LEGAL BILLS MOUNTING
Private attorneys representing fired Springfield Police Department detective Paul Carpenter have billed the city $93,241 for their services defending him over the past 19
months in a civil rights lawsuit filed by a pair of alleged drug dealers. Two
other former officers named as defendants in the lawsuit are also being
represented by private attorneys at taxpayer expense, but the legal bills for
Carpenter’s former partner, Jim Graham, and retired Lt. Rickey Davis are substantially lower than Carpenter’s tab. Davis, represented by Hinshaw & Culbertson, has so far billed $52,359 through September; Graham, represented by
Heyl Royster Voelker & Allen, has run up a bill of $36,063 through August. Carpenter is prepresented
by Thomas Schanzle-Haskins of Brown, Hay and Stephens.
The federal case was filed by Larry Washington and Jennifer Jenkins, arrested in March 2005 when police raided their residence and found a half
kilo of cocaine. They have steadfastly proclaimed their innocence, and charges
were dropped against the pair when plastic bags Carpenter and Graham presented
as evidence to obtain the search warrant for the residence tested negative for
traces of cocaine. Carpenter and Graham became the subjects of a year-long
investigation by Illinois State Police, who documented numerous violations of
SPD procedures by the two detectives. Although city officials subsequently
fired the two officers, the city council agreed to hire private counsel for
them due to an unspecified conflict of interest.
This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2008.
