People v. Torres

2026 IL App (1st) 240131-U

Fourth Division

Filed April 30, 2026

No. 1-24-0131

NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent

except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).

IN THE

APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS

FIRST DISTRICT

)

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Appeal from the

)

Plaintiff-Appellee, ) Circuit Court of Cook County

)

v. No. 95 CR 1889403

)

EDGAR TORRES, ) The Honorable Nicholas Kantas,

) Judge, presiding.

Defendant-Appellant.

)

JUSTICE OCASIO delivered the judgment of the court.

Presiding Justice Navarro and Justice Quish concurred in the judgment.

ORDER

¶1 Held: Dismissal of defendant’s postconviction actual-innocence claim was reversed, and the

cause remanded for an evidentiary hearing, where defendant presented new affidavits

from two codefendants that, if believed, would exonerate defendant.

¶2 On May 27, 1995, a fight broke out on tier A4 of the Cook County Jail between rival gang

alliances. During the chaos, two inmates were stabbed, one fatally. Six men, all members of the

Folk Nation, were charged with murdering the deceased inmate, a People Nation member named

Vincent Cox. Five of the defendants were acquitted. The sixth, Edgar Torres, was found guilty.

Now, two of those acquitted codefendants have sworn out affidavits that, if believed, exonerate

Torres. The question before us is whether Torres is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his claim

No. 1-24-0131

that those affidavits amount to new evidence of actual innocence that would, as a matter of due

process, require a new trial. We find that he is, so we reverse and remand.

¶3 I. BACKGROUND

¶4 In 1995, Torres and five codefendants—Reginald Guice, Demetrius Green, Marvin Hicks,

Robert Munoz, and Duane Calhoun—were charged with the first-degree murder of Cox.

¶5 A. Trial

¶6 The case proceeded to a bench trial that was held across four days in December 1997 and

June and July 1998.

¶7 The evidence at trial showed that, on May 27, 1995, the defendants and the victim were

inmates housed on tier A4 of the now-demolished Division 1 of the Cook County jail. All six

defendants were members of gangs affiliated with the Folk Nation alliance. Cox and several other

inmates on the tier were members of gangs affiliated with the rival People Nation. Around 7:30

p.m., some kind of disturbance broke out on tier A3, directly below tier A4. The inmates on tier

A4 heard the disturbance, provoking a commotion that quickly devolved into a melee. The

corrections officer watching over the tier heard someone yell, “Folks against the People,” and

inmates started fighting with each other, some of them using shanks. A group of People-affiliated

inmates, who were outnumbered, retreated to cell number 4-5 for safety, including inmate Corey

Bush, who was bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds. The inmates in cell 4-5 yelled for

help. Officers responding to the fight flooded the tier and extracted Bush and the others in cell 4-

5. Once the situation was back under control, officers did a cell-by-cell search and found Cox lying

dead or dying—it is not clear which from the testimony—in a pool of blood in his cell. He had

been stabbed several times.

¶8 Three inmates testified at trial: Angel Pagan, a member of the Folk-affiliated Spanish Cobras,

and Edgar Hill and Deangelo Horton, members of the People-affiliated Vice Lords.

¶9 Pagan testified that he and Torres were cellmates on the day of the fight. That evening, he

said, he was reading in his cell when the disturbance started. When he heard someone scream, he

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looked out into the hallway. He saw Torres and Calhoun chasing Cox into his cell, number 18.

Torres was holding a shank. He also saw Guice and Hicks chasing Bush while hitting and stabbing

him. Pagan heard screaming coming from Cox’s cell. After a couple minutes, Torres and Calhoun

emerged from Cox’s cell covered in blood. Torres ran back to his and Pagan’s cell, where he ripped

up his bloody clothing and flushed it down the toilet, washed the blood off of his hands, and threw

the shank into an air vent.

