Teen gets probation, suspended sentence

A teenage girl who spent 18 days locked up after her arrest for handing out anti-gay fliers at her high school will not have to serve any more time behind bars if she stays out of trouble for the next year, a McHenry County judge ruled this afternoon.

Judge Michael Chmiel instead sentenced the 16-year-old Crystal Lake resident to one year probation and 40 hours of community service on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest stemming from the May 11 incident.

The sentence includes a 14-day suspended detention or jail sentence, but the girl will not have to serve it unless she violates the terms of her probation.

The girl and a 16-year-old female friend initially were charged with felony hate crime for placing on cars outside Crystal Lake South High School fliers featuring a homosexual slur and depicting a male classmate kissing another boy.

Prosecutors last month dropped the felony charge as part of an earlier plea bargain in which the girl admitted to disorderly conduct for distributing the fliers and resisting arrest for running from a police officer who tried to stop her.

The girl must write letters of apology to both the police officer and the boy shown in the flier as part of her sentence and previously was barred from returning to classes at Crystal Lake South.

Her lawyers today blamed the flier on the girl's co-defendant, saying their client simply handed them out after the second teen produced them.

"Those words were not something written by my client," defense attorney Matthew Haiduk said. "The thoughts behind those words were not something from my client."

The girl's mother also spoke on her behalf, saying she has seen a significant change in her daughter's behavior since she spent more than two weeks in a juvenile detention facility after her arrest.

"She wants to graduate, she wants to go to college, she does not want to get in trouble with the law," she said. "She's had a big taste of that, and it was not to her liking."

Chmiel, however, said he was troubled by the girl's prior record, which included 19 contacts with law enforcement prior to the incident in May. He said her progress since then persuaded him not to send her back into detention. And he warned that after today she may be out of second chances.

"At some point a judge has to say, ‘When is it going to stop?'" Chmiel said. "And if it doesn't stop, we have to make it stop."

The second girl charged in the incident, a 17-year-old Crystal Lake resident, last month received a nearly identical sentence of one year of probation, a 14-day suspended jail sentence and 40 hours of community service. Unlike her co-defendant, the older girl did not spend significant time in detention after their arrests.

That girl said the fliers were the result of a personal feud between her and the boy pictured on them, not an anti-gay agenda.