Large jury pool summoned in DuPage death penalty trial
Amid the sea of potential jurors summoned this morning to the DuPage County courthouse are the 12 people who will decide if a twice-convicted killer should be sent to death row if found guilty of a third murder.
The future jurors will be asked to weigh in on the final chapter of a sad legal saga sparked nearly 18 years ago when a young father left his Aurora home to gather flagstones for his new patio and walkway.
Hours later, after her husband failed to return, Sharon Weber loaded her 1-month-old baby and 2-year-old son into the car and set out to find her husband. Not far from their home, she discovered the 24-year-old man lying face up in front of his van in the muddy field of an abandoned grain silo.
Jerry D. Weber, a carpet installer, was shot four times and robbed of his wallet, which contained just $6.
Nearly two decades later, Edward L. Tenney may face the death penalty if convicted of killing Weber early that April 17, 1992, in Addison Township. Tenney, now 50, formerly of Aurora, pleaded innocent.
This morning, DuPage Circuit Judge Daniel Guerin will give an estimated 120 folks in the jury pool a brief factual summary of the capital murder case before sending them on their way back to the jury commission room to fill out a thick questionnaire.
Actual jury selection begins Tuesday, and likely will last about two weeks. The trial will stretch across another month. The slain man's widow, Sharon, who lives out of state, is expected to attend the proceedings. The couple's sons, David and Erik, are now 19 and 17, respectively.
Tenney is serving two life prison terms for the infamous 1993 slaying of dairy heiress Mary Jill Oberweis, and her elderly neighbor, Virginia Johannessen, who lived one-quarter mile apart near Aurora in Kane County. The women were killed months apart in separate robberies.
Four other men were wrongly accused of the Johannessen slaying. Three were acquitted. One man from Bellwood was sentenced to a 60-year prison term, but he was set free in 1995 after Tenney and his cousin, Donald Lippert, were indicted.
Lippert, 34, formerly of Woodridge, has been serving a lengthy term since 1996 after he plead guilty to being Tenney's teenage accomplice in all three murders and agreed to provide truthful testimony against him. Judge Guerin signed off on a Jan. 19 writ to have Lippert - who is eligible for parole in September 2035 at age 60 - transferred from a state prison back to the DuPage County jail for the trial.
In earlier proceedings, prosecutors revealed a .22-caliber handgun they said was found in Tenney's possession was used in all three slayings.
Tenney once faced death by lethal injection for the Johannessen murder. His conviction, though, was overturned in 2002 based on a legal trial error. He was retried, convicted again and, in 2008, sentenced to a life prison term - clearing the way for the start of DuPage County's trial.
Prosecutors David Bayer, Robert Berlin, and Michael Pawl are trying the case. The defense team includes John Houlihan and Mark Kowalczyk.