SANTOS SET FREE BY APPEALS COURT

Former city Treasurer Miriam Santos was freed from a Downstate prison camp Wednesday, hours after a federal appeals court in Chicago threw out her conviction on fraud and extortion charges and castigated the trial judge for a “veritable avalanche of errors” that prevented her from receiving a fair trial.

The ruling raises the specter that the once-disgraced Santos, the first Hispanic elected to citywide office, could soon return to the treasurer’s post after serving nearly four months of her 40-month sentence, although her lawyers were uncertain what course she would take.

“I think she is certainly entitled to her job back,” said Santos’ lawyer, David J. Stetler. “Whether she will pursue it or not is a separate question.”

But city lawyers weren’t so sure and spent Wednesday wrestling with the legal quandary of whether Santos, 44, could immediately reclaim the office of city treasurer.

Meanwhile, prosecutors said they intend to retry Santos.

On her release from the women’s prison camp in Pekin around 4:30 p.m., Santos smiled broadly. She indicated that her first priority would be to spend time with her family.

“I just want to put my niece and nephew in bed,” she said.

“I will tell you that I’ve always believed in my case, in my innocence, and I’m going to continue to work toward being vindicated fully.”

In its hard-hitting 19-page opinion, a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that no fewer than 10 erroneous rulings or mistaken assumptions had been made by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle Sr., who presided over Santos’ trial.

None of the errors alone may have been enough to overturn the convictions, but taken together they couldn’t be ignored, wrote Chief Judge Richard A. Posner in the opinion.

The appeals court also disqualified Norgle from presiding over a retrial.

Norgle, a Reagan appointee to the federal bench in 1984, showed Wednesday that he hadn’t lost his sense of humor despite the public rebuke by the appeals court.

“Which case are you calling about?” Norgle asked when he returned a reporter’s call. “I’ve had a rough day.”

In a bizarre incident earlier Wednesday, a defendant berated Norgle and questioned the honesty of the court. Norgle wrested a half-hearted apology from the man and sentenced him to two days in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

The judge declined to comment on the appeals court’s ruling.

U.S. Atty. Scott Lassar said his office is mulling whether to ask the appeals court to rehear the case. But if that doesn’t occur, Lassar made it clear Santos would be retried.

“There’s no thought of possibly walking away from this case,” he said at a news conference in the Dirksen Federal Building.

Current and former prosecutors couldn’t recall the last time the corruption conviction of a major local political figure had been overturned.

Once a rising star in the state Democratic Party, Santos was convicted last May on five counts of mail fraud and one count of attempted extortion for allegedly cutting a brokerage firm off from treasurer business because it refused to contribute money to the Illinois Democratic Party on her behalf in the summer of 1998. At that time Santos was the party’s candidate for Illinois attorney general.

The federal jury acquitted her on four counts of attempted extortion and two counts of wire fraud. She won’t have to face those counts at a retrial.

But Lassar, in a surprise move, told reporters new charges could be brought against Santos–an apparent reference to revelations that came out during the trial that Santos allegedly kept cash-stuffed envelopes from brokers who did business with her office in a safe in her private office in City Hall.

Attorney Chris Gair, who represented Santos at the trial, criticized Lassar for commenting on possible grand jury matters in violation of secrecy rules.

By late Wednesday afternoon, city lawyers were still uncertain if Santos had a legal right to reclaim her office, which she lost when she was convicted.

Mara Georges, the city’s corporation counsel, said state law holds that “on entry of a final order reversing a conviction, an office holder is entitled to reinstatement.”

City lawyers were quibbling over whether Wednesday’s court decision represented “a final order,” but an appeals court official confirmed that was the case, though the ruling would be vacated if a rehearing is granted.

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In the meantime, Barbara Lumpkin, appointed treasurer by Mayor Richard Daley after Santos’ conviction, said she doesn’t know if she will be out of work in a matter of days.

“It has been an unusual day for a lot of folks,” Lumpkin said. “Like everybody, I will wait to see the final outcome as the legal process takes its course.”

Santos’ appeal had garnered unusual public support from a diverse coalition of prominent lawyers, former judges and U.S. attorneys, and law professors and bar groups on the issue of whether Norgle, by forcing the case to a quick trial, violated Santos’ 6th Amendment right to the counsel of her choice. Stetler, Santos’ first choice to represent her, had to step aside because of other duties.

In its decision, the appeals court said it was “perplexed” by the reasons Norgle gave for denying a postponement–a request that even the prosecution had not opposed.

“With all due respect,” the court wrote of Norgle’s reasons, “they do not hold water.”

Posner, joined in the opinion by Judges Ilana Rovner and Diane P. Wood, concluded that Norgle had abused his discretion, but they stopped short of reversing Santos’ conviction on those grounds. Instead, the panel said she deserved a new trial because of a “litany of errors” by Norgle in other rulings before and during the trial.

The court found Norgle unfairly restricted the defense’s attempts to blunt the prosecution’s evidence and improperly limited Santos’ lawyers from conferring with her in the midst of her testimony.

The court took Norgle to task for barring the defense from calling a doctor to testify how an improper dose of medication for Santos’ thyroid condition might explain her abrasive tone on a key tape-recorded call in which prosecutors said Santos crossed the line to extortion.

Norgle also erred by blocking the defense from presenting evidence showing that not all brokerage firms that rejected Santos’ campaign solicitations were cut off from treasurer’s office business, the court said.

“The whole thing has been a nightmare for her,” Stetler said. “And while it’s not over, she looks forward to being vindicated in a different courtroom–after a fair trial.”

Former Illinois Appellate Judge Dom Rizzi, who was among the group that supported Santos’ right to counsel of her choice, said the appeals court ruling was unusual in the large number of errors it cited and in its sometimes harsh language, though Posner is known for occasionally wielding an acid pen.

“It’s just one of those things that happens to a trial judge,” Rizzi said.