A Chicago police officer and the convicted felon he is alleged to have coerced and bribed into giving false testimony are the heart of Armando Serrano's bid for freedom, according to a Northwestern University Law School attorney and a journalism professor trying to win him a new trial.

That allegation has been obscured by the recent publicity surrounding the Northwestern University journalism students who have worked on Serrano's case. Serrano, 38, has spent nearly two decades in prison for murder.

Last month, Cook County prosecutors asked a judge to allow them to subpoena records compiled by students with the Medill Innocence Project, arguing that they are entitled to a full accounting of the work that led to the recantation of Francisco Vicente, the state's key witness at Serrano's 1994 trial.

They contend that what few documents they have received raise questions about whether project director David Protess' students or a private detective who works with them promised benefits to Vicente in exchange for recanting.

Protess said he believes the request for subpoenas is designed to divert attention from Vicente and the story he tells about former Chicago police Officer Reynaldo Guevara.

"He would do whatever was necessary to take people he believed were criminals off the street," Protess said. "It's clear that there was a pattern and practice by Area 5 police officers to recruit snitches to falsely testify against innocent men, and Ray Guevara was at the heart of it."

Serrano and two other men — Jose Montanez and Jorge Pacheco — were convicted in separate bench trials before Circuit Judge Michael Bolan of killing Rodrigo Vargas in 1993 as he left his Humboldt Park apartment for work.

Montanez is also seeking a new trial, largely based on the same evidence gathered by the Medill students, while Pacheco was acquitted after Bolan reversed his decision in that case.

In a trial with no eyewitnesses or confession from Serrano, the state relied heavily on the testimony of Vicente, who was himself facing lengthy prison sentences if convicted in a string of armed robberies.

Vicente testified that he met with Serrano and the others after the slaying and they admitted they shot the man during a robbery.

In return, he received special treatment from prosecutors, and was sentenced to just 9 years in prison.

But in May 2004, following a series of interviews with students from the Medill Innocence Project, Vicente signed an affidavit stating he agreed to falsely testify that Serrano and the others confessed to him only after Guevara fed him the story while hitting and poking him in the head.

"My false testimony was given as a result of threats, intimidation and physical abuse by Det. Reynaldo Guevara," Vicente said in the affidavit, which was filed as an exhibit in Serrano's petition for a new trial.

Vicente's affidavit is accompanied by dozens of alleged incidents in which Guevara intimidated or coerced suspects and witnesses in order to build his cases.

Serrano's petition alleges that between 1983 and 1998, Guevara beat suspects into confessions, falsely translated statements of Spanish-speaking suspects during interviews with prosecutors, beat and threatened witnesses with criminal charges if they did not say what he wanted them to say and improperly fed information to victims and witnesses in order to get them to identify suspects he was investigating.

"When you have dozens of other people describing the kind of criminal conduct Guevara was engaged in, it lends support and credibility to the witness in our case," said Serrano's attorney, Jeffrey Urdangen, of the law school's Center on Wrongful Convictions.

He said testimony about Guevara could "open the floodgates of exposing wrongful convictions and ultimately lead to civil litigation for monetary damages. This is a nightmare situation for the state's attorney's office."

Last year a federal jury awarded $21 million to Juan Johnson — the largest judgment ever against the city of Chicago — after finding Guevara intimidated and threatened witnesses in order to get them to testify against Johnson, who spent more than 11 years in prison until he was acquitted in a 2004 retrial.

Guevara, now retired, has never been charged with any crime in the Serrano case or dozens of other incidents of alleged abuse outlined in Serrano's petition. He could not be reached for comment, but his attorney, James Sotos, said many of the allegations in the Serrano case were also contained in Johnson's lawsuit.

Sotos contends that gang leaders who Guevara pursued intimidated and threatened witnesses to get them to recant and blame the officer.

"They tell them to say that Reynaldo Guevara, who was a gang crimes specialist, coerced them into making the original statements," said Sotos, who claims he has sworn statements from people who admitted they lied about Guevara's misdeeds.

A spokeswoman for the state's attorney's office said the judge in Serrano's case has already barred Urdangen from introducing testimony or sworn statements from the 34 of Guevara's accusers, and that Urdangen later declined to call the remaining 10 as witnesses.

"Mr. Urdangen has already stated on the record in court that he will not bring these witnesses to the court for the judge to assess their credibility and provide the state the opportunity for cross examination," said Sally Daly. "These facts underscore the flaws in the ridiculous allegations now being made by Urdangen and Protess."

Urdangen said his decision not to call the witnesses does not mean he now doubts their credibility.

"The law gives the judge discretion to accept statements under oath in place of live testimony in petitions for a new trial, and the judge has chosen to allow that here," he said. "I have no concerns about the veracity of these witnesses."

mwalberg@tribune.com