James Heiple has a stubborn streak as long as the stand of trees on his rural hideaway, which year by year and acre by acre he has slowly converted from farmland to forest.
“I am a stubborn man,” he will tell you.
His son Jeremy can tell you, too.
Jeremy defied his father’s wishes a few years back, and the mule in Heiple kicked. Heiple disapproved of Jeremy’s fiance, and he refused to attend the wedding.
When Jeremy took his vows, his father and brother were in Canada.
Heiple later admitted he was wrong and patched things up with Jeremy.
That stubborness is a small part of Heiple, but in the weeks to come, it figures to loom large. Heiple, the Illinois Supreme Court’s chief justice, does not give ground easily. He never has. But the impeachment hearings that started Tuesday figure to test him. Much of his life will be laid bare, and he likely will face one tough question after another.
The questions will go beyond his much-publicized traffic stops and the allegation that he stacked a panel to protect himself from discipline. His financial affairs will be examined as well.
State police have started pulling Heiple’s office lease documents and economic-disclosure forms as part of the impeachment probe, according to state officials.
A Tribune examination of those records and other documents indicates that Heiple could face questions about a possible conflict of interest as well as his failure to disclose certain financial dealings.
But what the hearing is not likely to provide is a wide-angle shot of Heiple.
To a large extent, Heiple’s recent travails have stripped him of dimension. Much of the public sees him as the bully judge, the judge who is facing not only the threat of impeachment but also disciplinary charges for allegedly disobeying police and using his position to dodge traffic tickets. They also know him as the author of the highly charged “Baby Richard” decision.
But Heiple is too complex to be tagged with the cliches that turn some public figures into cartoons. He can alienate, certainly, but he can also ingratiate. And contradiction seems to be as much his traveling companion as controversy.
His critics know the Heiple who, after edging Tobias Barry in a Supreme Court election, removed Barry from two court-picked panels, poked fun at him at a luncheon, and, according to a pending administrative complaint, docked the pay of a former Barry law clerk in a fit of retaliation. They know the Heiple who, when a speaker criticized the court during its annual black-tie dinner, stood up and stalked out.
But Heiple’s friends, family and a core of passionately loyal employees know a different Heiple. The man they know sheds his judicial demeanor at the courthouse door. They describe a tender husband and devoted father, a man who took his children to the family’s rural sanctuary and spent hours with them clearing brush, planting trees and carving trails.
They know the Heiple who, after Jeremy’s wedding, prevented his snub from forever dooming his relationship with his son.
“He has been very forthright in acknowledging where he made a mistake,” Jeremy Heiple said recently. “He now sees things in a light he didn’t have at the time. He thinks the world of my wife. At the time his view was different.”
Heiple defies easy description in many ways.
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Here is a law-and-order judge who is deeply suspicious of police; a ferociously blunt and independent man who has hired a public-relations firm, albeit under extreme duress; a man who takes pride in separating his private and public affairs but for years rented his taxpayer-funded court office in Pekin from a bank in which his wife was a director and stockholder.
Under state law, it is a felony for an elected official to have an interest in a state contract or lease. Heiple’s attorney has said he believes the office lease did not violate the law because the bank stock was owned by Heiple’s wife, not Heiple.
This week Heiple also acknowledged that while renting the office he obtained a $220,000 loan from the bank. Heiple borrowed the money, without collateral, for two months in 1995. The loan was at market rate, a Heiple spokesman said.
Heiple’s borrowing of the money–at the same time he was renting the office space with public funds–could raise a new possible conflict of interest issue.
Heiple did not disclose the loan on his judicial ethics form, as required by an Illinois Supreme Court rule. Nor did he disclose an $85,000 loan that his wife received from the bank in 1991. A Heiple spokesman said the judge did not believe he needed to disclose the loans because they had already been paid off. “It appears, upon closer examination of the rule, that the rule nevertheless required their disclosure,” the spokesman said.
Heiple’s new office in Peoria reflects a certain appreciation for contradiction and the value of hearing competing sides. On display are two front pages from 1948. “Dewey Defeats Truman,” trumpets the Chicago Daily Tribune. “Truman Defeats Dewey,” blares The Peoria Journal. Side by side, the papers may also speak to Heiple’s views of the media’s competence.
Heiple declined comment for this article, citing his attorney’s advice. Questions were referred to Serafin & Associates, his public-relations representative.
Controversy began dogging Heiple when he wrote the court’s unanimous opinion in the Baby Richard adoption case. And for that, Heiple can only curse fate.
Under the court’s rotation system, the opinion had initially been assigned to Justice Charles Freeman. But for some reason Freeman and Heiple wound up swapping cases. Baby Richard then became linked with Heiple, particularly when he wrote a subsequent court order in language so hot it raised blisters.
