Retiring Rolling Meadows prosecutor: 'It's been a privilege to seek justice for the people'

This article has been updated with the correct name of prosecutor David Coleman.

Thirteen years into her tenure as a Cook County prosecutor, Maria McCarthy left the state's attorney's office in 2002 and joined a civil law firm. Within a year, she was back.

"It was a great firm. I liked the people there, but I realized after six months that I'd rather put bad people in jail," said McCarthy who retired last week after 30 years.

McCarthy, who grew up in Mount Prospect and Arlington Heights, says she and her colleagues are motivated by a desire to uncover the truth and ensure justice, which she says takes many shapes and doesn't always equal incarceration.

"Justice is recognizing when a person made a mistake and shouldn't have the rest of (his or her) life ruined," said McCarthy, who settled on her career in junior high after reading Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."

"The viciousness and brutality in that case made me realize I wanted to seek justice on behalf of victims of crime," said the Prospect High School and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate.

After graduating from the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, McCarthy went to work for the Cook County state's attorney. Progressing through the ranks, she worked in the appellate, juvenile, domestic violence and felony review divisions, then prosecuted felonies at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building in Chicago and was named a supervisor in 1999. Among her most memorable cases involved a robbery and shooting of an elderly man. Two weeks after the victim named a Chicago gang leader as his attacker, he was murdered, McCarthy said. It took 11 years to convict the gang leader, who was sentenced to life in prison.

In the decade since she took over as supervisor at Rolling Meadows Third District, McCarthy prosecuted such high-profile defendants as D'Andre Howard, serving a life sentence for the 2009 stabbing deaths of three members of a Hoffman Estates family; Arlington Heights native Matthew Nellessen, sentenced to life for the 2011 murder of his father; disbarred Hoffman Estates attorney Donnie Rudd, sentenced last year to 75 to 150 years in prison for the 1973 murder of his wife Noreen Kumeta; and Frank Buschauer, formerly of South Barrington, to be sentenced later this month for the 2000 murder of his wife.

Rolling Meadows judges describe McCarthy as dedicated, hardworking, skilled and always prepared.

Moreover, McCarthy recognized how to properly dispose of a case, said Judge Ellen Mandeltort, who presided over Howard's trial.

That entails determining whether to dismiss a charge or amend it to a lesser charge, or what kind of sentence to offer in exchange for a guilty plea.

"It takes a lot of thought and skill," Mandeltort, said.

Among her most difficult tasks was telling victims or their families that the state lacked enough evidence to prove a case.

"It should never be easy to convict someone of a crime," McCarthy said, adding prosecutors have an ethical duty to prosecute only cases where the evidence makes a conviction reasonable.

"I can't imagine the job she does, the horrific things she's seen," said Karen Mezera, sister of Noreen Kumeta, who described McCarthy as "one of the most remarkable women my family and I have met."

"We'll always be thankful for the closure she (and fellow prosecutor David Coleman) brought to us. It's one of the greatest gifts we could ever receive."

Early in her career, on her first day in juvenile court, McCarthy tried two cases and lost both. She considered quitting.

"I called my dad crying and said, 'Maybe I'm not cut out to be a trial lawyer.' He said, 'Honey, why don't you stick it out?'" McCarthy recalled. "I'm glad I did."