A Hickory Hills man who confessed to murdering a prostitute after she threatened to tell his wife of his infidelity was ordered freed from prison Thursday because prosecutors took too long to bring him to trial.
The Illinois Appellate Court set aside the conviction and 30-year prison sentence of Kevin Healy because he was not brought to trial in Cook County within 120 days, as required by the state’s Speedy Trial Act.
“This is rare,” said one Criminal Courts judge. “It’s usually a question of keeping track of how much time has gone by and getting the case to trial.”
The last such case to make headlines in Illinois was in 1985, when Henry Lee Thomas, convicted of murder after confessing to stabbing a woman to death, was released when 120 days elapsed. Prosecutors had failed to set a new trial date after his original conviction had been overturned on appeal.
Renee Goldfarb, chief of the Cook County state’s attorney’s criminal appeals division, said she would petition the court to reconsider the ruling and, if unsuccessful, would appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.
“We believe they overlooked some very significant facts,” she said, referring to the appellate judges.
Healy’s lawyer, Michael Baird, said his client, housed in a state prison in Downstate Canton, would not be released until the ruling is officially communicated to prison officials–a process that takes about three weeks.
He was unable to reach Healy by telephone Thursday.
“Once he hears about it, I know it will be good news,” Baird said. “We have been talking about this since 1993–that this day would come.”
Nearly all states have speedy trial laws, most enacted in the past 20 years to ease jail crowding and courtroom logjams. As a result, keeping track of time elapsed is one of the early lessons for new prosecutors, many of whom keep court time lines stapled to their case files.
“This is one of the first things an assistant is taught,” said one veteran prosecutor.
Most prosecutors “calculate and recalculate,” said Richard Kling, law professor at Chicago Kent College of Law, adding that a mistake can mean “they will lose their job.”
The Healy case appears not to be a simple matter of mathematical oversight, but the product of imprecise language amid the relaxed–some lawyers say sloppy–atmosphere in the Cook County Criminal Courts, at 26th Street and California Avenue in Chicago.
The building has more than 30 courtrooms, handling several thousand cases annually. Daily court calls are frequently conducted quickly, tersely and in assembly-line fashion, relying on court clerks to make hand-written notations of continuances on accordion court files.
At issue in the Healy case was whether a 185-day pretrial delay violated the Speedy Trial Act requiring that incarcerated defendants–Healy was jailed without bond–to be brought to trial within 120 days and that defendants out on bond to go to trial within 160 days.
The time period can be extended by 60 days–to 180 days– in special circumstances, such as additional time needed for laboratory tests or a missing witness. But those extensions must be court-approved.
The act also allows for a temporary suspension of the running total of days each time a case is continued at the request of defense lawyers or if defense lawyers agree to a prosecution request for a delay.
The question in the Healy case was whether his lawyers had agreed with prosecution requests for trial delays because the state crime lab was tardy in processing evidence.
The prosecutors and the judge overseeing the case, Loretta Hall Morgan, contended that Healy’s lawyers, Baird and Peter Coules, acquiesced to five prosecution requests for delays from March 16, 1993, to Sept. 17, 1993.
The defense lawyers–and the appeals court–disagreed, saying that a painstaking examination of court transcripts from those five court appearances showed the defense never made an “express agreement” to postpone the case, even though the hand-written notes of those hearings showed the continuances were “B/A,” shorthand for “by agreement.”
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Healy was arrested on Nov. 22, 1992, and charged with the slaying of Janet Menz. Although he admitted to police that he beat her with a flashlight, strangled her with a plastic tie strap and stabbed her, Healy pleaded innocent and demanded a trial.
In his confession, Healy, a security guard, admitted that while his wife was at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for treatment of a back ailment, he sought the company of Menz, paying her $40 each time for sex.
On Nov. 7, 1992, while in Healy’s van, Menz, who also was known as Renee Hilton and Laura Sage, demanded more money to buy drugs, according to court records. When Healy refused, the woman threatened to tell his wife and was then murdered, court records state.
The woman’s body was found in the Chicago River a week later. Police began questioning friends of Menz’s and were told she was last seen with Healy in his van. On Nov. 22, Healy was picked up for questioning, admitted to the slaying and was charged.
At a hearing on March 16, 1993, the prosecution requested blood, saliva and hair samples from Healy, as well as six weeks to conduct an analysis.
Coules, representing Healy, replied: “I have no problem with any date in May, judge.”
Morgan, the judge, then said: “Is it a by-agreement date, or are you saying you want time to file your motions too?. . . Pick a date that would allow that.”
Coules replied: “Any date in May, we will be here.”
Morgan set May 6, 1993, for a return date to court.
Similar colloquies occurred at the next four court appearances. Each time the prosecution requested a continuance because lab work had not been completed. And each time, either Coules or Baird responded to Morgan’s request for a date by saying, in essence, that any date was fine with the defense.
On Sept. 17, 1993, the prosecution produced its lab results, and on Oct. 14 of that year, the defense filed a motion to discharge Healy, citing violation of the Speedy Trial Act.
After examining transcripts of the five court appearances, Morgan rejected the motion.
Morgan was constrained to add, though, that “the words `by agreement’ are not said very often.” In fact, the appeals court noted, those words were not said at all.
The appeals court opinion, written by Justice Warren Wolfson, noted that a delay can only be attributed to the defense when it is the result of an “affirmative act.”
“Mere silence or failure to object to a continuance requested by the prosecution is not an affirmative act,” the opinion stated. “Additionally, mere acquiescence to a date suggested by the court is not an affirmative act.”
Citing a case decided by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1980, the opinion noted, “The defendant’s silence while a date was set by the court did not contribute to the delay by express agreement.”
Indeed, the opinion noted in citing a 1991 case, a defense lawyer’s response of “that’s fine” to a prosecution request for a continuance did not constitute an express agreement.
The opinion stated that in the first of the five hearings in the Healy case, the judge asked whether the continuance would be by agreement but got no response and did not pursue an answer.
“Perhaps the trial judge could have tried to obtain an agreement,” the opinion said. “But it is the state’s job to bring a criminal case to trial. . . . Healy had no obligation to bring his own case to trial.”
After Morgan denied Baird’s speedy-trial motion in 1993, the case lingered until finally reaching trial in July 1996. Although Baird argued that the confession was involuntary because Healy suffered from a mental disorder, a jury found Healy guilty that August. Healy was sentenced to 30 years in October 1996.
Baird said that before the trial, he told prosecutors he would waive his speedy-trial argument on appeal if they would reduce the charge to second-degree murder, but was rejected.
“If there are 10,000 felony cases that go through the system a year, there are five (appeals on speedy-trial grounds) that are raised, and one that succeeds,” he estimated.
“They made a technical mistake and that does not happen very often,” he added.
“In my opinion, the state’s attorney is very good in paying attention to the limit.”
Goldfarb said that she intends to ask the appellate court to consider further information that was not included in the arguments it heard, but she would not be specific.