Hosey: Prosecutor’s secret reason finally revealed

After months of speculation and conjecture, the secret was finally revealed.

A sealed court filing was at last made public, and the curtain was pulled back for the world to learn why Will County State’s Attorney Jim Glasgow was unable to handle the prosecution of Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk, who had come under the scrutiny of the Illinois State Police for grabbing a pedestrian and dragging him away near the end of a Black Lives Matter rally that devolved into rioting and looting around the West Side last year.

The problem, according to what Glasgow said in a motion asking for a special prosecutor to step in and take care of the matter for him, was that O’Dekirk’s lawyer wrote a letter.

That’s right — a letter. And not just any letter, but one that made a false allegation, Glasgow’s motion said.

“Although the investigation was and is still ongoing the attorney for Bob O’Dekirk sent a letter to the State’s Attorney’s Office falsely alleging that it was steering the investigation away from his client being a victim,” Glasgow said in his Aug. 14 motion.

So now we know, but even in knowing there are so many more questions, not least of which is: Really, that’s all it takes to get your client over to a special prosecutor? You just have to write a letter?

If that’s the case, every defense attorney in town should start typing away and getting their letters to the post office as fast as possible. Especially if there’s the chance of lucking into a special prosecutor like Bill Elward, who seems to be somewhat extra special.

Elward got O’Dekirk’s case when he was already specially prosecuting Joliet Police Officer Erin Zilka, who was charged with driving drunk when she crashed into a disabled box truck.

Zilka’s passenger, off-duty Berwyn Police Officer Charles Schauer, was killed in the January 2020 wreck.

Despite the death of Schauer, Zilka faced only a misdemeanor for nearly a year before the charge was upgraded, and even then she never had to go to jail or post bond. That’s all very unusual when it comes to an aggravated driving under the influence case, at least around here. You might even say it’s special.

On top of all that, Zilka refused to submit to alcohol testing after the crash, according to an Illinois State Police report, and her license was suspended for it. But Zilka was able to get her license back when Elward failed to hold a hearing on the matter before the 30-day deadline, for some reason.

With hearings and court appearances and what have you in the Zilka case taking up so much of his professional life, it’s understandable that Elward might not have an abundance of time to devote to the O’Dekirk situation. After all, as Elward said in a May 13 letter to Chief Judge Dan Kennedy, it “involved hundreds of pages of reports, dozens of cell phone videos, and extensive interviews.”

That sounds like an awful lot to sift through, not to mention Erin Zilka to deal with, and there are only so many hours in a day. So it’s probably for the best that Elward decided to forgo a special prosecution of O’Dekirk. Not that he approved of what the mayor was up to that night. No, not one bit.

“While we do not condone O’Dekirk’s poor judgment in the incident, his actions do not rise to criminal liability,” Elward said in his letter to Kennedy, although he failed to elaborate on what exactly he does not condone.

Was it donning a Joliet Police Department issued baseball cap, then stomping around among a crowd on West Jefferson Street and shouting orders while acting like, one might even say impersonating, a police officer that Elward took exception to? Or could it have been obstructing a pedestrian who said he was just trying to make it to his brother’s car so he could get a ride away from all the chaos of that night?

If it wasn’t putting on a police officer’s hat and acting like a police officer, or blocking a man from walking in the direction he wanted to walk without any authority to do so, then it had to be grabbing that same man and dragging him away, apparently because he wasn’t obeying the man in the police officer’s hat who wasn’t a police officer.

You have to think it’s at least one, if not two or even all three, of those things that Special Bill Elward doesn’t condone. But we may never know because he’s not saying.

Elward failed to respond to a message left with a receptionist at the Special Prosecution Unit of the State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor’s office in Springfield, where he is a contract employee.

To be fair, the receptionist didn’t exactly seem eager to pass the message along so I sent Elward an email as well, just to make sure he got it.

Elward didn’t respond to either the phone message or the email, which wasn’t a complete surprise. Not when you take into account how challenging it must be not filing charges and failing to hold hearings. This whole special prosecutor business, when you really take a good look at it, sounds nothing short of exhausting.

• Joe Hosey is the editor of The Herald-News. You can reach him at 815-280-4094, at jhosey@shawmedia.com or on Twitter @JoeHosey.