Altering evidence? Or preserving pieces of a crime scene? That is the question

A civil court jury in Cook County found it within itself to clear the county sheriff’s police of wrongdoing in the way it handled the body of a 20-year-old woman who was killed five years ago in a car crash in the forest preserves near suburban Oak Forest.


That ruling in Cook County Circuit Court came on Friday, and I’m going to have to respect the judgment because I wasn’t there during the civil trial to hear every bit of evidence for myself.

BUT I HAVE to admit that reading the reports that came from the trial make me wonder about the logic of what was repeatedly called police “protocol” to justify the way the cops handled the scene.

This particular lawsuit wound up getting coverage because the woman killed in the auto accident wound up being stripped partially naked when photographers taking pictures of the scene as possible evidence in future criminal proceedings.

The girl’s mother seems to feel her daughter was violated by such acts, particularly since the fact wound up spurring rumors that the girl was somehow naked and having sex at the time of the car crash.

As it turned out, the driver of the vehicle tried claiming the girl was straddling him at the time – claiming that was what caused him to lose control of the vehicle.

BUT INVESTIGATORS WERE able to show that it was impossible for any such act to have occurred. Meaning the driver, himself, was to blame for losing control of the vehicle. He wound up being found guilty of criminal charges and is now serving a prison sentence. The photographs that were the focus of this lawsuit were supposedly key evidence in gaining his conviction.

Sheriff’s police claimed during the trial that their investigators were merely following the standard procedure for gathering up a crime scene (which is what the accident site near 147^th Street and Oak Park Avenue had become). Since crime scenes are never pretty and often garish, it is only inevitable that the evidence would be less than proper.

I don’t doubt that those crime scene photographers wind up seeing grotesque images that would wind up bothering the sensibilities of the deceased’s relatives.

But I never did read anyone explaining just why some of the photographs of the accident scene wound up showing the girl fully-clothed, and others showed her body moved to a tarp placed on the open ground where she was then stripped partially nude.

MY GUT REACTION is to wonder why this wasn’t construed as tampering with a crime scene – somehow altering the reality of what was there. No clear explanation was ever provided that I am aware of, and now I doubt that one ever will.

Not that it seemed to bother the jury that spent a good chunk of the day on Friday resolving the testimony they heard during all of last week. They seem to want to believe the police behaved professionally. Then again, some people will always argue on behalf of the police, no matter how extreme the evidence against them seems to be.

That is the verdict reached by a jury of peers, and it is what will remain as the outcome of this case – unless someone wants to try taking this to the Illinois appeals court and can come up with a specific bit of evidence that was wrongly excluded during the lawsuit’s trial.

After all, merely not liking a jury’s verdict is insufficient reason to justify granting an appeal.

PERHAPS THE MOTHER realizes that, since I read in newspaper accounts during the weekend that she is pleased she was able to publicly say her daughter wasn’t having sex or being naked or doing anything else that might be considered sordid at the time of her death.

For her sake, I hope she is capable of getting on with her life – which for the past five years and for the remainder of it will be without her daughter.

No amount of money that she might have received from Cook County as a financial reward from her lawsuit would have brought her daughter back.

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EXTRA: Justice in the dark

For those Chicago-area residents who remain without electricity or who had strong winds blow a tree into their house or onto their car or some other personal piece of property, my tale will seem trivial.

But one of the odd effects of the severe storms that hit metro Chicago this week was that it caused a moment of Justice in the Dark.

I HAPPENED TO be in Joliet Monday morning at the Will County courthouse. A newspaper I do some work for had an interest in a particular defendant.

Which is why I happened to be sitting in the courtroom of Judge Daniel J. Rozak, watching him go through his court call and waiting for the case to be called when the lights went out in the building.

Suddenly, the courtroom I was sitting in was pitch black, and the air conditioning immediately went dead.

Now this particular outage didn’t last long. I’d say power was fully restored to that courtroom within about 10 minutes. Lights flickered on bit-by-bit after a while.

BUT EVEN THOUGH court bailiffs quickly opened some doors so that outside light could creep into the courtroom, it didn’t change the fact that nobody could see much of anything.

What I will remember about this moment is that Rozak didn’t let the lack of light stop him. The case that was before him continued. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear perfectly as the judge went through all the legalese that ensured the defendant who was pleading guilty did so in a manner that would make it impossible for him to claim at a later day that he was being coerced.

For the record, the case in question was a man caught driving under the influence of alcohol. He got 24 months of court supervision, all done in the dark. About the only thing notable about his case is that he was a Mexican citizen (and yes, he had a valid “green” card indicating his “resident alien” status).

