Louis Russo was not quite 20 when he was
interrogated by Illinois State Police in March 2003. It was the day
after his infant daughter’s funeral, and investigators had
reason to believe that Russo might have caused the baby’s
death.
Special Agent Cynthia Robbins and Sgt.
Rebecca Dewitt-Early gave Russo his Miranda warning and then
started to question him.
“After having given you your rights,
Louis, are you willing to talk to us?” Robbins asked.
“Before I answer, if I do,” Russo
said, “what are my chances of spending one last night with my
wife?”
His entreaty caught the investigators
off-guard.
“Louis, I have, uh, an answer to a lot
of questions, but that one I don’t have right now,”
Robbins responded.
Over the next 32 minutes, as the
investigators tried to coax Russo to talk, he repeatedly asked for
a private visit with his wife: “I just want to be able to
speak to her before I tell anyone else. . . . I just don’t
want to say anything until I see my wife. . . . I’m not
telling anyone until I tell my wife . . . I just feel it wouldn’t be right
unless I tell her alone. . . . ”
When it became clear that the investigators
weren’t going to grant his request, Russo tried to end the
interrogation: “I’m not talking, I’m not. You
might as well stop the conversation because I’m not going to
talk. . . . You guys can do whatever you want to me. I’m not
going to talk. . . . ”
Months later, when Logan County Circuit Judge
David Coogan heard a tape of this interrogation, he ruled that
Russo’s statement was coerced and therefore inadmissible in
court. By the judge’s count, Robbins and DeWitt-Early had
violated Russo’s Miranda rights 15 to 20 times.
But Miranda wasn’t the only problem.
There’s also an unseemly scheme involving Russo’s dad
and wire-tapped phone calls, explained in a series of police
reports produced more than a year after the interrogation, not to
mention a soap-opera scenario in which Robbins was assigned to this
case by her live-in lover/supervisor, State Police Lt. Carlo
Jiannoni, who hoped to advance her career.
In a memo to the State Police officials, one
of the attorneys involved in the case claimed the
investigators’ incompetence harmed the cause of justice:
“I have tried to envision an innocent
construction of the events . . . and the reports which follow.
Knowing the case as thoroughly as I now do, I cannot ascribe innocent motives to this
situation. My conclusion is that SA Robbins knew or should have known
that Louis was invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. If
she does not know, she is woefully under-qualified to be a case agent
assigned to a murder investigation. If she does know, she intentionally
left extremely pertinent information out of her reports to the
detriment of the accused and ultimately the entire justice
system.”
That statement was drafted not by
Russo’s defense attorney, Tim Timoney, but by Tim Huyett, the
Logan County State’s Attorney — the original prosecutor
of the murder case.
Dated June 23, 2004, Huyett’s
densely-detailed seven-page memo apparently sparked an internal
investigation at ISP, as well as a criminal investigation. And for
the past year, it has appeared possible that the investigators
might be charged with obstruction of justice and official
misconduct.
But last Friday, a Logan County grand jury
convened to consider indictments for Robbins, DeWitt-Early,
Jiannoni and another officer, Sgt. Angela Grable, was cancelled.
Robbins and DeWitt-Early had made a deal, agreeing to accept
administrative sanctions rather than face prosecution. That
agreement means it will be up to ISP to discipline its own
officers.
A clue as to how bad a spanking Robbins and
DeWitt-Early can expect came earlier this month when two other
high-ranking ISP officials found themselves on the bad end of the law
in another case. A federal jury found ISP Capt. Steve Fermon and Lt.
Col. Diane Carper had retaliated against Lt. Michale Callahan for his
efforts to re-investigate a 1986 double-murder (Randy Steidl, one of
two men found guilty of that crime, has already been freed from
prison), and awarded Callahan more than $700,000 in damages.
ISP Director Larry Trent responded with an
e-mail to ISP brass, calling the jury’s decision “a
blatant miscarriage of justice” and pledging full support for
Fermon and Carper.
Timoney says the embarrassment of the
Callahan case might explain why ISP “pushed so hard to get a
deal struck on this.” And indeed, if the plan was to avoid
adverse publicity, it has apparently worked. Aside from a short
segment last Friday night on WICS Channel 20 and an article in the
tiny Lincoln Courier, this scandalous story has attracted no media
attention.
But we may not have heard the end of it yet.
Timoney plans to ask the state inspector general and perhaps the
FBI to investigate. “As far as I’m concerned,” he
says, “I’m not gonna stop.”
This article appears in May 12-18, 2005.
