Kevin Serna

Governor JB Pritzker for @time Tyty @kayaleeberne @gracecoudal 💪🏼

Honored to finally share a project I worked on last fall for @guardian ’s investigative podcast “Off Duty,” with a companion feature in last weekend’s Saturday print edition - an investigation by Melissa Segura into the wrongful convictions of Alex Villa, Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay stemming from the 2011 murder of Chicago police Officer Clifton Lewis. On December 29th, 2011, off-duty Chicago police Officer Clifton Lewis was working a second job as a security guard at an M&M Quick Foods on the west side when two masked men walked in and gunned him down during an armed robbery. Within a week, police had their suspects. Three men from the Spanish Cobras - Tyrone Clay, Edgardo Colon, and Alex Villa - were eventually charged with murder. Tyrone Clay sat in Cook County Jail for nearly 12 years without ever going to trial. Edgardo Colon was convicted and sentenced to 84 years. Alex Villa was convicted and sentenced to life. Tragically, while Villa was behind bars, his 14-year-old son was killed by random gun violence. The prison denied his request to attend the funeral and he watched his son’s burial through a video feed that kept buffering. By 2024, all charges had been dropped. Alex Villa’s defense attorneys, Jennifer Blagg and Eric Bisby, spent years uncovering what went wrong - coerced confessions, fabricated evidence, FBI cell phone data showing the defendants weren’t near the scene that prosecutors never turned over, and a PlayStation that could have proven an alibi but that an FBI forensics lab claimed was broken beyond repair. A local repair shop on the Northwest Side fixed it in under an hour for $35. The person who killed Clifton Lewis has never been caught. Listen to “Off Duty” wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much to @fletchinator for the call as well as your support and to Melissa Segura for your powerful reporting in the city I call home.

T-max fall and spring.

Happy Jackie day today! So grateful for you 💘

For @dwellmagazine latest issue - Ed-Tech entrepreneurs, Sue Khim and Silas Hundt with their kids inside their Hyde Park townhome designed by I.M. Pei and Harry Weese during the late 1950’s. TY @alexzcasto @cosmic_ghost

Jacqueline Trapp at her home in Wisconsin for @businessweek story about the costs of cancer care in America. Jacqueline has delt with a type of cancer called Multiple Myeloma for the past decade and with insurance has paid a cumulative $100k in out of pocket costs (not including premium payments and other costs of tests). Thank you @aeriel78 for the call.

25’ in a nutshell

Larry Aschebrook of G Squared for @incmagazine last month.

Making robotic hands work the way human hands do is apparently very very hard. A couple weeks ago, I got to spend the afternoon at Northwestern’s Center for Robotics and Biosystems documenting researchers and their progress toward solving ‘the hand-problem’ holding back the humanoid revolution. Check out the full story at @wsj Thank you @shelbsknowles for the call! 🦾

More walking, talking.

More notes from around my neighborhood this summer.

A few minutes with Klaus Mäkelä for @chicagomag at the CSO. Mäkelä, 29, will become the youngest music director to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in its history. Ty team! 🙏🏼 🙏🏼 Photo Director: @cosmic_ghost Design Director: David Syrek Lighting asst. @dbeeson Grooming: @cammykelly