenacity. and a will to keep fighting and not give up. And for the first time I really felt myself. Wanting to give up. being like, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this to myself? Alex was in prison for life. And as they looked around their own lives, they discovered they'd become captives to the case too. I mean it really Termites. Dug in at every level. Well, I started having uh thyroid issues. Uh, I think I was in fight or flight all the time. So I started having books about that and um I have jaw tension now that I used to not have. Real bad TM J. Gained thirty five pounds, I think. So I was about two hundred, two hundred and ten pounds by the end of this. So I got depressed. It affected my relationship. My girlfriend. I was working all the time. Even if we were having dinner. I would be on my computer or I would be taking phone calls. I've found that I lost my joy for doing things that brought me joy before. Working Alex's case was breaking them. Physically? Emotionally. And financially. And I think last year on my taxes I made twenty five thousand dollars. Jennifer told me that working on the case pushed her back into therapy. Where she found herself questioning everything she believed in as a lawyer. What I realized is it was impacting me so much psychologically because it was a total and utter complete failure on every level of the justice system. Felt like things couldn't get any darker. And then What The Guardian. This is off duty. I'm Melissa Segura. Episode six the sentence. By the spring of twenty twenty four. Alex's son Damian is 14 years old. He lives with his mom, Amanda. Alex's girlfriend. And she does her best to keep him safe and out of trouble. Both she and Alice are adamant that Damien have a different kind of upbringing than Alex did. That he steer clear of gangs, get a good education. Amanda sends him to Catholic school. She buys them gym equipment for their home. So he could keep himself busy inside the house and not be out on the streets. Damien goes to visit his cousins. Her brother's kids. and Widing, Indiana. Just twenty miles outside Chicago. as Damien and his cousins walk to a neighborhood park. Pulls up. Then It's fly. Someone calls 911. The tape I'm about to play for you is excruciating. My God. Amanda is at work. When she gets a phone call. I remember when I was told like You're you my mom was like, you gotta go, you're you're so much shot. I'm like, what do you- I was so dumbfounded, I was like, my son was shot. Like, what what do you mean he was shot? I I couldn't make any sense to it. She rushes to the hospital. couldn't get answers from anybody, like the hospital. No one would tell me nothing until I get there. And I'm like, where did he get shot? Like please say it's like his hand, his foot somewhere. I could be like, you're never leaving my side again. When she arrives at the hospital Brought into a room to talk to the doctor. He tells her he'd done all he could. Damien is dead. I was g at that moment I honestly wanted to fight the doctor. Tell me he did all he could. And uh I was a it was more like I was more in a point of how did this even happen? Like who The best anyone could guess was that Damien wasn't the target. But no explanation would ever make sense to Amanda. Not now. and not as she stands in the hospital. struggling to take in the reality that Damien has been killed. Just happened to our son. And then to know? And the way That it happened and it's like so unbelievable 'cause never there couldn't be a million years that someone can make me believe my son was shot. My son did not be around nothing like that. He was such a good kid. And then comes the realization. She has to tell Alex. And I'm like, my God, in my head I just kept playing over, like how am I even gonna tell him? How is she gonna hold it together enough to deliver this unbearable news? But also, literally, how is she gonna reach him? Prisoners can't receive incoming calls. They can only call out. Amanda tries calling the prison, saying it was an emergency, and could they convey a message? But they don't. So she just has to wait for Alex to call her. What she does. The next day. Normal call. Phone answers like good morning. I just noticed. Uh mana was uh sounding devastated. I asked what was wrong. And I just remember telling them like Yeah. When I tell you you gotta promise to be to be good. To be cool. And he just went off. Like he was like fuck do you mean? Be good. Like he's like a man he just kept saying like Amanda tell me what the hell's wrong. Like what is wrong, you know? And My only words that came out of my mouth was like Our son left us? Or something? I said our son. The sun's gone, our son left us. She screamed, he's like, no! and dropped the phone and all was hearing in the background was like him falling to the ground screaming like, nah, nah, my son. And I didn't know what was going on because like I didn't get to explain anything. Felt like uh I was gonna go in a panic attack, I know. But it's weird because when When she told me that, there was like a fight breaking out in jail, so to it all it was all the noise, I couldn't hear nothing. I was just like so Tunnel vision from uh what she told me and uh just kept saying, I am God, not him. Making matters worse. Prison was put on lockdown. All the men had to be in their cells. No phone calls. No contact with anyone. Alex has to sit in his cell. with only a few scraps of information. Did he hear that right? Damien had left them? And where happened. So you know, I was just pacing back and forth. President Jon You don't want to look. week or have your personal business out, but it was hard for me to contain it. Obviously. It overwhelms you. He spends the next couple days going over and over the call. Trying to remember exactly what Amanda said. When the lockdown ends. He calls her as soon as he's allowed. You think when I thought I heard you tell me our son left us. I thought maybe I heard something wrong, like like if I would just tweak too quick and I just thought thought wrong. And uh so I kept paining my hair like no that's not what she said. That's not what she said. Keep myself sane in a cell or whatever. Amanda goes through it again. Tells him all the details. Lens as Alex takes it all in. Alex makes a request to attend his son's funeral. But it's denied. funeral uh like all that had to do without him. he should have been able to go go see him. Like minus any of us be in there, like he should have been able to do that. Prison officials allow Alex to watch a live stream of Damien's funeral. But the signal keeps out. How. Getting frustrated, I even um Last minute, uh it it worked like literally