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A man serving 40 years in prison for killing his wife in 2016 – leaving her body in the basement of their McHenry home for two days before attempting suicide, then calling 911 – claims in a post-conviction petition that his constitutional rights were violated during his trial.
When police arrived to the home they found her body under a pile of wood in the basement and it appeared Harrison planned to burn her and the house down.
Harrison waived a jury trial and his case was heard before McHenry County Judge James Cowlin who handed down the guilty verdict.
In his petition, Harrison alleges that his constitutional rights were violated when his attorney did not adhere to doctors’ notes regarding his mental health and have him evaluated for fitness upon arrival at the jail.
Judge Robert Wilbrandt on Wednesday scheduled an evidentiary hearing on April 14 over a prosecutor’s motion to dismiss.
Harrison claims that his attorney, Assistant Public Defender Kim Messer should have sent him for a mental health fitness evaluation when initially brought to the McHenry County jail from Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville. He was taken to the hospital after being arrested at his home on June 6, 2016, and treated for a self-inflicted stab wound, he wrote in his petition filed in the McHenry County courthouse on Feb. 23, 2021.
Hospital personnel alerted arresting officers on June 8, 2016, that he needed further psychiatric evaluation and was still considered suicidal. Hospital personnel recommended to city of McHenry police officers that he be taken to a mental health facility rather than jail. Instead, he was taken to the McHenry police station then to McHenry County jail “where he did not receive any suicide precautions,” according to Harrison’s petition and an opinion affirming Harrison’s conviction from 2020 filed with the Second District Appellate Court in Elgin.
Harrison also claims Messer was not initially provided correct medical records indicating the doctor’s concern and recommendation. When she did receive the records, Harrison wrote she did not motion for a fitness hearing in violation of his constitutional rights.
Although not evaluated immediately after his arrest, he was evaluated twice by a psychologist in preparation for his trial. The first evaluation was within the first four months of his arrest, according to the 2020 opinion.
On Nov. 1, 2016, Messer reported to Cowlin she had received the mental health evaluation and was seeking additional medical records.
On September 13, 2017, Messer requested a second evaluation to “assess his state of mind at the time of the offense,” according to the 2020 opinion.
In the following months, Messer followed up with the evaluator and gathered additional information on Harrison’s mental health and on July 30, 2018, she told the judge that Harrison would be presenting an “insanity defense,” according to the 2020 opinion.
On that same date she also filed for a motion to dismiss the case stating that the state never disclosed that “a police officer ignored the recommendation of a treating medical professional to transport defendant to a facility capable of treating his ongoing mental health” and instead took him to the county jail, according to the 2020 opinion.
Messer alleged that “the officer’s bad faith decision to ignore defendant’s treatment recommendation prevented the defense from obtaining exculpatory, or at least potentially useful, material evidence related to an insanity defense.”
On Aug. 3, 2018, Messer told the judge that after discussing with Harrison they were withdrawing the insanity plea. Cowlin also asked Harrison directly if he agreed with that and he responded that he did, according to the 2020 opinion affirming Harrison’s conviction.
In court Wednesday, Harrison’s current attorney Thomas Carroll said though Messer did have Harrison’s mental health evaluated she did not disclose the findings from the phycologist to the judge or the prosecutors at the time.
Wilbrandt said, unlike top prior arguments Harrison has made, this third argument rests on a “possible constitutional violation” of Harrison’s rights.
“If someone is saying he is unfit, he can’t agree to a waiver of jury trial,” Wilbrandt said.
The judge also said that neither he nor Carroll, nor the prosecutor, Assistant State’s Attorney Jim Newman, were present at his bench trial and cannot say whether Harrison was fit.
“There really are issues of fact,” Wilbrandt said. “We don’t have records, here. None of us were there and saw what was going on and [we]have not seen psychological evaluations that were done and [we] don’t know why she didn’t include them in the file.”
Wilbrandt and Carroll agreed that Messer did nothing wrong in not submitting the reports to the court while preparing for trial, but they just don’t know why or what the reports said.
The issue “at any stage of proceedings was whether Harrison was fit and whether he gave up any rights because he was unfit,” Carroll said.
Formerly Laura Yunger, she grew up in part in Naperville and was a 2004 graduate of Neuqua Valley High School. She was one of a set of triplets and a half sibling to a second set of younger triplets. At the sentencing hearing, friends and family described her as a “wonderful person, truly good human being.”
At the time of the murder, she was trying to end their marriage. She had a pending domestic violence charge against him filed in McHenry County courthouse.
In handing down the sentence, Cowlin, who now is McHenry County Chief Circuit Judge, said her murder was “a true textbook case of domestic violence.”
Harrison also expressed remorse during the sentencing hearing saying the murder was “unspeakable, unthinkable and despicable,” “a nightmare.”