Sheriff seeks state police inquiry into elderly couple's arrest

At the behest of McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren, Illinois State Police investigators will examine the circumstances of a 2008 incident that led to an elderly Nunda Township man and his wife being accused of assaulting a sheriff's deputy.

Nygren confirmed the investigation Tuesday, just hours after county prosecutors dismissed aggravated battery and resisting arrest charges against Jerome C. Pavlin, 81, and his wife, Carla E. Pavlin, 66.

State's Attorney Louis Bianchi said "inconsistencies in the evidence" revealed during a pretrial review of the case led to the decision to drop the charges.

"There were multiple legal and evidentiary problems with the case," Bianchi said. "We felt we couldn't prove the elements of the charges, and if we can't prove the elements we have an ethical duty not to go forward."

Nygren said Bianchi informed him of the decision Friday, but did not offer a satisfactory explanation for it, prompting his request for a state police inquiry.

"I'm at a total loss to explain what happened here and why it happened," the sheriff said. "We're going to have the state police come in, talk to everyone involved and get some facts."

Mark Gummerson, the attorney for the Pavlins, declined to comment on the case.

Sheriff's deputies arrested the Pavlins March 14, 2008, after going to their home on the 5400 block of Rita Avenue to arrest their adult son on a warrant for domestic battery. Carl Pavlin, 32, had been accused a day earlier of shoving his wife's face into a faucet, Nygren said.

According to court documents, Jerome Pavlin spit in the face of one of the deputies who came to arrest his son, then struggled and pulled away when the deputy attempted to handcuff him. While that was occurring, reports state, Carla Pavlin jumped on the deputy's back.

Both Pavlins where taken to a hospital after the incident. Jerome was treated and released, but his wife remained several days for treatment of a prior back injury that was aggravated during the altercation.

Nygren said Tuesday Bianchi was "very vague" in explaining the decision to dismiss the charges and is hoping state police investigators can clarify the situation.

"If somebody in the sheriff's department did something wrong, I'll be the first to hold them accountable," Nygren said. "Maybe (Bianchi) knows something I don't. He didn't elaborate for me."

Nichole Owens, criminal division chief of the state's attorney's office, disputed Nygren's account, saying the prosecutor's office provided the sheriff with a detailed report explaining its decision. The report, she said, included photographs, details of the Pavlins' injuries and a memorandum on the new information that led to the charges being dropped.

The report, Owens said, also explained that the arrest warrant deputies had for Carl Pavlin did not give them permission to enter his parents' home to search for him.

"They did not have authority to enter the Pavlin residence on the night this event occurred," Owens said.

Bianchi, who did not join Nygren in seeking the state police probe, said that as the county's attorney - and thereby the sheriff's department's attorney - it would not be appropriate for his office to conduct or instigate an investigation into the actions of deputies.

"The sheriff is our client," he said. "Our whole focus was to make an inquiry into whether we could go forward with a trial (of the Pavlins). That was our focus, not to investigate the sheriff's department."