From the Belleville News Democrat

Oct. 17, 2004
Ads in Supreme Court race don't paint whole picture
Judicial race gets too political for some
BY BRIAN BRUEGGEMANN
The attack dogs have been turned loose in the race for an Illinois Supreme Court seat from Southern Illinois.
Television commercials airing for candidates Lloyd Karmeier and Gordon Maag are using the candidates' judicial records to paint them as soft on criminals -- child molesters, in particular.
It's a situation that worries Mary Schaafsma of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which has voiced concern about the politicization of judicial races. Schaafsma said it's easy to take a judge's ruling out of context and make it look bad in a commercial.
"In a 30-second commercial, you could never say all the facts of a case," Schaafsma said. "An ad can be factually true but contextually false."
Karmeier is a Republican and a circuit judge from Washington County. Maag is a Democrat and an appellate court justice from Glen Carbon.
The battle of the attack ads is expected to get worse and more costly.
The race already has attracted $2.4 million in campaign money, far exceeding the record $1.4 million spent for an Illinois Supreme Court race two years ago. Some political observers estimate total spending could hit $5 million.
Karmeier's top donations are $700,000 from the Republican Party of Illinois and $336,000 from the Illinois Civil Justice League, a group mostly of business interests.
Maag's top donations, about $900,000, have come from the Democratic Party of Illinois, which earlier this year received donations of about $1 million from lawyers, including $300,000 from three Madison County lawyers or firms.
"We're still startled at the level of fund raising in the last two weeks," said Schaafsma, who expects the tone of the ads to get harsher.
In a new commercial for Maag, paid for by the state Democratic Party, Karmeier is criticized for giving probation in 1993 to a 32-year-old Belleville man, Bryan Watters, who molested a young girl and her two brothers and took pictures of the acts.
Steve Tomaszewski, a spokesman for Karmeier, said the commercial fails to point out that Watters was mentally impaired. Watters' attorney, Clyde Kuehn, now an appellate court justice, said at the time that Watters had the intelligence of a 9-year-old.
Karmeier originally sentenced Watters to six years in prison after issuing a finding that he was not eligible for probation, but Watters appealed. The appellate court, in a ruling not involving Maag, overturned the prison sentence and said Watters was eligible for probation.
Brendan Hostetler, a spokesman for Maag, said he thinks Watters should have gone to prison.
"So did the prosecutor in the case," Hostetler said.
The prosecutor at the second sentencing asked for a prison sentence to be imposed.
Tomaszewski said he will ask the Illinois State Bar Association's Standing Committee on Election Campaign Tone and Conduct to review the Watters commercial. The committee, when asked to do so, is reviewing advertisements in the race and, when it deems appropriate, will ask the candidates to disavow ads that are inappropriate.
David Anderson, a spokesman for the committee, said Thursday there were no complaints pending before the committee. So far, neither candidate has been asked to disavow an ad.
Another Democratic Party ad pokes at Karmeier for giving probation in 2000 to Carol Mosley, then 23, of East St. Louis, who took part in the robbery and beating of 92-year-old Florence Krieg of Centreville.
Krieg had $60,000 stolen from her during a two-month period. She was duct-taped and driven to a bank to cash a check for another $9,950, but an employee noticed duct tape around her neck and called police.
Mosley had two co-defendants, a 23-year-old woman who received a sentence of probation as part of a plea bargain she reached with prosecutors and a 16-year-old who was sentenced by a different judge to two months in a juvenile prison and placed on probation for one year. According to court records, it was the 16-year-old who beat and duct-taped the victim.
Maag, when asked whether he would have handled Mosley's case differently, said: "I certainly found it interesting when I read your newspaper articles and read the facts, and read that these people were put on probation."
Tomaszewski said there was "no evidence that there was physical involvement by that lady." He said Mosley, a first-time offender, was the sole provider for her three children, was working and was in school.
"Judge Karmeier put her on intensive probation. He still believes it was the correct decision in that case," Tomaszewski said.
Tomaszewski said an agreement Mosley reached with prosecutors when she pleaded guilty called for a three-year cap on any prison sentence she would receive. He said if Mosley had been sentenced to three years in prison, she would have been free in less than six months due to various sentence credits.
Mosley later was sentenced to four years in prison for violating her probation by possessing bullets in a dresser drawer.
A commercial paid for by the state Republican Party faults Maag for overturning the conviction of a Marion County man for molesting a 6-year-old girl in late 1997.
A Marion County jury convicted the defendant, Gary W. Miller, who was 20 at the time, and he was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison.
The trial judge allowed the girl to testify via closed-circuit television to prevent subjecting her to further trauma, but during the testimony, there were interruptions in the audio and video because of technical problems.
During deliberations, the jury asked for a transcript of the girl's testimony because of the technical problems. The trial judge then read to the jury a transcript of the girl's testimony.
In a ruling that Maag concurred with, the 5th District Appellate Court overturned the conviction on grounds that the trial judge's actions were "a violation of defendant's right to confront and cross-examine the witness against him."
Tomaszewski said Karmeier believes the trial judge's reading of the transcript was proper.
Hostetler said the trial judge "trampled the defendant's constitutional rights." He added, "The commercial makes it sound like he set this guy loose to the public, when what happened was that the case was remanded for trial and the guy got seven years."
After the appeals court overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial, Miller pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and was sentenced to seven years in prison.