Most of murder suspect's statements to police thrown out
A Lake County judge ruled Tuesday that most of the statements made to police by a man accused of murdering his wife in Lincolnshire in 2008 cannot be used at his trial.
Associate Judge Theodore Potkonjak said local police who questioned Clarence Weber Jr. in Indiana and Waukegan violated his Constitutional guarantees regarding his right to speak to an attorney.
Weber, 60, is charged in the July 5, 2008 stabbing death of Adelina Weber, 31, in a Lincolnshire hotel parking lot.
He was arrested three days later near Crown Point, Ind., and a pair of detectives from the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force were sent there to question him.
In keeping with Illinois law, all the interaction between Weber and Lincolnshire Detective John Eric Anderson and Mundelein Detective Paul Dempsey are on videotape.
About 90 minutes into the questioning, after Weber has admitted he was in his wife's car in the hotel parking lot on the day she was killed and had sent her a note asking for the meeting, Weber tells the officers he wants to talk to a lawyer.
Courts generally require police to stop asking questions if suspects request an attorney, but Anderson and Dempsey continued to question Weber.
In addition, Dempsey testified that the next morning as they sat in the back seat of a squad car on the trip to Illinois, Weber told him police would find his DNA on his wife's forehead.
Once back in Lake County, Weber was taken to the Waukegan police station where Anderson and Dempsey questioned him further.
The law generally requires police to advise a suspect of his so-called "Miranda rights" before each session of questioning, and police generally do so by reading the rights from a pre-printed form.
But Dempsey testified Tuesday he did not have the form with him when he questioned Weber in Waukegan, so he recited it from memory.
The videotape played in the courtroom showed Dempsey did not remind Weber before the second questioning session of his right to speak to an attorney.
"It does not really matter if it (the omission) was an oversight on the detective's part or deliberate," Potkonjak said. "It is clear that he (Dempsey) left out the part about the lawyer, so anything that was said in Waukegan is suppressed."
The detectives testified Weber volunteered to show them where he had thrown the knife he used to kill his wife, but they were unable to locate the weapon.
Prosecutors Bolling Haxall and Eric Kalata said they intend to go forward with Weber's trial without the statements, and they believe they have enough evidence to convict him.
Assistant Public Defenders John Bailey and Katherine Hatch said they will file a motion soon seeking to bar evidence from being used at the murder trial that Weber has also been charged with attempting to hire someone to kill some witnesses against him.
Weber, who is held $2 million bond, is scheduled to appear in court March 25