Standing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building Monday morning fresh from learning that a judge vacated her murder convictions, Madeline Mendoza, who was 16 when she was arrested in connection with a double slaying, said she now plans to go to law school.
Mendoza, 47, is among dozens who have accused disgraced former Chicago police Detective Reynaldo Guevara of fabricating evidence to frame them for crimes they did not commit throughout his career with the Chicago Police Department.
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She appeared in court before Judge Alfredo Maldonado, who overturned her convictions. Cook County prosecutors dropped the charges after indicating they would not oppose the motion. A co-defendant, Marilyn Mulero, had her cases dropped in August.
Mendoza was released from prison about 13 years ago, she said, but the convictions remaining on her record made it difficult to pursue the law career she wants, one she hopes will allow her to help others like her.
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“Now I can go to the best law schools,” Mendoza said.
Mendoza pleaded guilty in 1993 to two counts of first-degree murder and a count of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the killings of Jimmy Cruz and Hector Reyes in Humboldt Park on May 12, 1992, according to court records.
According to Mendoza’s petition, the two men were killed by Jacqueline Montanez, whose sentence in 2016 was reduced from life in prison, a term handed down when she was a juvenile, to 63 years.
Though Mendoza was present during the shooting, her petition says she “did not have prior knowledge of any plan to shoot Cruz or Reyes, she did not give any signal before the shooting of Cruz, and she did not otherwise participate in the shooting.”
The petition alleged Guevara and Ernest Halvorsen, another detective, fabricated evidence to implicate Mendoza as an active participant, including soliciting false information from a jailhouse informant.
Mendoza pleaded guilty in the case because, her petition said, her lawyer told her she’d likely be found guilty at trial and serve life in prison. She was sentenced instead to 35 years.
“There are other Madelines who need justice,” said her attorney, Joel Flaxman. “To have any kind of functioning government, we’ve got to be able to believe what’s happening in court.”
Mendoza said the day is bittersweet. Her father, uncle and grandmother, who were staunch supporters of her innocence, have since died. She had a daughter at the time of her arrest, and missed large parts of her life growing up.
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“I was a child,” Mendoza said. “I left a child behind.”
But now Mendoza is a grandmother of two, rebuilding her life.
mabuckley@chicagotribune.com
