An unlikely legal team is filing a petition in Peoria Thurs. that seeks to reopen the 1970 murder case of a Peoria County Sheriff’s Sergeant. The petition argues murder convict Cleve Heidelberg, who’s serving a life sentence, is innocent.
But one retired Peoria County Sheriff's lieutenant stands by his conviction the right person is behind bars.
Emanuel Manias says it’s been more than 40 years since the murder, but he still thinks about it often. Sergeant Raymond Espinoza, was his partner, an expert shooter, and his best friend.
“His family I knew, he knew mine, I had been to his house, he had been to mine," Manias said. "We were just like family.”
Manias wipes a tear from his cheek and says, to this day, he carries the weight of guilt. He believes if he were there on the night of May 26, 1970, Espinoza would still be alive.
“The reason being, the informant was sitting in the passenger seat," Manias said. "And if I would have been in that seat I would have seen him [the suspect], and had my weapon out, and had a chance to shoot him before he shot Espinoza."
It was Manias’ night off. Even though he wasn’t there the night of the shooting, Manias played a central role in the investigation that convicted Cleve Heidelberg of the murder.
“My investigation in talking to all the police officers that were involved in the case and other witnesses, I have no doubt the right man’s in jail,” Manias said.
One of the witnesses used in the case, Jerry Lucas, was a paid police informant. Lucas was reportedly in the passenger seat of Espinoza’s police car when officers were dispatched to a robbery in progress at the former Bellevue Drive-In.
“He sees a guy come out of the bushes with a gun and he ducks, and then the shots are fired into the car that actually kill Sergeant Espinoza, then the shooter got in a car and fled,” Andy Hale, an attorney from Chicago who started investigating the case for a documentary.
Hale says witness testimonies used throughout the initial investigation were flawed. But he says there’s one particular detail about Lucas that’s questionable.
“He got paid money that night. He was basically asked, will you testify that Cleve Heidelberg was the shooter? And Lucas said yes, they paid him $40, and apparently that was the first night they had paid him money,” Hale said.
Records indicate the Peoria County Sheriff’s office paid Lucas several times during Heidelberg’s investigation, trial and sentencing.
The concerns about witness testimony don’t end there. Another key witness, Mayme Manuel was working that night and was held up at gunpoint during the robbery.
“For approximately 15 to 20 minutes with someone pointing a gun at them, now you don’t think they’d be able to recognize the man a short time later, the next day?,” Manias said.
But that witness, Mayme Manuel, testified in court that in fact, she was unable to identify the gunman. Hale says during a preliminary hearing a week after the murder, Manuel couldn’t identify Heidelberg.
“She was allowed to actually come off the witness stand to walk down to the defense table, stand in front of Cleve, look him in the eye," Hale said. "She couldn't even pick him out when he was the only guy right in front of her.”
Still, the retired Sheriff’s Lieutenant says his witnesses’ testimonies are iron-tight because ultimately, members of the jury were convinced that Heidelberg was guilty.
“Unfortunately, we don’t always inform jurors as to the issues in the accuracy related to eye witness testimony, so jurors tend to think eyewitness testimony is accurate.”
That’s Christopher Williams, he heads the Department of Criminal Justice Studies at Bradley University.
Williams says in the decades since the murder, research has reshaped the understanding and use of witnesses in criminal cases.
“Eyewitness testimony is thought of as one of the most persuasive kinds of testimony, but simultaneously, one of, if not the least reliable form of evidence.”
Even if a witness is “extremely confident,” Williams says, research shows they’re just slightly more accurate than those who are less confident.
“But even those who are extremely confident can sometimes be very wrong.”
Williams says that doesn’t mean eyewitnesses can’t be accurate, but he says they need to be used cautiously. Or even better, in addition to other variables, like physical evidence.
And at least one instance of physical evidence from the Heidleberg case wasn’t factored in.
That’s Marcella Teplitz, the investigator working with Andy Hale, says a pair of horn-rimmed glasses found in the crashed vehicle are included in the archived case file.
“If they are prescription, that would narrow down who these glasses might belong to,” Teplitz said.
Heidelberg purportedly wore glasses. And so did another person, James Clark, who confessed to the murder in an affidavit a few months after the incident.
“He said in his rush to exit the getaway car, after he had crashed it, the glasses fell from his pocket onto the floorboard of the car, and he fled,” Teplitz said.
The glasses in the evidence file weren’t used in the court proceedings. Neither was a latent fingerprint report conducted by the FBI. The results never surfaced in the courtroom, but the FBI’s investigation was brought up, in an affidavit last month. This one comes from James Clark’s younger brother, Matthew.
The affidavit says in 1970, James was arrested in Rock Island Illinois. The affidavit says James Clark told his younger brother the FBI came to talk to him in Rock Island and said something about finding fingerprints on evidence related to the shooting of the police officer in Peoria.
James Clark died in 2015, but he confessed to the murder in an affidavit, while Heidelberg was being sentenced. Matthew Clark says his brother is the one who should’ve been sent to prison.
Matthew Clark’s affidavit, from Mar. 25, 2016, is one of three included in a joint petition by Andy Hale and Peoria Attorney Don Jackson who is also the president of the Peoria NAACP chapter. They’re requesting a special prosecutor and seeking to reopen Cleve Heidelberg’s case.
The decision rests on 10th Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Steve Kouri. Judge Kouri won’t speak to this case in particular, but says from his time on the bench, he believes jury's decisions are usually reliable.
“But there is this little sliver between beyond a reasonable doubt, and beyond any doubt. There’s little sliver on that continuum. And some of these cases fall in that sliver.”
Some still believe it would be an “injustice” to reopen the case, that includes Sergeant Espinoza’s former partner and retired Peoria County Lieutenant Emanuel Manias.