Supreme Court to decide if Cardamone harassed witness
SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois Supreme Court could decide later this year if Michael P. Cardamone harassed a witness by driving behind her and then calling 911 to report he saw the woman driving recklessly and drinking from a bottle.
Cardamone, a former Aurora gymnastics coach accused of fondling female students, was convicted in 2006 of harassing the mother of one of his accusers from his earlier child molestation trial. Police said the woman was neither drunk nor driving recklessly.
At the time, Cardamone testified he did not know the woman driving ahead of him was the witness. But last month Cardamone was indicted on a charge of perjury after his wife told prosecutors Cardamone lied about not knowing who was driving the car.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on whether to uphold lower court rulings that Cardomone's false report to police is witness harassment, a felony. It is not known whether the perjury indictment will have any effect on the appeal.
Mark G. Levine, Cardamone's attorney, argued that calling the police is not "communicating" with the witness, which the harassment law requires.
"What could be his intent other than to have a police officer intervene?" countered Erin M. O'Connell, an assistant attorney general. "Clearly it was communication."
Levine rejected O'Connell's assertion Cardamone could harass using the police.
"This communication was so remote and so indirect that it reached (the witness) through her own imagination," Levine said.
In 2006, Cardamone was sentenced to three years in prison for witness harassment. He was also convicted in 2005 of fondling seven female students at his family's American Institute of Gymnastics in Aurora.
Cardamone had completed the harassment sentence and was serving an additional 20-year prison term when an appeals court overturned the child molestation conviction in March 2008 on a procedural error.
Cardamone, 32, is currently out on bail ahead of a new trial on the molestation charges.