Request For Sheriff's Special Prosecutor Still Open

Thirteen months after ex-deputy Zane Seipler asked for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the McHenry County Sheriff's office, there's still no firm decision.  Wednesday in a ruling based on legal procedure Judge Thomas Meyer refused to change his conclusion that the State's Attorney's Office could handle an investigation but allowed Seipler more time to complain that it wouldn't.

"I'm troubled," Meyer said, by the revelation first reported in FEN that it's the choice of the State's Attorney always to defend the Sheriff in court even though, legally, it could investigate or prosecute him, too.  Assistant State's Attorney Don Leist claimed he'd made that clear in previous arguments but Meyer said, "I didn't think you were stating policy."

Meyer said he'd stand by his ruling that there was no inherent conflict of interest in the State's Attorney's investigating claims of wrongdoing in the Sheriff's office. However, he gave Seipler attorney, Blake Horowitz, two weeks to add to the complaint that by standard operating procedure it didn't intend to.

State's Attorney Lou Bianchi Wednesday declined to explain the point of all the argument about whether his office could investigate the Sheriff if it never intended to do it in the first place.  "We'll address that in our written answer (later)," he said.

A hearing on the latest amended request to investigate the Sheriff's office was tentatively set for March 10.