Special prosecutors on Thursday rested their case against two former Cook County assistant state’s attorneys standing trial on accusations of wrongdoing in connection with an infamous wrongful conviction case.
The end of the state’s case moves the at-times contentious trial into a new phase, after it resumed in October following an 11-month break due to a rare midtrial appeal. Moments after prosecutors wrapped up, defense attorneys for Nicholas Trutenko, 69, and Andrew Horvat, 49, vigorously argued to Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes — who is hearing the matter instead of conflicted Cook County judges — that the state failed to prove its allegations.
In criminal cases, when the state finishes presenting its case, defendants can argue to a judge that prosecutors failed to meet their burden of proof. A judge then can enter an acquittal at that stage, or deny the motion and order the trial to continue with the defense’s case.
“They’ve gone to such an extreme to come up with some reason to try to indict Andrew Horvat that they’ve stretched the application of the law to the breaking point,” said Terry Ekl, Horvat’s attorney.
Trutenko is charged with perjury, official misconduct, obstruction of justice and violating a local records act in relation to his testimony as a witness at the third and final trial for Jackie Wilson in 2020. Horvat, who represented Trutenko in that proceeding when he was an attorney with the office’s Civil Actions Bureau, is accused of official misconduct.
Wilson, who was eventually granted a certificate of innocence in the slayings of Chicago police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien, was critical to unveiling systemic practices of torture within the Chicago Police Department.
Special prosecutor David Hoffman defended the prosecution team’s case, arguing that there was “blatant concealment” by Trutenko about information that was critical to Wilson’s case.
Shanes took the matter under advisement to rule at a later date.
The history of the case stretches back to 1982, when Jackie Wilson, then 21, was behind the wheel of a car with his brother Andrew Wilson, who shot and killed the two officers. Jackie Wilson has said he did not know his brother would shoot the officers.
In 1989, Trutenko prosecuted Wilson during his second trial after his first conviction was reversed and put on the stand a key witness, a British con man with a long rap sheet named William Coleman, who testified that Wilson had admitted his role in the crime while they were locked up together in the county jail.
The 1989 conviction was also eventually vacated, and Wilson was later tried for the third time in 2020 in a trial that imploded when, prosecutors allege, Trutenko lied on the stand.
Prosecutors have alleged that Trutenko hid a 30-year friendship with Coleman that resulted in him flying to England to serve as godfather during the baptism of one of Coleman’s children. Then, they alleged, he lied on the stand during that trial when defense attorneys asked if he discussed Coleman in prep sessions with the prosecutors trying that case.
The prosecutors assigned to the 2020 trial had not been able to locate Coleman, so they were allowed to admit his 1989 testimony, which Wilson’s attorneys contended violated his constitutional right to confront his accuser.
Prosecutors have accused Horvat of aiding in the concealment of the information.
On Thursday, Trutenko’s attorney Jim McKay argued that Trutenko, while on the stand, largely told the truth about his relationship with Coleman.
“His brain cramp about whether Coleman’s name came up on Zoom, that’s perjury?” McKay said. “You know it’s not.”
Hoffman, though, countered that Trutenko was asked multiple times about a substantive part of the meeting.
“It was really impossible he was misremembering,” Hoffman said.
While delivering arguments, defense attorneys contended that the indictment was wrongheaded and so sweeping that it portends a future of criminal charges that may be levied attorneys for minor slipups or perceived mistakes.
In response, Hoffman argued that official misconduct statutes underscore the “special integrity to lawyers employed … by a public entity.”
“This is not going to ensnare every lawyer … this is for public officials,” he said.
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