¶ 10 At trial, Pagan admitted that he had not consistently told the same story about the fight. During

the initial investigation, he claimed not to know anything. Like every other inmate on the tier,

Pagan was issued a citation for fighting with a shank. (The officer who issued the citation admitted

at trial that he had not seen Pagan doing that but his superiors had ordered him to write up everyone

on the tier.) He was sent to administrative segregation based on the citation. But then, ten days

after the fight, Pagan signed a handwritten statement implicating Torres and the others, and he

testified before a grand jury a week later. He was eventually transferred to protective custody in

Division 10. Later that year, however, Pagan sent a letter to Torres’s attorney disavowing his signed

statement and claiming that he had been coerced into giving it. At trial, he testified that he sent the

letter because Torres had also left segregation and had threatened him with harm if he did not

recant. He acknowledged that, when he actually spoke to Torres’s defense team, he had denied

being threatened into recanting.

¶ 11 The State also called Hill and Horton, but both of them either denied seeing or remembering

anything pertinent, so the State introduced typewritten statements that each one had signed as

substantive evidence. According to their statements, when the incident started, Hill and his

cellmate, Eddie Larry, were in their cell, number 4-5, along with Horton and another inmate that

neither statement identified by name. They saw Bush being attacked and stabbed by other inmates.

Bush made it to cell 4-5, whose occupants pulled him to safety before barricading themselves in.

After Bush joined them, Hill and Horton both saw a group of Folks attack Cox. According to Hill,

the assailants included Torres, Guice, Hicks, Munoz, Green, and several others. Torres, Guice,

Hicks, and Munoz had knives and were stabbing Cox; Green was beating him with a broom handle.

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After leaving Cox’s cell, the group—still armed—tried to get into cell 4-5 until correctional

officers arrived. In Horton’s telling, Torres, Guice, Hicks, and Munoz, all of whom were armed

with knives, pushed Cox into his cell, where Hicks started stabbing Cox. After leaving Cox’s cell,

the same four men walked past cell 4-5 with blood on their clothes.

¶ 12 At the close of the State’s case, all six defendants moved for acquittals. Noting that Pagan

had affirmatively identified both Torres and Calhoun as members of the group that killed Cox, the

court denied their motions for directed verdicts. As for the other defendants, the court observed

that the only evidence implicating them in Cox’s murder were the prior unsworn statements of Hill

and Horton and there was no testimony that had been given under oath that any of them were

involved in the killing. It therefore found Guice, Green, Hicks, and Munoz not guilty.

¶ 13 The two remaining defendants proceeded by stipulation. The lone stipulation offered by

Torres was that, when interviewed by the defense on June 8, 1998 (the date he testified), Pagan did

not tell them that Torres had threatened him or his family if he did not give exculpatory testimony

at trial.

¶ 14 After hearing closing arguments, the trial court entered its findings. It began by acquitting

Calhoun. It explained that, while Pagan had testified that Calhoun was one of the men who attacked

Cox, neither Hill’s nor Horton’s statements had identified him as a member of that group, leaving

a reasonable doubt as to Calhoun’s guilt. Torres, by contrast, was named by all three eyewitnesses

as a participant in the killing. For that reason, the court was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt

that Torres was, at minimum, accountable for Cox’s death. It therefore found him guilty.

¶ 15 At sentencing, the court found Torres eligible for the death penalty, but it found that the

uncertainty over whether he actually inflicted a fatal wound was sufficiently mitigating to preclude

capital punishment. Instead, it sentenced him to 60 years’ imprisonment to be served consecutively

to an existing 30-year sentence for home invasion and armed robbery.

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¶ 16 B. Direct Appeal & Habeas

¶ 17 On direct appeal, Torres challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his conviction,

contended that the trial court erred by denying pretrial suppression motions, and argued that his

sentence was excessive. We rejected all three arguments and affirmed. See People v. Torres, 324

Ill. App. 3d 1138 (2001) (table) (unpublished order under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23). He then

sought habeas corpus relief in federal court, but his petition was denied. See United States ex rel.

Torres v. Briley, No. 03 C 0522, 2004 WL 1254133 (N.D. Ill. 2004).

