Judge's letter proves to be ticket to prison

A simple run through of the spell-checker function could have saved a Waukegan man more than six years in prison.

Lake County Assistant State's Attorney Steven Derue said that Marvin Miles, 41, agreed last week to accept a six-year, three-month sentence after pleading guilty to violating his probation for a sex crime and a forgery of a most unusual kind.

The Waukegan man was placed on probation in May 2006 after pleading guilty to aggravated criminal sex abuse, and was told not to violate the law again.

Shortly thereafter, Miles was applying for a job at an Arlington Heights company, and his prospective employer raised concerns about his criminal record.

Miles moved to relieve those concerns by producing a letter from the judge in his case, Circuit Judge Victoria Rossetti.

In the letter, Rossetti explained that she was convinced Miles was innocent, but since he had pleaded guilty she was bound by law to stand by the conviction.

She did, however, agree to reduce the term of his probation and urged him to seek to have the conviction "esponged" from his record when his term of probation was over.

The employer smelled a rat, and called police who took the letter to Rossetti in order to verify the information therein.

Rossetti said that she did not write the letter, and also that she was well aware that to erase a troubled past one has a criminal conviction "expunged" from his or her record.

So Miles got the forgery charge and the prison term, and did not get the job.

Budget successTales of fiscal woes in government are everywhere these days, and budget deficits have become the universal boogeymen of the 21st Century.So it is refreshing to see that the Lake County sheriff's office is having great success in managing the public's dollars.Sheriff Mark Curran said recently that revenue collected by his office was up $594,500 in 2009 over the previous year.Fines collected from DUI convictions increased by $3,822 over 2008, Curran said, and collections were up by $440,000.Expenses for the office operations decreased by 10 percent in 2009 and the overtime budget was slashed by 12 percent, Curran said."This is a result of all our department heads looking hard for ways to save money and increase revenues," Curran said. "It was an absolute effort on everyone's part to make sure we are taking the best care we can of the money of the Lake County taxpayers."