Civil trial begins for man acquitted of stabbing his neighbor to death

A civil trial charging a Hoffman Estates man with the wrongful death of Terrance Michael Hauser began Wednesday with echoes of the criminal trial, in which a jury acquitted Joseph Biedermann of murdering Hauser.

Biedermann, 32, claimed he stabbed Hauser in self-defense after Hauser brandished a medieval-style dagger and threatened to sexually assault him, during the early morning hours of March 5, 2008, in Hauser’s Hoffman Estates home. Hauser, 38, was stabbed 61 times, several hours after the men met for the first time at a bar near the apartment complex where they both lived.

A Cook County jury acquitted Biedermann of first-degree murder in July 2009. The verdict followed a bold, all-or-nothing defense strategy that denied the jury the option of finding Biedermann guilty of second-degree murder, an option court observers believe te jury might have exercised had it been available.

The Hauser family’s wrongful death suit seeks at least $50,000 in damages for the support of Hauser’s teenage son; his son’s emotional loss; and for the “pain and suffering Mike Hauser endured from the first stab wound through the 61st, until he died,” attorney Michael LaMonica told the seven-woman, five-man jury Wednesday.

Defense attorney Kevin Stroud countered by saying that Hauser had a dark side, which he showed to Biedermann that fateful night.

“What happened in that house only Mr. Hauser and Mr. Biedermann know,” said Stroud, adding that his client had to “stab Mr. Hauser in order to preserve his own life.”

“Just because the defendant won this fight does not make him the aggressor. He is the victim,” Stroud said.

Steven White, a pathologist with the Cook County medical examiner’s office, testified about Hauser’s injuries, some of which he said were inflicted with a “significant amount of force.” Among them were 10 serious wounds to vital organs, including the lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, intestines and jugular vein, any of which could have been fatal, White said.

Each would have caused Hauser pain and would have incapacitated him, White testified. And with each successive wound, Hauser would have been “less likely to do anything other than bleed and feel pain,” White said.

Hauser’s brother Ian Hauser testified that his oldest brother, known to families and friends as Mike, was a caretaker to his three younger siblings. “It was God, Dad and Mike,” he said.

Mike Hauser focused like a laser beam on caring for his son, Ian Hauser said.

His nephew was devastated by his father’s death, Ian Hauser said. “He’s lost everything.”

Hauser’s mother, Catherine Meyers, testified that her son was good-spirited, never held a grudge and always made time for his child. “He had a girlfriend but he always deferred” to his son, she said.

Testimony resumes Thursday in Chicago.