¶ 18 C. 2004 Postconviction Proceedings

¶ 19 After Torres’s habeas petition was denied, he filed a pro se postconviction petition that

included a freestanding claim of actual innocence which he supported with a then-unnotarized

affidavit authored by Angelo Evans. According to the affidavit, Evans was a People-aligned inmate

on tier A4 on the date of the murder. When the fight broke out, he fled to the shower room, where

he encountered Torres, who was getting dressed. He told Torres that he wanted nothing to do with

what was going on. When another inmate arrived with a knife, Torres interposed himself bodily to

protect Evans and told the would-be attacker that Evans had nothing to do with what was

happening, and the knife-wielding inmate left. Torres then escorted Evans to cell 4-5, shielding

him from harm along the way. After Evans was safely inside the cell, Torres stayed in front of the

door and tried to defuse the situation by saying that what happened in tier A3 had nothing to do

with tier A4. Beyond saying that he felt guilty for not being able to help Torres at trial, Evans’s

statement did not explain why he had not come forward sooner. In the pro se petition, Torres

suggested that Evans was afraid of retaliation from his own gang if he helped a member of a rival.

¶ 20 The court appointed counsel, who filed a supplemental petition on Torres’s behalf. Attached

to the supplemental petition was a notarized copy of Evans’s affidavit and an affidavit from Torres

stating that the original, unnotarized affidavit had been received about two months before Torres

filed his pro se petition.

¶ 21 Counsel also supported the actual-innocence claim with a new affidavit from Luis Sosa, a

member of the Spanish Cobras and a longtime associate of Angel Pagan. According to Sosa’s

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affidavit, in the summer of 1997, Pagan told him that he felt bad because he had lied to the grand

jury about what he had seen during the fight and anticipated lying again at Torres’s trial. Pagan

explained that he had been forced to testify falsely against Torres to avoid being charged himself.

Pagan also said that he felt lucky to have avoided a charge because an officer had seem him with

a shank during the fight and written him a ticket for it. Sosa averred that he encountered Torres in

prison in 2005 and, after telling Torres what Pagan had said, agreed to make a sworn statement.

¶ 22 The court dismissed the petition on the State’s motion, finding that Evans’s affidavit was not

newly discovered evidence because Torres would have been aware that Evans was a witness at the

time of trial. The court did not specifically address Sosa’s affidavit.

¶ 23 Torres appealed, and we affirmed. People v. Torres, 384 Ill. App. 3d 1090 (2008) (table)

(unpublished order under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23). 1 We found that Evans’s affidavit was

unnotarized and, therefore, “a nullity, and insufficient to support defendant’s claim of actual

innocence.” Torres, slip order at 7. We also agreed with the circuit court that Sosa’s affidavit was

cumulative to Pagan’s impeachment at trial. Id. at 7-8.

¶ 24 D. 2014 Postconviction Proceedings

¶ 25 In 2014, Torres sought leave to file a successive postconviction petition raising a new actual-

innocence claim based on an affidavit sworn out by acquitted codefendant Reginald Guice.

According to Guice’s affidavit, the inmates in tier A4 became aware that a riot had broken on tier

A3, one floor below. Guice was upset because, on tier A3, Folk-aligned inmates were outnumbered

by People-aligned inmates, who were taking advantage of their numerical superiority. The situation

in tier A4 was reversed, so Guice decided to take revenge on the People-aligned inmates for what

was happening below. He found and chased Angelo Evans into the shower room, meaning to stab

him. Evans hid behind Torres. When Guice told Torres to move, Torres refused. Guice considered

this a betrayal, and he was contemplating stabbing Torres when he heard someone calling his name.

1

Our decision is not in the record, but we take judicial notice of it. See People v. Brown, 2023 IL App

(2d) 220334, ¶ 26 n.2.

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No. 1-24-0131

He returned to the cells, spotted Vincent Cox looking out of his cell door, and attacked him,

stabbing him repeatedly as Cox retreated to the back of his cell. Others joined in and also stabbed

Cox, but Torres was not one of them. When Guice left Cox’s cell, he saw Torres in front of cell

4-5, where the People-aligned inmates had taken refuge. He started toward Torres intending to stab

him for aiding their enemy, but guards began pouring into the tier, so Guice found a place to ditch

his shank. Guice explained that he had not come forward after his own acquittal because he felt

that Torres had gotten what he deserved for his “ultimate betrayal.” He only chose to speak up

because he had realized that two wrongs did not make a right and he wanted to clear his conscience.

