Devine slips up on opening remarks
In a slip of the tongue that left a packed but silent courtroom perplexed, Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine confused the Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant with Burger King as he started his opening remarks to the jury Friday.
"This case will take us back to the night of Jan. 8, 1993," he began, and went on to say the setting of the murder spree took place in a Burger King.
He then showed an aerial picture of the infamous Palatine Brown's Chicken on a projection screen and called it a Burger King.
The slip went on for about a minute before Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan interrupted Devine in midsentence and asked him to approach the bench. Gaughan leaned close to the prosecutor and told him of the mistake.
"Brown's Chicken, I'm sorry," Devine said as he walked back toward the jury.
The Brown's Chicken slayings have been on Devine's agenda since he first won office after blasting his predecessor, Jack O'Malley, for failing to solve the crime.
Devine and his spokesmen are under a judge's order not to talk to the media about this case and could not discuss the mistake.