Since then, the controversies surrounding Heiple have mounted. He incurred the wrath of three fellow court members when he tapped a former law clerk, William Holdridge, to be the court system’s chief administrator while Holdridge was serving simultaneously as an appeals court justice. And he aroused suspicion by naming friend and fellow Supreme Court Justice Moses Harrison II to head the Illinois Courts Commission–the panel that rules on judicial misconduct charges–10 days before charges were filed against Heiple.
The controversies may not end there.
John A. Gorman, another member of the commission, once represented Heiple as an attorney, a Heiple spokesman has confirmed. The Judicial Inquiry Board, which is prosecuting the disciplinary charges against Heiple, was never told of that, said Jeffrey Stone, a Chicago attorney who is representing the board.
“I can’t predict what we would have done with the information, but it’s certainly something that, as a litigant, I think we were entitled to know about,” Stone said.
A Heiple spokesman said Gorman represented Heiple in a “minor real estate transaction” about 20 years ago. Generally speaking, the more years that have gone by, the less need there is for a judge to disclose a prior professional relationship or to disqualify himself, according to law professors.
Heiple doesn’t think Gorman’s participation in Heiple’s disciplinary case poses a conflict, the spokesman said, but “it’s really up to Judge Gorman to make that decision.”
Gorman said he had forgotten about the matter until asked about it by a reporter. To the best of his recollection, Gorman said, he wrote a single letter for Heiple rescinding an offer to buy some commercial property in Pekin. He has never represented Heiple before or since, and said he has no doubt he can be impartial in his case.
For Heiple, all the controversy appears to have taken its toll. Last spring, Heiple vowed he would not let his detractors run his life. Even though he had received death threats and obscene telephone calls, he refused to make his home number unlisted. Now, not only is his home number unlisted, but his new home’s address is not to be found in most commonly available public records.
Heiple moved late last year from his long-time Pekin home to a duplex in Peoria.
Heiple, 63, is a relatively wealthy man. He draws a Supreme Court salary of about $126,600 and, along with his brother, inherited an estate estimated at $800,000 when his mother died seven years ago, according to court records. Heiple’s father, who died in 1976, had a profitable career in banking, insurance and as a lawyer.
Heiple also owns two farms in Tazewell County–one of 360 acres, the other 177. Over a 10-year period beginning in 1985, the farms were paid approximately $127,500 in federal farm subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based farm watchdog group. Figures since 1994 were unavailable. Until 1995, Heiple’s brother, Rae, owned half of one of the farms.
Over the years, Heiple has also bought and sold stock in at least two dozen companies, according to state records. But getting a fix on his portfolio can be difficult.
Judges must file economic disclosure reports, which are used by lawyers to screen judges for potential bias. On forms filed with the Illinois judiciary, Heiple has listed ownership of stock in several companies without ever reporting them being sold. Yet his judicial form filed on March 10 listed no stock holdings. A Heiple spokesman said Heiple “may have inadvertently failed” to list those stocks as former assets, but it “never resulted in any conflict.”
And last week, following questions by the Tribune, Heiple amended his judicial disclosure form to show ownership of a stock he had listed on a form filed with another state agency.
Heiple doesn’t seem to live extravagantly–the home he had in Pekin sold last year for $136,000–but he has spared little expense on representation. Former Gov. Jim Thompson is handling the impeachment proceedings, and he usually charges clients $425 an hour. A Joliet law firm is fighting the disciplinary charges. And Serafin & Associates, which has represented such heavyweights as former congressman Dan Rostenkowski, is handling public relations.
Heiple is paying all three personally, a spokesman said. That means he could wind up footing a staggering bill to keep a job in which his pension vested several years ago, assuring him of a six-figure annual retirement income.
Heiple has been a judge for 27 years, the last seven on the Supreme Court. He grew up in the Tazewell County town of Washington, but later moved to the county seat of Pekin. He and his wife raised two boys and a girl. Both sons are now lawyers. Heiple’s daughter is a teacher. Heiple’s wife died two years ago.
Neighbors on the tree-lined street where Heiple lived from the 1960s until last year recall that, as he rushed off to work early or arrived home late, Heiple always smiled and waved hello even though there usually wasn’t time to chat.
“I’ve seen these things in the newspapers. It really doesn’t sound like him at all,” said Donita Elmore, who lived next door. “He was a friendly neighbor, a personable man. We can’t believe the things they’re saying about him.”
Said longtime friend Robert Strodel, “On a day-to-day basis, he is laid-back, affable, friendly, helpful.”
