A group of Chicago Police officers, who are defending against lawsuits brought by two men who claim they were coerced into pleading guilty in the brutal double murder of a Chicago couple in order to take their baby for another woman to claim as her own, have been blocked from obtaining recordings of prison phone calls made by a female inmate, who attorneys for the officers claim may have knowledge about efforts to persuade the woman convicted for her role in the murders to change her testimony at a key deposition.
On Dec. 2, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sunil R. Harjani granted a motion by attorneys for Marilyn Mulero to quash a subpoena issued by the Chicago Police officers, seeking recordings of Mulero’s calls from prison during a 15-month span she was incarcerated with Adriana Mejia.
Mejia has been imprisoned since she pleaded guilty for her role in the 1998 fatal stabbings of Mariano and Jacinta Soto in their home in Chicago.
Lauren Myerscough-Mueller
| University of Chicago School of Law
At the time, two men, Arturo Reyes and Gabriel Solache, also confessed to assisting in the murders, intended to help Mejia kidnap the Sotos’ two children, so she could allegedly fulfill her dream of becoming a mother.
Over the years, Reyes and Solache recanted their confessions, and eventually were exonerated when Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx declined in 2017 to pursue new trials against either man, over the objections of police officers who investigated the case and despite assertions from some of Foxx’s top prosecutors that they believed the evidence showed the two men were guilty of the murders.
Attorneys with the firm of Loevy and Loevy, of Chicago, then filed suit on behalf of Reyes against the city of Chicago and the police officers involved in the case. Solache filed suit through his lawyers at the People’s Law Office, of Chicago. Both lawsuits accused the Chicago Police officers of abusing the two men to coerce their confessions in the murder.
However, from the beginning of the investigation into the Sotos’ murders, Mejia had continued to insist Reyes and Solache had assisted her, including in statements given to Cook County State’s Attorneys and lawyers for the city of Chicago, even after Reyes and Solache had recanted their confessions and had begun to sue over their alleged wrongful imprisonment.
Mejia, however, abruptly altered her story, when she was questioned by the police officers’ lawyers at a deposition in 2019, as the officers sought to defend themselves against the lawsuits.
At that time, she refused to testify about the murders and Reyes’ and Solache’s roles in them, insteading invoking her Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. She also testified that she was “working on being released from prison.”
A judge has since ruled that Mejia cannot invoke her Fifth Amendment rights in discussing the murders, and Reyes’ and Solache’s cases, because she has already been convicted and sentenced in connection with those same murders.
Further, attorneys for the officers said in a brief filed in October that Mejia’s attorneys had confirmed that there were no motions or petitions pending on Mejia’s behalf to secure a release from prison.
The officers’ attorneys said Mejia’s abrupt reversal piqued their interest in determining why she had suddenly refused to testify in accordance with the statements she had made consistently over the decades.
They said they then turned their attention to Mulero, who had herself been convicted of a double homicide, and had been imprisoned with Mejia for 15 months. The relationship between Mejia and Mulero had deepened during that time, to the point Mejia referred to Mulero as her “true sister.”
Both Mejia and Mulero also shared another connection: Chicago Police detective Reynaldo Guevara, who had investigated both of their cases and who stands accused as one of the defendants in the lawsuits brought by Reyes and Solache.
In 2017, when Foxx had refused to retry Reyes and Solache, a Cook County judge had declared Guevara’s allegedly long history of misconduct accusations led him to conclude Guevara’s testimony could never be treated as credible, on any case he investigated, including that of Reyes and Solache.
According to attorneys for the Chicago police officers, Mulero’s attorneys at the Exoneration Project have ties to the Loevy firm, which is representing Reyes and Solache. Both the Exoneration Project and the Loevy firm share the third floor of the building at 311 N. Aberdeen St., Chicago, and eight attorneys from the Loevy firm are among 13 total staff members listed on the Exoneration Project’s website.
The Exoneration Project, a non-profit affiliated with the University of Chicago School of Law, has petitioned courts to reopen a number of Chicago murder convictions.
Lawyers for the Chicago police officers in the Reyes and Solache case then filed a subpoena, demanding the Illinois Department of Corrections turn over recordings of phone calls made by Mulero during her 15-month co-incarceration with Mejia. In a brief filed in support of that subpoena, the attorneys for the officers said they wished to listen to the phone calls – excluding any calls between Mulero and her lawyers – to determine if there was any evidence to back their suspicions that Mulero had been used in any way to persuade Mejia to change her testimony, which the police officers and city intended to use to bolster their defense against Reyes’ and Solaches’ lawsuits.
Mulero’s lawyers at the Exoneration Project moved to block that subpoena, saying the police officers were engaging in a “fishing expedition.”
They said Mejia’s sudden change was more likely linked to the appointment of an attorney to represent her at her deposition.
The officers “ignore that critical piece of relevant information and instead suggest to this Court, without any evidence, that Mulero’s counsel, and presumably counsel for one or more Plaintiffs in this case, engaged in a conspiracy to influence Mejia’s testimony in this case by involving Mulero to prevail upon Mejia to exercise her Fifth Amendment rights in order to advance Plaintiffs’ chances of prevailing in this litigation,” Mulero’s attorneys said in a brief filed Oct. 30 in response to the officers’ arguments.
“They imply that this scheme involved offering Mejia some benefit in exchange for altering her testimony.
“… Defendants’ response suggests, again without any supporting evidence, that Mulero’s counsel has engaged in conduct not only that would have implications for the merits of Plaintiffs’ cases, but that likely would result in these attorneys being disbarred or charged with a crime,” Mulero’s lawyers continued.
“It is an extremely serious allegation to make about members of the bar and about Mulero, who is fighting her own case. It is an allegation that the undersigned, as officers of the court, categorically deny, and yet it is an allegation that the Individual Defendants’ apparently feel comfortable making with zero evidence to support it.
“And while, of course, they are perhaps entitled to sling whatever accusations they want to make in these pleadings, that does not entitle them to pointless discovery that invades Mulero’s rights.”
On Dec. 2, Judge Harjani sided with Mulero in the subpoena fight.
The judge said the officers’ lawyers “confusing conspiracy theory” isn’t enough to allow them access to Mulero’s recorded phone calls, even if Mulero, as an inmate, should have known her calls were being recorded by the state.
Harjani said the officers’ lawyers attempt to use connections between Mulero’s lawyers and the Loevy firm to “make mountains out of molehills.”
“… The crux of the problem for Defendants here is that there is no evidence that Mulero talked to others on the phone about Mejia, let alone talked to others on the phone about a plot to pressure Mejia into changing her story about the Soto homicides,” Harjani wrote. “What’s more is that there is no credible evidence at this point that Mejia’s decision to invoke the Fifth Amendment is connected to Mulero in any way at all.”
The judge also noted the police officers’ lawyers will have another chance to question Mejia under oath, when she sits for another deposition at which she is barred by court order from invoking the Fifth Amendment.
“Perhaps Mejia will offer testimony in that deposition indicating that Mulero talked to others on the phone about Mejia in a way relevant to this case,” the judge said. “Until then, Defendants are ‘throwing darts in the dark’…” the judge said.
Mulero is represented by attorneys Lauren Myerscough-Mueller, of The Exoneration Project, and Lauren Kaeseberg, of the Illinois Innocence Project, of Springfield.
The officers are represented by attorneys Josh M. Enquist, James G. Sotos, Caroline P. Golden and Samantha J. Pallini, of the Sotos Law Firm, of Chicago. They are serving as special assistant corporation counsel, through the city of Chicago’s Department of Law.