During oral arguments Tuesday for former Lake County Surveyor George Van Til’s appeal, the judges focused on whether he’s even allowed to challenge his restitution.
Van Til, pleaded guilty in December 2013 to using his office and employees to help run his re-election campaigns. When U.S. District Judge James Moody sentenced him to serve 18 months in prison, the judge also ordered him to pay $26,502 to Lake County in restitution.
Van Til appealed, arguing that the evidence the government presented at sentencing didn’t support that amount, which he says is about $13,000 more than what he really owes.
During oral arguments at the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago on Tuesday, Chief Judge Diane Wood immediately began questioning Van Til’s attorney, Scott King, about the fact that Van Til waived his right to appeal when he agreed to a plea deal with the federal government.
“I’m not going to give this appeal waiver an A+… but it does say ‘all components of my sentence,'” she said
However, King argued that restitution is not automatically a part of the sentence.
“A waiver has to be knowing,” he said, referring to other court cases in which a federal judge explicitly questioned a defendant about whether he knew he was giving up his right to appeal a specific part of the sentence.
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He also argued that federal attorneys could simply have added “including restitution” to that section of the plea agreement.
“Add two words,” he said.
Daniel Bella, who represented the government, argued that the government purposely included “all components” because they’ve had other defendants in the past appeal when a portion was not specifically included.
“This was a deliberate choice on our part,” he said.
Wood questioned whether there were too many components of a sentence to not list them all, but Bella argued that left the government open to forgetting even just once.
Bella also defended the restitution amount, admitting that the government erred in regards to hours it had attributed to one employee but said the total amount is far less than the total that the county likely lost because of Van Til’s crimes. For instance, he said, the government only calculated work employees did for Van Til’s election campaign during certain months of election years and only included eight employees when more actually worked on the campaign.
“This amount of restitution,” Bella said. “It was always going to be an estimate.”
However, King said that there still wasn’t enough evidence to support the total restitution.
Wood, along with Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, heard the case and will issue a ruling later.
Van Til is serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute.