Judge D.J. Tegeler on Wednesday denied a request by murder suspect Daniel Rak’s attorney to throw out an assistant state’s attorney’s affidavit relating to emails in the case.
Prosecutors charged Rak with fatally beating his father, Jeffrey, during an altercation inside the home they shared in Burlington Township in February 2016. Daniel Rak has pleaded not guilty and remains in Kane County Jail on $950,000 bail where he has been since his arrest in June. Differing positions on the case have emerged in court filings, with Kane County Public Defender Kelli Childress claiming Jeffrey Rak was an alcoholic prone to “falls, seizures and … blackouts” and prosecutors contending he died of a fatal blow delivered by his son, not a prior injury.
The situation argued in court Wednesday arises out of a subpoena issued by Childress last year seeking sheriff’s office emails and other communications relating to the Rak case. In the course of complying with that subpoena, county officials included several public defender’s office emails, which Childress suggested is a breach of client-attorney privilege that undermines the case against Rak.
However, Assistant State’s Attorney Deborah Lang filed an affidavit in October explaining that she recognized the county’s information technology department had included public defender messages and then deleted the emails in question from her inbox without opening them.
“I realized that one of the senders of the emails was from the public defender’s office and realized it was internal communications,” Lang wrote in the affidavit, noting she has sought to quash the subpoena. “I did not read any of the email involving the public defender’s office. No other person saw the emails. I did not show anyone else the emails and at no time did the trial prosecutors see any email communication of the public defender’s office.”
Childress objected to Lang filing the affidavit to the court file since she is not directly involved in the case.
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“This has no basis to be in the court file,” she said, adding it could open a “Pandora’s Box” for people to file statements they want heard in connection to any case.
Tegeler agreed with prosecutors when he ruled that the affidavit was filed properly, with all attorneys and Rak made aware of it in a timely manner.
Childress is also seeking to have her client’s statements to investigators suppressed for a number of reasons, including that Daniel Rak was under the influence of alcohol and not given food or water when first taken into custody on Feb. 14, 2016, after sheriff’s police responded to an early morning 911 call to the residence, according to a motion filed last year. Childress argues Rak was “detained against his will for more than 58 hours” before being released without charges. Any statements he made during that time should be barred because Rak was physically ill, emotionally distraught over his father and had been isolated while in custody. Tegeler has scheduled a Feb. 2 hearing to consider the suppression motion.
Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.