Co-defendant takes plea
Jury selection began Monday in the case of two ex-police officers charged with handcuffing and brutally beating a man in an off-duty bar fight two years ago, but with a little more space at the defense table than expected.
Jessica Thelen, a co-defendant of former Spring Grove officers Ronald L. Pilati and Jerome Volstad, got out of the case Monday morning after pleading no contest to allegations she lied to detectives investigating the Feb. 20, 2005, incident outside KC's Cabin in Fox Lake.
Thelen, 30, of Bristol, Wis., had been scheduled to go on trial with the former officers Monday on three felony charges alleging she participated in the beating and then lied to impede an Illinois State Police investigation of it.
Instead, she cut a deal with McHenry County prosecutors by which she admitted that testimony against her could convince a jury she was guilty of obstructing a peace officer, a Class A misdemeanor, for misleading investigators.
Under the terms of the deal, Thelen will spend one year on conditional discharge and pay a $1,500 fine. The felony charges against her were dismissed.
Her attorney, Daniel Hofmann, said Thelen opted for the agreement in part because it did not require her to admit to any wrongdoing in the altercation.
"Her father is severely ill, and that had a big impact on her willingness to sit in court for two weeks," he added.
The agreement does not require Thelen to testify against Pilati, 36, of Spring Grove, and Volstad, 42, of Cary, as they face trial on aggravated battery, mob action, unlawful restraint and disorderly conduct charges. However, both prosecutors and the former cops' lawyers are expected to call her as a witness.
Thelen, according to witnesses, was in the thick of an altercation that broke out in the tavern's parking lot between Wisconsin resident Ryan Hallet and Pilati, Volstad and a third former police officer, Brian Quilici.
Authorities say that after Hallet and the former officers exchanged words inside the bar, the three ex-cops surrounded Hallet in the parking lot, wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him and then repeatedly punched and kicked him as he lay defenseless.
Hallet suffered a fractured eye socket and several other facial injuries in the altercation.
The former officers' lawyers will argue they were acting in self-defense after a hostile and inebriated Hallet threatened them with a knife, then grabbed Thelen and held the weapon against her throat.
Pilati and Quilici, who at the time was a Richmond police officer, both were fired because of the incident. Volstad had not been working as a police officer in the months before the altercation because of a back injury.
Quilici, 35, was found guilty in August 2006 of five charges stemming from the altercation and is now serving a two-year prison sentence.