Man gets 40 years for trying to arrange murders

A Carbondale man who tried to sell more than five pounds of cocaine in Waukegan, then sought to have a police officer and his co-defendant killed, was sentenced to 40 years in prison Monday.

Abdul Love, 30, spent most of the more than four years since his arrest attempting to show he was set up in both cases, only to discover it had no impact on his guilt.

On Oct. 5, 2005, Waukegan police stopped a car occupied by Love and Michael Nelson, 31, of North Chicago. Inside the trunk of the car was a box containing more than five pounds of cocaine that Love admitted he had agreed to bring to Waukegan to sell in return for $45,000.

While in jail for that crime, Love told another jail inmate he wanted to hire someone to kill Nelson and Waukegan Det. Dominic Cappelluti.

That inmate contacted police, and an undercover Illinois State Police detective met with Love twice in the jail and taped their conversations about the contract killings.

Love was convicted of solicitation of murder for hire and possession of cocaine with the intent to deliver, but not after a protracted legal battle.

Through five lawyers and numerous motions he filed on his own, Love sought to introduce evidence he believed would show he had been set up by the person who gave him the cocaine to bring to Waukegan and by the jail inmate who informed on him in the murder plot.

In every case, Foreman ruled Love had entered into the criminal acts of his own accord, and information about how he came to be caught was irrelevant.

"Without good luck and the actions of a self-serving jailhouse informant, two men would be dead today," said Assistant State's Attorney Scott Hoffert, who asked Foreman to impose a sentence of 60 years.

Waukegan defense attorney Ian Kasper asked for a sentence closer to the minimum of 35 years, arguing his client had come into his situation naively.

"An opportunity came up where he could make a significant amount of money," Kasper said. "Stupidly, Abdul said yes."

In his own statement to the court, Love said he was accepting responsibility for what he had done, but that the system had wronged him by not allowing him to show how others conspired against him.

Foreman responded that he believed those two positions to be in conflict with each other.

"The defendant says he is accepting responsibility," Foreman said. "Then he criticizes the police, the state, his lawyers and the judges. He is not accepting any responsibility at all."