Antonio McDowell and his attorneys will speak to the press following the hearing.
Antonio McDowell returns to court tomorrow awaiting the State’s decision on whether to dismiss his case or retry him after a judge vacated his decades-old conviction, investigated by disgraced former CPD Detective Reynaldo Guevara.
Since August 2022, the State’s Attorney’s Office under Kim Foxx’s administration no longer disputed Guevara’s misconduct, particularly the well-documented pattern of threatening and abusing eyewitnesses into making identifications, manipulating truthful alibi statements, and fabricating evidence.
Earlier this May, after a day-long evidentiary hearing, presiding Judge Kuriakos-Ciesil issued a decision vacating McDowell’s conviction, emphasizing his account of going from victim-to-suspect, and Guevara’s undeniable pattern of misconduct.
This is the second post-conviction hearing in a case tied to Reynaldo Guevara since State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke took office, both resulting in the Court deciding to vacate the convictions.
If the charge is tossed, McDowell will be the 51st person with a homicide conviction tied to Reynaldo Guevara to be exonerated. He was released in 2020 when the Governor granted his clemency petition, based on an emergency commutation request based on McDowell’s COVID-related health risks. In total, McDowell spent 23 years wrongfully imprisoned and has been living with the weight of a wrongful conviction for nearly 28 years.
Antonio McDowell is represented by Attorneys Lyla Wasz-Piper and Josh Tepfer of The Exoneration Project, as well as Anand Swaminathan of the civil rights law firm Loevy + Loevy.