No new trial for Carpentersville official guilty of baseball bat attack

A Kane County judge Thursday denied a request for a retrial in the domestic battery conviction of a Carpentersville trustee.

Paul Humpfer, who was found guilty in March of hitting his wife with a baseball bat, will be sentenced by Judge James Hallock on June 19 at the Kane County Judicial Center.

The trustee faces up to a year in Kane County jail.

Humpfer defense attorney Van Richards asked Hallock to reconsider the conviction, saying the judge did not give enough weight to the testimony of Humpfer's 8-year-old son, and other inconsistencies in accounts from prosecution witnesses.

"We believe that in annunciating the decision, the court made no reference to the only eyewitness in the case," Richards said.

During the two-day bench trial, both Paul Humpfer and his wife, Jacqueline, testified that their son was in the room when the incident happened.

In addition, Richards said the judge's ties to a former Carpentersville trustee and the current mayor justified a new trial for his client.

Hallock is the brother-in-law of former Carpentersville Trustee Bob Whitehouse and attended the same high school as Village President Bill Sarto.

In rejecting the retrial request, Hallock said Humpfer's son "was not credible enough" and said his Carpentersville connections had "no bearing on the case."

And though prosecution witnesses described different colored bruises and provided conflicting accounts of what Jacqueline Humpfer was wearing the day after the incident, Hallock said the witnesses were credible.

"The crux of the case is that these witnesses had the opportunity to observe the bruising," Hallock said.