¶ 26 The court granted Torres leave to file his petition and appointed counsel, who did not file an

amended petition but did supplement the pro se petition with the affidavit of another acquitted

codefendant, Demetrius Green. Green’s affidavit stated that, when the fight broke out, he found

himself locked in his cell, from which he watched everything that transpired. According to Green,

Torres never went into Cox’s cell and, in fact, tried to stop the melee by protecting members of the

Vice Lords and Black Stones, both People-aligned gangs, from being stabbed. Green did not

specifically say why he had not come forward sooner, but he did aver that he had “recently heard”

that Torres was still in prison for the killing.

¶ 27 The State moved to dismiss. The circuit court granted the motion, finding that the court had

previously adjudicated Evans’s and Sosa’s affidavits and that Torres had not established that

Guice’s and Green’s affidavits were newly discovered, noncumulative, or conclusive.

¶ 28 II. ANALYSIS

¶ 29 A motion to dismiss a postconviction petition tests the legal sufficiency of the petition. People

v. Domagala, 2013 IL 113688, ¶ 35. The question is whether the allegations, if proven at an

evidentiary hearing, would entitle the defendant to relief. Id. In making that determination, the

petition’s well-pleaded allegations and supporting affidavits are taken as true as long as they are

not rebutted by the record. People v. Robinson, 2020 IL 123849, ¶ 45. As this is a question of law,

review is de novo. People v. Moore, 2023 IL App (1st) 220919, ¶ 22.

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¶ 30 Torres’s petition raises only one claim, which is that there is newly discovered evidence

showing that he is actually innocent of the crime he was convicted for. See People v. Washington,

171 Ill. 2d 475, 489 (1996) (holding that such actual-innocence claims are cognizable in

postconviction proceedings as a matter of due process under Illinois law). To succeed on this kind

of a claim, the defendant must show that the evidence in question is (1) new, (2) material,

(3) noncumulative, and (4) conclusive enough that it would probably change the result on retrial.

People v. Coleman, 2013 IL 113307, ¶ 96. The parties agree that Guice’s and Green’s affidavits

are material evidence that is not cumulative of evidence admitted at trial, but they dispute whether

their proposed testimony is truly “new” and whether it would be sufficiently conclusive to probably

result in acquittal.

¶ 31 We start by determining whether Guice’s and Green’s affidavits are newly discovered for the

purpose of an actual-innocence claim. “Newly discovered evidence is evidence that was

unavailable at trial and could not have been discovered sooner through due diligence.” People v.

Harris, 206 Ill. 2d 293, 301 (2002). Generally speaking, when the source of the evidence is a

codefendant, it qualifies as newly discovered because the codefendant had a fifth amendment right

to avoid self-incrimination that no amount of diligence could have forced him to waive. People v.

Edwards, 2012 IL 111711, ¶ 38. Here, both Guice and Green were Torres’s codefendants, so Torres

argues that their affidavits are newly discovered.

¶ 32 The State does not dispute that Guice and Green were not available to testify when trial

started, but it argues that they became available when the trial court entered directed acquittals at

the close of the State’s case. But as Torres points out, their acquittals on the charge of murdering

Cox did not render them immune from liability for either the uncharged stabbing of Bush or their

alleged possession of shanks in the jail. Even after their acquittals, each would have had

“reasonable cause to believe he might subject himself to prosecution” for those offenses by

answering, which would have allowed them to invoke the privilege. People v. Ousley, 235 Ill. 2d

299, 306 (2009). Hence, they remained unavailable to testify despite their acquittals.

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¶ 33 The State also advances the proposition that, even if Guice and Green were not available at

trial, their affidavits are not new evidence because they disclosed facts that were known to Torres

at the time of trial. See People v. Snow, 2012 IL App (4th) 110415, ¶ 21; People v. English, 403 Ill.

