Embattled Illinois State Police Capt. Steve Fermon was
on trial again last week, facing a second accusation of retaliating against
an underling. This time, the jury deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial. In April, a federal jury found Fermon and his
supervisor, Lt. Col. Diane Carper, guilty of retaliating against former ISP
Lt. Michale Callahan by transferring him from investigations to patrol.
Callahan claimed that the move was punishment for his efforts to
reinvestigate the 1986 double homicide of newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads
in Paris. In the more recent case, Fermon was accused of
retaliating against ISP trooper Lance Dillon for complaints Dillon had made about ISP Special Agent Lou
Shanks. In 2000, Shanks and Dillon worked together in a Danville-based
multiagency task force called the Vermilion Metropolitan Enforcement Group.
The task force set up a drug sting operation just across state lines in
Indiana, to take advantage of that state’s tougher sentencing laws.
After an Illinois-based drug dealer ensnared in the sting pleaded guilty,
Shanks testified at a sentencing hearing that the man sold drugs mainly in
Illinois. Dillon told the prosecutor that Shanks’ testimony was
inaccurate. To make matters worse, Dillon later repeated this
accusation to Ron Haring, a retired ISP officer who worked on a contract
basis, performing background checks for ISP. Shanks had applied for a
promotion, and Haring ultimately recommended that Shanks not get the job.
Shanks, who is a friend of Fermon’s, got the promotion anyway but was
subsequently fired for unrelated reasons. The day after Dillon was transferred to patrol, Fermon
sent an e-mail to ISP deputy director Dan Kent with the message: “I
could kiss you, but I will not. Thanks so much.” The subject line in
the e-mail was “Dillon.” Callahan testified briefly in the case, though no one
on the jury was aware that he had already won his own similar court case
against Fermon, and that fact was not allowed to be presented to the jury. Unlike Callahan, who had a clean disciplinary record
at ISP, Dillon had been given at least two significant suspensions for
violating ISP policies. One incident involved Dillon’s taking his
children to school in his squad car and subsequently lying about it to
ISP’s internal-affairs investigators; another incident involved a
verbal altercation involving his brother and a tavern patron. The jury in the case had five questions to consider
and, after five hours of deliberation, could not reach consensus on any of
them. However, the judge acknowledged in open court that jury polls
indicated that many members of the panel sympathized with Dillon. Scott Mulford, spokesman for the Illinois attorney
general’s office, which represented Fermon at trial, declined to talk
about the trial. “In light of what happened, we should probably
refrain from commenting,” he said. Dillon’s attorney, John Baker, is taking an
optimistic view of the exercise. “There was a big hurdle to overcome
to bring a lawsuit like that. We obviously were pleased that enough of [the
jurors] saw things in our favor. We were just disappointed that all of them
didn’t see things that way,” he said. The case is scheduled for a new trial beginning July
10.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2006.
