A downstate prosecutor has requested a judge appoint a special prosecutor to review the case of a Morton Grove teen who was found dead in 2014.
A judge approved the order March 2.
Pravin Varughese, 19 was found dead a year ago in a wooded area woods near his school in downstate Carbondale, Ill., located in southern Illinois’ Jackson County. Two autopsies conducted by different doctors concluded that Pravin died from either hypothermia or blunt force trauma to the head.
A Carbondale-area man admitted to striking Pravin shortly before Pravin ran into the woods on Feb. 12, 2014.
On Feb. 25, Jackson County State’s Attorney Michael Carr phoned Charles Stegmeyer, the downstate Belleville-based attorney for Pravin’s parents, Lovely and Mathew Varughese, to say he had convened a grand jury from June through December, which decided against charging the suspect.
Carr issued a memorandum stating the grand jury’s determination that Pravin died of environmental hypothermia due to very cold weather, and that blunt force trauma was not the cause of death.
“Unbelievable,” Lovely Varughese responded.
She said that the decision was unfair, because Carr had not subpoenaed Ben Margolis, M.D., the Harvard-trained, independent forensic pathologist, and director of the Autopsy Center of Chicago, whom the Varughese family retained to perform a second autopsy.
Margolis’ testimony could be pivotal to the case because he concluded that being struck in the head caused blunt force trauma that led to Pravin’s death. Margolis said at an October press conference in Morton Grove that the trauma could have resulted from a punch to the head.
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Charles Stegmeyer, the Varughese’s attorney, said that after Margolis spoke at the press conference, Carr sent Margolis a four-sentence, very general invitation to present his findings before a grand jury, but the letter did not indicate a grand jury had actually been convened, nor did it set any date for Margolis to appear. It was not a subpoena.
Stegmeyer described it as vague, and Lovely said she understood it to refer to a potential future grand jury, not an actual one.
Lovely said when Margolis received Carr’s letter, he asked Carr for the first autopsy report, wanting to prepare in the event he was called to testify. Carr did not grant the request.
“Since this put Dr. Margolis in a position with many unknowns, and he did not feel comfortable with Carr’s intention, we decided for him not to go,” Lovely Varughese wrote in an email March 1. She added that if Carr wanted Margolis to appear, he could have subpoenaed him.
On Feb. 24, when Carr called Stegmeyer to say he would not be bringing charges against any suspects in the case, Lovely Varughese and Stegmeyer said they were completely unaware Carr had convened a grand jury. Illinois law does not require grand jury proceedings to be made public, Stegmeyer said.
On Feb. 26, Stegmeyer said he and his client were considering whether to bring action to question Carr’s authority.
“The [Varughese] family is reviewing whether the state’s attorney created an abuse of authority or malfeasance by not calling Dr. Ben Margolis, M.D., as a witness,” Stegmeyer said.
On Feb. 27, Carr issued a press release saying his grand jury had determined not to bring charges in Pravin’s case, and that when he informed Stegmeyer, Stegmeyer criticized his decision not to subpoena Dr. Margolis as a witness. Carr suggested, in the press release, that both Stegmeyer and Lovely Varughese knew a grand jury proceeding had been taking place because they acknowledged that Carr had sent Dr. Margolis a certified letter inviting him to speak.
“The Varughese family made the decision, according to an article in Friday’s Southern Illinoisan, not to let Dr. Margolis testify,” the press release read. “This completely contradicts her attorney’s claims, made only one day before, that neither he nor the family had any knowledge of the grand jury investigation and contradicts the attorney’s statement that I had not tried to contact their doctor.”
On Feb. 27, Dr. Margolis wrote a memorandum that seemed to call Carr’s judgment into question. He retracted the statement on March 2, saying he had used language that was stronger than he intended, his comments were outside his area of expertise and he regretted making them.
The events culminated on Monday, March 2, when Carr made a motion in circuit court (the First Judicial circuit, which includes Jackson County) requesting the appointment of a special prosecutor.
“This matter has been the subject of an intense national media campaign promoted by the family of Pravin Varughese to prosecute the individual who it is believed was last with Pravin Varughese before he died in February of 2014 in Carbondale, Ill.,” Carr wrote in the motion.
“Following my statement last week that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a prosecution, the focus of the family’s campaign for prosecution shifted from the investigation to vague unspecified challenges about my impartiality in reviewing the investigation.
“Last week, Mrs. Varughese expressed publicly, among other things, that I was unfair and could not be impartial. While I do not agree with her conclusion, and do not agree I have done anything which prevented me from impartially reviewing the investigation, I am nonetheless requesting the appointment of a special prosecutor to review the investigation, the grand jury matters and my findings, and to take whatever actions the special prosecutor deems necessary under the circumstances. My request is not required by any law but is being made to avoid even the appearance that my decisions have been made improperly or unfairly.”
The circuit court judge approved the motion and entered an order for the office of the state’s attorney appellate prosecutor to appoint a special prosecutor. The order noted that the special prosecutor serves at the pleasure of the Illinois attorney general, who may choose to substitute a special prosecutor from her office, as permitted by law.
Pam DeFiglio is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.