Dispatch 12.18.07
The frisson that comes from party-crashing is always enhanced by the chance to rub elbows with luminaries. I took a gamble recently and bluffed my way into the dedication ceremonies for, and the inaugural inductions into, the Area 45 Special Prosecutors Hall of Fame in Crown Point. I learned that prosecutors, like baseball teams, apparently need a bullpen of relievers - outside legal warriors brought in to handle Lake County criminal cases that the regular prosecutor is (for reasons I don’t pretend to understand) unable to start or unable to finish.
Not surprisingly, those in attendance were mainly lawyers, whom I noticed tended to clink Rolexs with each other as some form of tribal greeting. Passing myself off as one of them proved easier than expected - I simply nodded sagely when the lawyers talked shop and acted like an arrogrant pr*ck when dealing with real people.
Here’s a profile on the initial Hall of Fame inductees and a summary of their yeoman-like service to the citizens of Lake County:
Eric Tamashasky
On Easter Sunday in 2004, Leslie Paul McGuire and two others punched and kicked an East Chicago man, and struck him with a metal object believed to be a tire iron. The victim suffered episodic loss of vision. McGuire and the others were charged with attempted murder and battery. Special Prosecutor Tamashasky (imported from the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s Office) fought, clawed, scratched and battled his way to a plea agreement calling for McGuire’s conviction to the lesser charge of battery. A strange probationary sentence followed, strange because: (1) probation was not a legally permissible option for that crime, and (2) probation was not an legally permissible option for McGuire, because he’d been convicted some 24 years before of the murder of a cab driver. Somehow, Tamashasky missed those finer points of law, but hey, those things happen.
P.S. Less than three months after this never-shudda-happened probationary sentence, McGuire stabbed and killed an East Chicago woman. He’s now in prison for murder, again.
P.P.S. Tamashasky’s services as special prosecutor for the case were needed because one of the other men involved in the beating was a relative of Prosecutor Bernard Carter. That relative, who also received probation, was represented by Carter’s close family friend, Willie Harris.
Kimberly DeWitt
In 2005, Kimberly DeWitt (from the LaPorte County Prosecutor’s Office) was brought in from the bullpen to relieve Carter’s office in the drug prosecution of Sharde McKinney. The reasons for the appointment of this special prosecutor - four months into the case - remain a little vague. DeWitt faced two batters made two appearances at hearings here in Lake County and dismissed the drug case.
P.S. McKinney is back in jail, charged with the September 2007 murder of a Gary legal secretary.
After the induction ceremonies, the attendees were treated to dinner and a movie - And Justice For All, starring Al Pacino.
December 24th, 2007 at 3:37 am
Those three guys were charged with A misdemeanor battery for 6 months before the special prosecutor was brought in. They all pleaded guilty to felonies. Don’t let facts interfere with your blog, though. The victim of the “attempted murder” took his mom to Easter mass immediately after the incident.
***********************
UC Response: And so don’t let the law interfere with a good probationary sentence? McGuire chose to plead guilty to a felony, not a misdemeanor - a felony for which probation was not a permissible option, as acknowledged after-the-fact. Was the agreement for the felony plea just for show, just for public consumption, with probation to follow with a wink and a nod from the special prosecutor? Or was the SP surprised by the resulting sentence and simply lacked the cajones to speak up about it? Or did the SP simply not know the elementary fact that probation was not permitted by law under the circumstances? None of these possibilities is particularly comforting, given the homicide that followed a few weeks later. Peace.