Rich Craig, a Chicago attorney and former Heiple law clerk, was interviewed by Heiple in 1992 for the clerk position. What was supposed to be a 20-minute interview stretched to 50, as the two men talked weather, baseball and the difference between Downstate and Chicago politics.
“After the first five minutes, I forgot I was talking to a Supreme Court justice,” Craig said. “I felt I was talking with a friend I had known for 10 years.”
During an interview with a baiduhai reporter last year, Heiple even took off his shoes and tramped about in his socks.
But Strodel points out that Heiple’s generally amiable demeanor is reserved for those who have not crossed him.
“He has a streak of arrogance that can come out if his string is pulled,” said Strodel. “When he gets a bug in his brain, he is not afraid to let somebody have it.”
Heiple’s fellow judges could attest to that.
As a trial court judge, Heiple blasted the Illinois Appellate Court, likening its members to Santa Claus for granting appeal bonds to convicted criminals. As an Appellate Court justice, Heiple mocked the Illinois Supreme Court, likening its members to Roman fortune tellers who divined life’s mysteries by examining bird entrails. And as a Supreme Court justice, Heiple has ridiculed lower court judges.
Heiple has flayed major bar associations, the jury system and plaintiffs’ lawyers. He writes on an IBM Selectric typewriter, and if paragraphs need to be rearranged, he resorts to cut and paste. His writing is almost always witty, concise and clear. Many lawyers and judges–even those who do not share Heiple’s judicial philosophy–agree that his candor is both rare and refreshing.
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Heiple has said he respects police and has been a “law and order judge” by reputation. But police have been among his most frequent targets. In court opinions he has labeled the issuance of speeding tickets a “predatory” activity that generates “bounty revenue” and employment for hundreds of police officers.
Those words were written several years before his own dust-ups with police resulted in disciplinary charges, and several decades after his brother played a similar chord. While in the General Assembly between 1958 and 1964, Rae Heiple II fought unsuccessfully to raise the speed limit on some highways to 90 m.p.h. A few months before, Rae had been ticketed for going 89 m.p.h.
James Heiple has also alleged that Pekin police roughed him up two years ago when he was charged with resisting arrest during a traffic stop. He was afraid that officers were going to beat him over the head with a sap, he has said. Police have vehemently denied treating Heiple roughly.
Even Heiple’s processing that night became contentious. Police asked him to sign some fingerprint cards, then apply his prints. The prints can get smudged if it’s done the other way around, police told him. Heiple, suspicious, balked. If he signed first, he told a sergeant, police could put somebody else’s prints on the cards.
So a routine booking procedure became a standoff. Then, the standoff’s resolution became a point of contention. Police say Heiple relented and signed first, according to a police report. Heiple says police relented and took his prints first, according to what he told state investigators last year.
With Heiple, it seems, matters often escalate.
After the Pekin arrest, Heiple threatened lawsuit and hired a private investigator who poked around the police officers’ backgrounds. Pekin authorities, meanwhile, began investigating Heiple’s suspension from Indiana University Law School 40 years before. Heiple had beaten up a fellow law student and was suspended “for reasons of character,” according to a letter from the law school’s dean.
It could have been a doozy of a misdemeanor trial, but the two sides thought better of it. In a plea agreement, Heiple was convicted of two petty offenses and fined $200. He also agreed not to sue.
Matters also escalated two years ago when five teenaged boys vandalized Heiple’s rural property after a post-prom drinking party, causing about $850 worth of damage. Heiple reported the vandalism to local authorities and, according to a Heiple spokesman, had an off-duty sheriff’s deputy investigate as well.
When questioned by a sheriff’s detective, the boys confessed. The local state’s attorney at the time, Erik Blanc, then filed felony charges against them.
“My son did wrong, and I don’t want to minimize that,” said Carla Coggins, whose son Dusty Schmidgall caused much of the damage. “But when I heard they were talking about felony convictions and even jail time, I couldn’t believe it.”
Some parents came to believe Heiple was pressuring prosecutors to go hard on the boys. Blanc, now a judge, did not return telephone calls. A Heiple spokesman said Heiple and the state’s attorney did speak about the case, “but any decision with regard to bringing criminal charges is solely within the discretion of the state’s attorney.”
In the end, Schmidgall and another teenager each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and were ordered to serve two years’ probation, pay fines and restitution and do community service. Heiple, some of the parents believe, had had time to cool off. The three other boys got deferred prosecution.
As for Heiple’s own travails, there is speculation he may buckle under all the controversy and resign. But that hardly seems part of his makeup.
In an interview last year, Heiple talked about all the fights he got into while growing up. Sometimes, he said, you have to fight for your honor.
“I never bullied anybody in my life,” he said, “but at the same time, I never, ever backed down.”