Jury clears ex-cop of sex assault in McHenry tavern

A jury deliberated nearly three hours Friday before finding former police officer and McHenry County state's attorney investigator Leslie Lunsmann not guilty of charges he sexually assaulted a bartender at his McHenry tavern.

Lunsman, 51, stared straight ahead as McHenry County Judge Sharon Prather read verdicts acquitting him of criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse charges stemming from a July 2006 incident at his Mulligan's Saloon.

His accuser, a 26-year-old Joliet woman, was not in court to hear the verdict.

Lunsmann declined comment afterward, but his defense lawyer said the not-guilty verdicts were an example of the criminal justice system working.

"He was charged the day after this complaint was made without a proper investigation," Mark Gummerson said. "This has been extremely hard on him and his family."

Lunsmann is a former police officer with McCollum Lake and the Illinois State Police North Central Narcotics Task Force. He also served as an investigator for the McHenry County state's attorney's office in the 1990s and earned recognition for his efforts to establish anti-gang programs in area communities.

Jury members approached after the verdict said they did not want to comment.

McHenry County State's Attorney Louis Bianchi said the case was a difficult one for his prosecutors, particularly after a judge separated the 26-year-old woman's charges from accusations made by another woman that night claiming that Lunsmann groped her inside the bar.

Bianchi's office had hoped to try the two cases together.

"The combination of both made a strong case," Bianchi said. "Once the court severed them, it became a he-said, she-said."

After the verdict, prosecutors dismissed the misdemeanor battery charge filed in connection with the second woman's accusation.

The verdict came just hours after Lunsmann, of McHenry, took the witness stand before the eight-woman, four-man jury and repeatedly denied the woman's claims he assaulted her in an employee washroom at his tavern.

With no eyewitnesses and no physical evidence corroborating the accuser's account, jurors were left to base their verdict primarily on whose version of the incident they found more credible.

The woman testified earlier this week that she was preparing to leave Mulligan's after a shift tending bar when Lunsmann locked her in the washroom with him, forcibly kissed her mouth and chest, then shoved a hand down her pants.

Lunsmann told jurors he believed the woman fabricated the claims because he fired her that night for cheating on her time card and other work problems.

The defense's case may have been helped most by a pair of Mulligan's workers who, when called to the witness stand by prosecutors, gave testimony that contradicted portions of the accuser's account.

The case's lead prosecutor, Assistant McHenry County State's Attorney Michael Combs, said after the verdict that the conflicting accounts were not unexpected.

"Two different people are going to have a different recall two years afterward," he said. "I was not surprised by that."

During his closing argument Combs told jurors that Lunsmann's version was less credible than his accuser's, saying she had no reason to make up the accusations.

"Of all the reasons why a woman might fabricate a sexual assault claim, being fired from a $7.50-an-hour job is not one of them," he said. "She gains nothing by falsely accusing the defendant. Her only motivation is the truth."

Lunsmann's defense, however, stressed the inconsistencies to jurors and noted that the woman had no bruises or abrasions that night, despite her testimony that the burly Lunsmann had grabbed her roughly during and after the incident.

"You can't blindly accept what someone says when she is contradicted throughout her testimony," he said. "The credibility and believability of (the accuser) are nonexistent based on the prosecution's own witnesses."