N. Chicago officer acquitted in fight with Waukegan police chief

A Lake County jury deliberated about five hours Thursday before finding Carl Sain not guilty of attacking Waukegan Police Chief Artis Yancey.

Carl Sain, 46, a 15-year veteran of the North Chicago police department, was charged with aggravated battery in the June 17 incident at the home of the woman who was in the process of divorcing him.

Sain, who said he had been on unpaid leave since November, expressed relief at the verdict.

"This has placed a lot of pressure on me and my family," Sain said outside the courtroom. "Hopefully, the mayor and the chief (in North Chicago) will now look at this as what it was and I can get back to work real soon."

A prosecutor said Sain, who had moved out of the Waukegan home three months earlier, broke into the house because he believed his wife was with another man.

Off-duty but armed with a handgun, Sain confronted Yancey in an upstairs bedroom where Yancey testified he had gone to repair a light fixture.

The two men fought, and after pinning Yancey to the ground, Sain struck him three or four times with such force that it broke bones in Yancey's face.

Exactly what Yancey was hit with was a point of contention in the weeklong trial before Circuit Judge Fred Foreman.

Yancey claimed that Sain struck him while still holding the .40-caliber Glock pistol he brought into the house, while Sain said during his testimony he had put the weapon into his waistband as soon as he recognized Yancey was the man he was confronting.

Sain also said that it was Yancey who began shoving him, wrestling with him and throwing punches at him, while Yancey claimed it was Sain who introduced the physical violence.

Defense attorney Charvis Walker urged the jury not to accept the prosecution's portrait of his client as a man who had lost all control of himself.

"Carl Sain is not the enraged, violent beast they would have you believe," Walker said in his closing argument. "Because if he was, he would have put a bullet right between Chief Yancey's eyes."

Walker also said the jurors should not believe Yancey's testimony that he had gone to Cheryl Sain's bedroom to do repair work.

Sain testified Yancey had told him he had had sex with the woman twice in the last month.

"Does anybody believe that Artis Yancey was in that house that night to fix a light bulb?" Walker asked the jurors. "Because that is what this comes down to." Assistant State's Attorney Reginald Matthews told the jurors that Sain, despite the fact that he had not yet been divorced from his wife, had relinquished any claim he had on her affections or their property by moving out.

"Cheryl was the wife he no longer wanted," Matthews said in his closing argument. "But his jealousy would not allow her to see anyone else."

He argued that no act of perceived betrayal on the part of his wife could be used to justify the level of violence Carl Sain unleashed that night.

"We are a country of laws, not men," Matthews said. "If we start letting people do what they want because of rage, we become barbarians."