Legal fees for the City of Springfield to defend
three former police officers against a civil lawsuit filed by an alleged
drug dealer have likely far exceeded the amount approved by aldermen,
according to documents obtained by Illinois
Times.
Responding to a request filed under the Freedom of
Information Act, the city provided invoices showing that the total bills
paid so far were less than the $100,000 authorized by city council.
However, the records cover only work done through April. Since that time,
the parties have been engaged in intensive discovery efforts, spending days
taking the sworn depositions of numerous witnesses. The city’s legal
office has not yet forwarded the invoices for May through August to the
office of budget and management, and therefore will not release those
bills.
The city hired three top-notch private law firms to
defend former SPD detectives Paul Carpenter, Jim Graham, and retired Lt.
Rickey Davis, who are accused of conspiracy and false arrest by Larry
Washington and Jennifer Jenkins. Carpenter and Graham were fired in October
2006 after an Illinois State Police investigation documented numerous
infractions of SPD rules and policies. Davis, who retired in January 2007,
had been in a supervisory position over the detectives.
In March 2007, when Washington and Jenkins filed suit,
Springfield Corporation Counsel Jenifer Johnson said hiring outside
attorneys to defend each of the former cops at taxpayers’ expense was
necessary because the city has a conflict of interest with each of the
three. She would not explain what that conflict was. In an e-mail to a
reporter, Johnson wrote: “I cannot discuss the nature of the
conflict, but trust me, we have one.”
Washington and Jenkins were arrested in March 2005,
after an early-morning raid of their residence resulted in the seizure of a
half-kilo of cocaine. Charges against both were dropped when the evidence
SPD used to obtain a search warrant — plastic bags with purported
cocaine residue, found in their trash by Carpenter and Graham —
tested negative for narcotics.
In May 2007, the city council passed an ordinance
authorizing payments up to $25,000 each to the firms of Brown, Hay &
Stephens and Heyl, Royster, Voelker & Allen, representing Carpenter and
Graham respectively, and Hinshaw & Culbertson, representing Davis. A
few months later, the council amended the ordinance to double the
allocation for Davis’ attorneys to $50,000.
Carpenter’s attorney, Thomas Schanzle-Haskins,
had billed the city $34,634.10 through April — more than $9,000 above
the approved amount. Graham’s attorneys, Frederick P. Velde and
Theresa M. Powell, had billed $12,389, and Davis’ attorneys, Andrew
Ramage and Charles Schmadeke, had billed $23,040. Ken Crutcher, director of
the city’s office of budget and management, says those invoices have
already been paid.
But those invoices don’t include the fees that
have accumulated during depositions, which began in June. The bills for
work done after April have not yet landed on Crutcher’s desk, and
have not been paid.
“The bills are not releaseable until they have
been processed for payment,” Crutcher says. “They might be in
dispute or something like that. I have not discussed it with
[Johnson].”
Washington’s attorney, Gregory E. Kulis of
Chicago, estimates that the tab for those hours will exceed a
quarter-million dollars, based on multiplying the time spent in depositions
by the $175-per-hour rate of each of the attorneys.
“It’s a crazy case. I’m going to
spend a million dollars of their money. Not me — they’re going
to spend it,” says Kulis. “They’ve got quality lawyers
representing a bunch of officers that state police has said are bad cops.
What the city is doing is taking good taxpayer money to defend bad
officers.”
The ISP probe cited by Kulis was prompted by a 20-page
complaint filed March 2, 2005 by then-Sgt. Ron Vose. The raid on
Washington’s residence happened two weeks later; therefore, the
incident was not included in the ISP’s 2,300-page investigative
report — a document that has never been made public.
Other officers named as defendants in the lawsuit are
Detectives Steve Walsh and J.T. Wooldridge, and retired Deputy Chief
William Rouse. They are represented by two of the city’s staff
attorneys, Megan Morgan and Lucretia Pitts.
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2008.
