Alleged ‘masking’ of past DUI convictions for DeKalb man charged in deputy death ‘alarming:’ Rep. Keicher

SYCAMORE – State Rep. Jeff Keicher is calling for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office to investigate the driving background of a DeKalb man charged with driving under the influence and causing a crash that killed DeKalb County Sheriff’s Deputy Christina Musil.

Keicher, R-Sycamore, said he’s also in the middle of drafting legislation that would fix what he called a “glaring hole” in state legislation related to releasing a person pending trial.

The public outcry was prompted this week after Capitol News Illinois reported that the driving record of Nathan Sweeney, 44, was not properly reported to state officials, calling into question whether he should have had a driver’s license or access to a commercial driver’s license at the time of the March semitrailer crash that killed the sheriff’s deputy.

Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said Sweeney “should have been denied his ability to get behind the wheel” had Kane County officials properly notified his office of the 2020 DUI conviction, CNI reported.

In a statement posted to his official Facebook page, Keicher called the news “deeply troubling.”

“The fact that his DUI record may have been illegally masked in a plea deal with the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office raises alarming questions,“ Keicher wrote. ”Had the law been followed and the DUI reported to the state, Deputy Musil would very likely still be alive today.”

Sweeney is charged with driving under the influence of drugs while behind the wheel of a commercial truck for work and crashing into the squad car of Musil on March 28, killing her.

In a statement released Friday afternoon, Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said that although her office welcomes an audit of the 2020 case, she refutes allegations against her office’s practices made by the secretary of state. She expressed condolences for Musil’s family.

“Contrary to the allegations made in that letter, the decisions regarding the case were based upon a number of factors that were unrelated to [Sweeney’s] commercial driver’s license," Mosser said in a news release. “We welcome any review or audit of the 2020 case and our practices by the secretary of state and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which will show that the allegations against my office are without merit.”

Sweeney’s defense lawyer, John Kopp, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Musil, 35, a mother of three and a veteran who served in Afghanistan, was on patrol the night of March 28 in rural Waterman. She’d been with the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office for five years, and also served in the corrections division briefly. Musil was parked and sitting in her squad car just south of the intersection of Perry Road and Route 23 about 10:40 p.m. that night when a Kenworth semitrailer truck, driven by Sweeney, ran off the road and rear-ended Musil’s car. She died hours later at Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital in DeKalb, authorities said.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers and loved ones attended her funeral. Affectionately called “Beana” by family, she was remembered for her devotion to her children and selfless nature, according to her obituary.

Four years before police said Sweeney caused the crash that killed Musil, he pleaded guilty to DUI and having 44 grams of heroin in his car. The 2020 offense, if properly reported to the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office according to the law, should have led to Sweeney’s driver license and commercial driving privileges being revoked, CNI reported.

The state was never notified of that conviction, however. Instead, Sweeney agreed to a plea deal with Kane County prosecutors that masked the convictions that would have triggered the license revocation, a practice prohibited by both state and federal law, Giannoulias told CNI. Giannoulias has called for a federal audit into Kane County.

DeKalb County Sheriff Andy Sullivan told Shaw Local on Thursday that he hopes whatever comes of an investigation into the state’s handling of unreported DUI convictions means fewer lives lost.

“I am appreciative of the efforts that are being made by Secretary Giannoulias and Rep. Keicher to have this looked into at a deeper level,” Sullivan wrote in a statement. “I hope that when this investigation is complete that there will be measures put into place that would prevent this from ever happening again. After learning more about the past driving history, drug addiction and accompanying charges, this defendant should have never been behind the wheel.”

Keicher says changes needed to SAFE-T Act

Keicher said he is working with his staff and is in the early stages of drafting legislation that he hopes will stop something like Musil’s death from happening again. He reiterated concerns that he’s voiced before about pretrial release standards set by the Illinois Pretrial Fairness Act.

Cashless bail is prohibited in Illinois under that legislation, the portion often referred to as the SAFE-T Act. Instead, prosecutors must argue a list of criteria in front of a judge: What is a person’s criminal history and severity of new charges? Do they pose a risk to victims or the public if released? Can a judge set stipulations such as restrictive GPS monitoring, surrendering all weapons or revoking a driver’s license that would lower that risk if released pending trial?

When Sweeney was released in April, Circuit Court Judge Marcy Buick’s ruling in DeKalb County court came under public scrutiny. Some argued that Sweeney’s release, as he faces charges in connection with Musil’s death, was unfair because he’d been accused of causing the death of a first responder. In her ruling at the time, Buick cited the SAFE-T Act and its legal guidelines as to why she let him go free pending trial.

Sweeney is not allowed to drive, was ordered to surrender his license and refrain from consuming nonprescribed drugs or alcohol, and was ordered to undergo regular randomized drug testing in Kendall County.

Court records show that Buick granted Sweeney’s request Nov. 7 to amend how he’s drug tested as he awaits trial. Instead of driving to Yorkville three times per week for a urinalysis, Sweeney’s lawyer had asked that he be allowed instead to wear a PharmChek sweat patch. Kopp argued that the patch, which tests for drugs in a person’s system through perspiration, would save Sweeney’s family driving time and be “a more reasonable and less restrictive means of drug testing,” he wrote in an Oct. 21 court filing.

Given news of Sweeney’s driving history coming to light, when asked whether his office would pursue amending Sweeney’s pretrial release in the fatal crash case, DeKalb County State’s Attorney Riley Oncken said Friday that he needs to confer with the lead prosecutor on the case, Scott Schwertely, before answering. Oncken is on his fifth day on the job after he was sworn in Monday.

Keicher told Shaw Local that he believes whatever is unearthed from an audit of Kane County courts could inform potential proposed amendments to the SAFE-T Act.

“Equally alarming in all of this is that Sweeney was granted pretrial release under the SAFE-T Act,” Keicher said in his statement. “Regardless of his past record, the fact that someone charged with aggravated DUI [of] drugs causing death and reckless homicide is free after killing a police officer demonstrates the frightening limitations of the SAFE-T Act.”

He said he thinks it’s too early to put a draft up in Springfield, however.

“It would be ill advised for anyone to proceed with legislation that doesn’t actually address the root cause of how we got here,” Keicher said. “So, my whole goal is to have an informed narrative about how they got this person back out on the road, given the facts of the prior intoxication accidents. And once that’s known with confidence at the conclusion of an investigation, that will be the appropriate time to proceed with trying to close any [legislation] loopholes that were unidentified prior to that.”

Beth Hundsdorfer of Capitol News Illinois contributed to this report.