Which means that if Immigration and Customs Enforcement someday wants to be hard-nosed about this case, this man who has lived in the United States for two decades and has family here could face deportation.

I COULDN’T HELP but wonder what this man (who had a court-appointed interpreter at his side) thought about what was going on around him – having a lot of legalese spoken to him in the dark!

American “Justice” at its finest? Or just a humorous moment, since I have to admit that the hearing I heard was in no way memorable. Just another of the thousands of court cases that arise every year from people who get caught imbibing a bit much.

And perhaps I should feel thankful that I was indoors when the most severe weather struck, and that I had electricity functioning when I returned home later that day.

Because some people won’t be able to make that claim for several more days.

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DUI – it seems anyone is capable of it, but do they show any remorse for it?

A pair of stories will pop up in the local news report this week involving driving under the influence of alcohol. Both involve public officials from south suburban towns who managed to get caught driving their cars after having imbibed alcohol.

One of those officials, Roel “Roy” Valle, who happens to be the elected village clerk of Lynwood, is suffering the ultimate ordeal. He has a court date scheduled for Wednesday for the criminal charges he faces – for which, if found guilty, he could go to prison. Considering that he’s 64 years old, any prison term regardless of length is going to dominate the rest of his life.

THE OTHER OFFICIAL is Harvey Police Chief Denard Eaves, who supposedly was seen driving his car after having spent some time last April at a bowling alley in nearby Dolton drinking beer. He doesn’t face charges for the actual driving while intoxicated. But he is the subject of a lawsuit that contends he used his police position to try to threaten and intimidate the people who tried reporting him for drunken driving.

I know many people are more offended by the predicament of Valle, who last month was arrested by Illinois State Police when he drove the wrong way on Illinois Route 394, hitting another car head-on and causing a chain reaction that hit a third vehicle that was nearby at the moment of impact.

A woman was killed in that auto accident, in which police say alcohol was involved. That woman had a husband and young children, who will now have to grow up without their mother. The fact that the woman’s family has filed a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in compensation isn’t going to make up for that fact.

There also is the fact that Illinois State Police took more than a week before making it known that charges of aggravated driving under the influence involving death and reckless homicide were filed against Valle – who had been a Lynwood elected public official (first a village trustee, then its clerk) for more than 20 years.

THE FACT THAT he also suffered some injuries in the auto accident have caused some of his court appearances to be delayed. Some people are going to want to believe that he’s getting some sort of special consideration because he’s a public official.

Yet this is a case that will move forward in due time. His court appearance in Markham on Wednesday is meant to be a preliminary hearing, although there is a chance Valle will learn that he has been indicted by a grand jury – superseding any criminal charges already filed.

My point being he is in the Cook County criminal justice system. Unless we learn some previously unknown fact that completely reverses our perception of this case, he will pay for what has happened.

Which is a lot more than we can say about Eaves of Harvey.

HE WAS DETAINED by police in Dolton following the incident on April 23, 2010, but no charges were ever filed.

It seems that it was one of Eaves’ own police officers who turned him in – calling 911 to report that he say his off-duty police chief driving erratically after having been at the bar.

That officer has since filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, claiming that Dolton police threatened him with arrest, and that Eaves himself has threatened the officer. His lawsuit claims he once received an anonymous note telling him, “Police Don’t Snitch on Police, You Dead Bitch.”

The officer himself has spent the past year on a medical leave of absence from his police post, and I would be surprised if he ever returns to that job.

I DON’T KNOW what Eaves’ blood-alcohol level was at the time of the incident. But the story described in this lawsuit (which seeks at least $75,000 in damages for the officer who needs to find a new line of work) is one of police officials covering up for each other, and demonizing the lone officer who tries to be honest about a moment of wrong-doing.

Among those named in the lawsuit are the then-chiefs of both the Dolton and Harvey police departments (Dolton’s chief has since moved on to a new position), the internal affairs commander of Harvey police who is supposed to be keeping his department’s officers honest, and the former inspector general of Dolton village government – none other than Robert Shaw; the one-time Chicago alderman whose brother, William, later became the south suburb’s village president. It sounds like a closed club – one that is meant to bolster each other and knock down anyone who might dare to look too closely at their flaws.

Which is why I cannot get totally outraged at the situation that occurred out of Lynwood. By the time this criminal case is closed, Valle likely will express some serious remorse for his actions, and probably will accept whatever punishment the court deems him worthy of.

I can’t say I see the same thing ever happening in the other case, where those police officers probably think they’re the victims, being picked upon by nosy people.

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