Judge recuses herself from Miller justice obsruction case
McHenry County's top criminal courts judge is bowing out of a case involving a Cary truck driver whose alleged special treatment in court last year landed another judge in hot water with state authorities.
Citing her role as a potential witness in proceedings against a colleague accused of impropriety for his handling of the case, Judge Sharon Prather recused herself from the case of David Miller, allowing another judge to take over the proceedings.
"It's to assure the defendant feels he's getting a fair trial from someone who has nothing to do with any extraneous matters surrounding the case," Prather said.
Miller, 50, faces a felony obstructing justice charge claiming he sped away from a Cary police officer during a June 16 traffic stop, and then dumped his truck's load to prevent the officer from checking whether it was within legal weight limits.
The otherwise routine case made headlines a few weeks later when it was learned that McHenry County Judge Michael Chmiel held special Saturday-afternoon court proceedings for the sole purpose of getting Miller out of the McHenry County jail early.
Because of the timing of his arrest on a late Saturday morning, Miller normally would have had to sit in the McHenry County jail without bond at least until court returned to session the following Monday morning.
However, the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board alleged in a February complaint that Chmiel convened a special session in order to set David Miller's bond that Saturday afternoon, allowing him to post bail and go free as much as 36 hours earlier than anyone else in his circumstances.
Why would Chmiel do something so generous? According to the Inquiry Board, the judge acted at the behest of friend and one-time political ally Bob Miller, the Algonquin Township road commissioner. Bob and David Miller are brothers.
To make matters potentially worse for Chmiel, the complaint against him claims he lied to his fellow McHenry County judges as well as the inquiry board when asked about the special court session.
Chmiel, who formally has denied the allegations, could face punishment ranging from censure to removal from office if the allegations are proved to be true.
In the meantime, Miller's case has been transferred to the courtroom of Associate Judge Michael Feetterer. It is scheduled to return to court later this month for a hearing on a defense motion to dismiss the lone felony charge.
Icy reception at strip club: It probably wasn't what Blake Uppleger had in mind when he went to catch an eyeful last year at a downstate strip club.
But according to a lawsuit filed last week in McHenry County Circuit Court, the most memorable eyeful Uppleger got that night was a piece of ice thrown at his face by a bartender.
Now Uppleger, of Harvard, is seeking at least $50,000 in damages from the Hollywood Showclub, its owners and a bartender known only as Amy Doe, for what the suit calls a serious eye injury that caused him severe pain and suffering.
According to the suit, the ice-chucking incident occurred April 6, 2007, when Uppleger was visiting the club. The suit gives no indication of why the bartender threw the ice, but blamed it on her being drunk.
Calls to the club, located in the St. Louis suburb of Washington Park, Ill., went unanswered last week.