McHenry County unseals hundreds of impounded search warrant files

Acting on legal advice from the Illinois Attorney General, McHenry County officials Monday made public 248 previously sealed court files detailing police efforts to obtain search warrants in hundreds of cases and what they recovered in those raids.

The move comes after members of the McHenry County State's Attorney's office and county law enforcement agencies spent the past several months looking through hundreds of impounded files trying to determine whether any contained information that might jeopardize a pending investigation. State's Attorney Louis Bianchi said when the review was complete, less than 20 of the files remained closed.

"The only concern we had is protecting police officers or any other individual involved in an investigation," Bianchi said.

While many counties unseal search warrant documents as a matter of routine once the related investigation is complete, McHenry County court officials have left them permanently impounded, even after charges have been filed or the case that sparked the search ended.

Bianchi said his office sought the attorney general's opinion on the practice last year after a judge in downstate St. Clair County, ruling in a lawsuit brought by a local newspaper, declared that search warrant documents should be open for public inspection unless doing so would irreparably harm a pending investigation.

The attorney general concurred, telling county officials that after the warrants have been served, the files should be "open to public inspection or dissemination unless the court enters an order specifically providing otherwise."

"The law is the law, and we like anyone else should be following it," Bianchi said Monday.

Most of the files unsealed Monday stem from drug investigations. But the 248 files also included search warrants filed in connection with murders, suspected embezzlements and, in one case, an illegal fowl hunting investigation.

James Wales, Lake in the Hills' director of public safety, said his department does not oppose the files being made public.

"If we have legitimate reason to keep a search warrant sealed because it's part of an ongoing investigation, then that's still possible," Wales said. "But otherwise, we don't have an issue with this at all. Once an investigation is over, there's usually no reason to keep it sealed."