New trial for man convicted of running down police officer in Carpentersville
A state appeals court on Monday overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial for a downstate man found guilty of running down a police officer when an undercover drug operation in Carpentersville turned violent.
Leamon R. Cavitt Jr., 51, of East St. Louis, was serving a 34-year prison sentence for aggravated battery to a peace officer, aggravated fleeing and possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver before Monday's unanimous court ruling.
The decision means he will at some point return to Kane County for a second trial or other resolution to his case.
Chris Nelson, a spokesman for the Kane County state's attorney office, said prosecutors will respond to the ruling in court.
The charges stem from a January 2012 drug bust in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. Authorities say Cavitt was taking part in a deal to buy a kilogram of cocaine when officers tried to arrest him.
Prosecutors said that when police approached, Cavitt put his car in reverse and struck an officer, then drove forward and tried to run down another as officers opened fire on him and his vehicle. Despite being hit in the face by gunfire, authorities say Cavitt led police on a high-speed, 20-mile chase through several suburbs before he surrendered in Itasca.
After a trial in which he acted as his own attorney, a Kane County jury convicted Cavitt of the felony charges in March 2016.
In its ruling to throw out the conviction, the Illinois Second District Appellate Court focused on choppy surveillance video from the restaurant depicting the drug deal gone bad and the trial judge's decision on how jurors could view it.
After watching the 16-minute video during the trial, jurors asked if they could view it again during their deliberations. Rather than sending the video to the jury room, Judge John A. Barsanti returned jurors to the courtroom and permitted them to see the video only one more time.
That was an error that deprived jurors of the right to examine the video as they saw fit.
"It is troubling that, in assessing the jury's request for the video, the court ignored the video's poor quality and the limitations it presented," Justice Ann B. Jorgensen wrote in the 55-page decision. "As confirmed by the court's post-trial comments and our own viewing of the video, it is difficult to ascertain the events depicted. Thus, the only reasonable approach would have been to allow unrestricted access."