Court's 'comedy of errors'
Judges ordering defendants to pay fines for their misdeeds is a daily occurrence around the McHenry County courthouse.
Last week, a state appeals court ordered a role reversal, telling the McHenry County State's Attorney's office to pay a drunk-driving defendant $500 for wasting his and his attorney's time.
In a unanimous seven-page decision, the Second District Appellate Court of Illinois ruled that the county prosecutors' office needlessly drove up the man's legal costs by improperly calling him and his lawyer to court on three occasions.
In the final instance, court records show, the man and his attorney were called to court for a hearing prosecutors had failed to place on the court schedule.
The decision upholds a July 14, 2006, ruling by McHenry County Judge Gordon Graham.
The fine stems from the case of Daniel Stefanski, a former high-ranking official with the Illinois Department of Transportation arrested for driving under the influence in April 2005.
Stefanski, of Mundelein, ultimately pleaded guilty to a drunk-driving charge and was placed on 18 months probation.
But while the case was pending, Stefanski and his lawyer, Mark Gummerson, asked a judge to sanction prosecutors for repeatedly violating local court rules regulating the court scheduling.
The violations, Gummerson claimed, led him and Stefanski to come to court three times when there was no need for them to be there.
Although prosecutors admitted to a "comedy of errors" in handling the scheduling, they argued that sanctions were inappropriate since they did not act in bad faith.
The appellate court agreed that prosecutors did not act in bad faith, but ruled that prosecutors still had a requirement to follow court rules.
"The state had several opportunities to cure the matter, it failed each time, and with each failure Stefanski incurred costs," Justice Thomas E. Callum wrote in the decision.
Convicted attorney now suspended:ŒA once-prominent municipal attorney snared in a 2004 child-porn bust cannot resume his legal practice for at least 2½ years, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled recently.
The suspension for John A. Roth comes more than a year after he admitted guilt to a possession of child pornography charge stemming from the raid at his former McHenry office.
Under a plea bargain he was placed on 30 months probation and ordered to serve one year of periodic imprisonment in the Lake County jail.
At the time Roth served as the village attorney for Cary and several other McHenry County communities.
"By committing his crime, Respondent violated the privacy and dignity of the children whose pictures he possessed, and he became a link in the chain which creates and supports the market for the sexual exploitation of children," an administrator for the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission wrote in a final report on Roth's case.