after last minute, they had to hold up the funeral for a a little while for me. I was a little grateful to be able to see it on her. But you're the But I just feel like it's another thing that's taken. No, not only my freedom has been taken from me. Every phase of this experience. Is something being taken from you. Alex and Amanda can't stop imagining an alternate universe. When were Judge Lynn had granted a motion for a new trial? Or vacated his conviction. and finally released from prison. In that universe. They leave Chicago for Florida. And Damien is still alive. If he would have allowed us to come home, we wouldn't have been here. We wouldn't have been Nowhere near Chicago. Let alone Indiana. Never, never, never, and then Alex would have been So different. After the news of Damien's death, Jennifer and Eric throw themselves back into Alex's case at full throttle. You have to be a fucking idiot to do this job and win, right? Like you've got to have some blind faith, um, that Requires. some sort of fortitude that the average bearer doesn't have of not quitting. You have to have something within you that does not quit. in this work to be successful. Their next move is to take Alex's case to an appeals court. Jennifer is a mix of confident and apprehensive. Or maybe a bit self delusional when it comes to Alex's case. We're gonna win. going to get out of jail. Period. His his son was murdered while he was in jail, you know? That's the worst it's the worst. It is the very, very worst. I guess he could be murdered there, right? And we wouldn't have a chance. They were searching for every chance they could find. But it's important to know. Appeals are actually really narrow. You know, somebody would think, Oh, if I learn new evidence I can present that at the appeal and they'll let me go. You that's not the case. Appeals are almost always limited to evidence presented at trial. So if there's new evidence. Can't hear it Which doesn't matter really. Because they don't have any new evidence. Out of the blue. They get a call that changes. After the first prosecutors, Nancy ADUC and Andy Varga were removed from Alex's case. A new prosecutor named Kevin De Boney was assigned to it. in October 2023. He's packing up some boxes of evidence to ship to storage. When he finds a computer disc that he's not sure had been shared with the defense. De Boney figures it's his duty to pass it along. He's like, uh, Jennifer. So we found this disc. I don't think there's anything on it. It's not a big deal. But you know, I just wanted to let you know that we found it. Um, so we're gonna be sharing it with you and Um just letting you know, okay. Jennifer and Eric get the disc and pop it into the computer. We hadn't looked at it long and Eric is like, oh my God, oh my God, you know. And I don't know if I called prosecutor back or I texted him and I was like, There's nothing on this? Are you effing kidding me? Kidding me? It's a bombshell. One thing the disc contains is the metadata from Alex's text messages on the night of Clifton Lewis's murder. Remember He said he was in a fight with his girlfriend that night. Arguing back and forth over text. Obviously Alex's defense attorney argued Who's texting their girlfriend right when they're about to go and do an armed robbery? So the prosecutor countered that argument with w Oh, he could have just sent an emoji. Now, with this disk, the metadata could show who was right. Eric found an expert who actually could say how many character the text message was. And it was a very long text message. The metadata, she says. up what Alex had been telling police since the first time they questioned him. Other files caught their attention too. Remember that twenty twelph map Jennifer got from the FBI? The one the prosecution hadn't shared? The map was there. On the desk. This was all great for their case. Except. Been here before. Finding a piece of evidence that they think should be a slam dunk. the PlayStation. And yet? Alex is still sitting in prison. But here was the kicker. Prosecution could claim. Hey. We never saw this evidence. There were so many moving parts to this case. So many files. Disc just got lost in the shuffle. We didn't even realize we had it. Except. packet of information Kevin De Boney turned over? There was a photo of a sticky note attached to the disc. with Andy's handwriting on it. Mentioning rebuttal? The fact his handwriting was on it meant he couldn't argue I never got that disc. Clearly he got the disc and the fact that the it said rebuttal meant that he couldn't say, oh, I got it in 2012, 2013, or something like that, and I forgot I had it. He was prepared to use it at trial. And there's at one point during the prior proceedings, Nancy Adoucy makes a joke about how Andy loves sticky notes. doesn't any more. So Just to be clear. We don't know exactly when the sticky note was written. But we know that he had the disc by the time of Alex's trial in two thousand nineteen. I told you last episode. Prosecutors have to turn over evidence that could be helpful to the defense. case can be thrown out if that rule is broken. The sticky note showed that Varga knew about the cell phone map. and it was never turned over. Over the four years they'd worked on the case, Jennifer and Eric had found so much evidence casting doubt on Alex's guilt. They uncovered that FBI map. suggesting that the suspects' phones weren't near the scene of the crime. They'd unearth phone records. showing they hadn't communicated. They'd revealed the edited police report, altered in a way that downplayed the injury to Alex's hand. The confessions from Tyrone and Edgardo had been tossed. And none of that had been enough. Jennifer and Eric couldn't introduce new evidence for an appeal. This was different. This was evidence that the prosecution had violated the rules in the original trial. This tiny sticky note. This three by three square of paper. opened a new pathway to bring Alex home. I see it going forward, um hope it's only positive outcomes. I think we have enough to win. It's just a matter of time. The Guardian made repeated attempts to reach Nancy ADUC and Andy Varga and their lawyers. We did not hear back. Neither a Deucey, nor Varga. Have been formally accused of wrongdoing in connection with the prosecution of this case. In court papers, they deny any wrongdoing. In court filings, the Cook Count State's Attorney's Office argued that there is no showing of bad faith by a Dusi or Varga and has denied misconduct claims. It declined to answer questions posed by the Guardian, citing pending litigation. Judge James Lynn did not respond to our requests for comment. This is the Guardian.