App. 3d 121, 133 (2010); People v. Jones, 399 Ill. App. 3d 341, 364 (2010); People v. Collier, 387

Ill. App. 3d 630, 637 (2008). This proposition is not good law. “[O]ur supreme court has found

that an affidavit is still newly discovered, even when the defendant knew of the witness earlier and

knew what facts the witness could testify to, if no amount of due diligence could have forced that

witness to come forward and swear to those facts earlier.” People v. Anderson, 2021 IL App (1st)

200040, ¶ 59 (citing Edwards, 2012 IL 111711, ¶ 38); accord People v. Mendoza, 2024 IL App

(1st) 231588, ¶¶ 46-47, People v. Rosalez, 2021 IL App (2d) 200086, ¶¶ 97-105; People v. Fields,

2020 IL App (1st) 151735, ¶ 48.

¶ 34 We agree with Torres that his codefendants, Guice and Green, were not available to testify at

his trial and no amount of diligence could have forced them to. See Edwards, 2012 IL 111711,

¶ 38. Their unavailability at trial is sufficient to satisfy the requirement for newly discovered

evidence regardless of whether their affidavits could have been obtained and put forward in a

previous postconviction proceeding. People v. Harris, 2024 IL 129753, ¶¶ 60-61. Consequently,

Torres has made a substantial showing that their affidavits are newly discovered. Furthermore,

because Guice’s and Green’s affidavits were not presented in a previous proceeding, Torres’s claim

is not barred by res judicata principles. Id. ¶ 61 (citing People v. Ortiz, 235 Ill. 2d 319, 333-34

(2009)). “A [d]efendant is not precluded from raising multiple claims of actual innocence where

each claim is supported by newly discovered evidence.” Ortiz, 235 Ill. 2d at 333.

¶ 35 Next, we analyze whether Guice and Green’s affidavits are of a sufficiently conclusive

character so as to probably result in an acquittal. Evidence is sufficiently conclusive if, “when

considered along with the trial evidence,” introducing it at a new trial “would probably lead to a

different result.” Coleman, 2013 IL 113307, ¶ 96. The evidence does not need to be “entirely

dispositive” to merit a new trial. Robinson, 2020 IL 123849, ¶ 48. It only needs to place the

evidence that was presented at trial “in a different light” so as to undercut the court’s confidence

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in the verdict at trial. Coleman, 2013 IL 113307, ¶ 97. The question is whether it is more likely

than not that no reasonable juror would find [the defendant] guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” in

light of the new evidence. People v. Sanders, 2016 IL 118123, ¶ 47. Because this case is before us

on appeal from a second-stage dismissal, we assume that the trier of fact would believe Guice’s

and Green’s testimony at a hypothetical retrial. People v. McCoy, 2023 IL App (1st) 220148, ¶ 14

(citing People v. Wilson, 2022 IL App (1st) 192048, ¶ 75).

¶ 36 Taking the affidavits as true, we find that they would place the trial evidence in a different

light and undermine confidence in the guilty verdict. Guice’s affidavit in particular establishes that

he and other unnamed detainees stabbed and killed Cox, not Torres. See id. (finding that, if the

jury believed codefendant’s testimony that defendant was not involved in the charged murder, “it

is hard to believe that the jury would still convict the defendant based solely on the contrary

identifications” of other witnesses). Guice’s and Green’s affidavits also establish that, during the

riot, Torres was actually trying to prevent People-affiliated detainees from being stabbed,

contradicting Angel Pagan’s trial testimony that he saw Torres run into Cox’s cell and emerge

shortly thereafter covered in blood and Hill’s and Horton’s stationhouse statements asserting that

Torres was a member of the group that fatally attacked Cox. At this stage, where we are concerned

with the sufficiency of the petition, it would not be appropriate for us to determine whether Guice’s

and Green’s accounts are more or less credible than those of Pagan, Hill, and Horton. See Rosalez,

2021 IL App (2d) 200086, ¶ 143. Instead, credibility determinations are meant to be made at a

third-stage evidentiary hearing. Id. ¶ 141 (citing People v. Harper, 2013 IL App (1st) 102181,

¶ 44).

¶ 37 III. CONCLUSION

¶ 38 Taken as true, Torres’s successive petition and its supporting materials make a legally

sufficient showing that he is entitled to a new trial as a matter of due process based on the

availability of new evidence of actual innocence. The motion to dismiss should have been denied.

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¶ 39 Accordingly, the judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded for the State to file its

answer and for the court to conduct a hearing on the petition. See 725 ILCS 5/122-5, 122-6 (West

2024).

¶ 40 Reversed and remanded with directions.

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