Friday, May 17, 2013
The attorney for convicted killer Ricardo Gutierrez filed court papers that said the lawyer for his girlfriend threatened to quit the case if she testified at his trial.
Ricardo Gutierrez was convicted of gunning down a man who supposedly threatened his girlfriend and her baby. Court papers field this week claim that same girlfriend wanted to testify at Gutierrez's trial but her lawyer threatened to walk out on her if she did. Gutierrez's attorney, Jeff Tomczak, presented the allegation to Will County Judge Carla Alessio Policandriotes during a Friday morning hearing. Gutierrez was scheduled to be sentenced to prison Friday but that was pushed back by Tomczak's motion. Gutierrez, 24, was found guilty in March of murdering Javier Barrios in October 2007. Barrios was 18 when he was killed. Gutierrez's girlfriend, 24-year-old Gabriela Escutia, was arrested and charged with Barrios' murder along with him. She …
Thursday, May 16, 2013
A Plainfield man convicted of sexually abusing a 15-year-old rambled on about his life, his case and other things before a Will County judge handed him a 5-year prison sentence.
Brian Peppers recalled watching the television show Cops with his grandfather, and how the old man warned him that if he didn't change his ways, he would end up like the shirtless man getting chased down and tackled by the law. "Boy, if you don't get your stuff together, that's going to be you," Peppers said his grandfather told him. "No, grandpa, that's not going to be me," Peppers remembered replying. Maybe Peppers got to keep his shirt on—and wasn't tackled—but he still got slapped with a five-year prison sentence for sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl. Peppers, 25, of Plainfield got to talk about the times he watched Cops with his grandfather during a lengthy speech he gave before Will County Judge Sarah Jones handed down her sentence…
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
A Will County judge postponed making a ruling on whether to release the psychiatric records of the alleged victim in a sex abuse case to the defendant's attorney.
A ruling scheduled for Wednesday on whether to release the psychiatric records of a boy allegedly subjected to sexual abuse by a teen was pushed back a day. Will County Judge Sarah Jones postponed her decision when the attorney for the alleged sexual abuser could not make it to her courtroom for the Wednesday morning hearing. The attorney, Neil Patel, was at a sentencing in an unrelated case down the hall of the Will County Courthouse, said one of his associates, Joel Murphy. Patel is trying to get a hold of the alleged victim's psychiatric records to defend 19-year-old Jason Minger against charges of criminal sexual abuse. Minger, of Plainfield, was arrested in May 2012. He had allegedly abused a boy over the course of a year. The alleged…
Friday, April 26, 2013
A Will County judge will decide whether the lawyer for a Plainfield teen can pursue the psychiatric records of the boy he is charged with sexually abusing.
The lawyer for a Plainfield teen charged with sexually abusing a child is trying to get a hold of the boy's psychiatric records. "I'm not making this request to embarrass or be insensitive to the alleged victim in this case in any way, shape or form," said Neil Patel, the attorney for 19-year-old Jason Minger. Rather, Patel said during a Friday morning court hearing, "The state has indicated that the victim will testify," and the information may prove useful when questioning the boy while he is on the witness stand. According to Patel and to court papers he filed, the boy was undergoing counseling when he told his mother Minger sexually abused him, but he had never mentioned it to the counselor. After informing his mother, the boy also …
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Jason Chance already did time in prison for threatening Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow but was found unfit to answer new allegations of harassing officials.
A downstate man already convicted of threatening Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow on Facebook was found unfit to face new charges of menacing public officials. Jason Chance, 40, was returned to jail after a Monday morning court hearing but will be transferred to a facility run by the Illinois Department of Human Services. Chance has already taken a two-year prison sentence for making threats against Glasgow in 2010. According to a criminal complaint, Chance made a Facebook post "containing a threat to rape and kill James Glasgow." Chance was also charged with "cyberstalking" Glasgow. On top of the prison sentence, Chance was also hit with 30 months of probation with special conditions. Chance allegedly violated that probation by …
Saturday, April 20, 2013
A former Plainfield North gym teacher pleaded guilty to meeting a teen for sex. And that was just one of the things going on in court this week.
More than two years after the police caught her in a car with a half-dressed student from the high school where she was a teacher, Ashley Blumenshine copped a plea. Blumenshine, a 30-year-old former Plainfield North gym teacher, will have to do 11 days in jail. She will also spend two years on sex offender probation and 10 yeas on the Illinois sex offender registry. She tearfully apologized before she was taken into custody to start doing her time. Let's look at what else was going on in the area's courthouses this past week: Check out all these stories and more on our Facebook page.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
A New Lenox man spoke of his "horrific" ordeal in the county jail after he was arrested for a murder someone else was wanted for.
We started the week off by talking with the New Lenox man jailed for two weeks for a murder allegedly committed by someone else with the same name. Pedro Hernandez, 67, said his time in the Will County jail was "horrific," and that he's looking for a lawyer to talk to about filing a lawsuit. But Hernandez's ordeal was just one of the things going on last week. There was also: Check out all these stories and more on our Facebook page.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
There's not going to be a special prosecutor or a special hearing in the Hickory Street double murder case. At least not yet.
It was another week abbreviated by a court holiday. But even with just four days instead of five, there was plenty going on at the area's courthouses. In Joliet, we had one of the defense lawyers in the Nightmare on Hickory Street double murder case asking for a special hearing to find out how Patch obtained police reports no other news outlet seems able get their hands on. The Will County judge presiding over the case didn't go along with it, at least not for the moment. The judge did say he may revisit the issue of a special evidentiary hearing in the future. Attorneys representing the two young men and two young women charged with brutal murdering Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, both 22, backed off on their request for a special …
Friday, March 8, 2013
The jury took two days before returning a guilty verdict in the case of Ricardo Gutierrez.
A Chicago man charged with a 2007 Plainfield murder went to bed Thursday night with his fate in the hands of the jury. On Friday afternoon, that jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. The jury returned about 2 p.m. and convicted Ricardo Gutierrez, 23, of first-degree murder. Gutierrez gunned down Javier Barrios in October 2007. Barrios was 18 when he was killed. Barrios, a Romeoville resident, was first shot by his ex-girlfriend, 24-year-old Gabriela Escutia, police said. Escutia allegedly set up a rendezvous with Barrios in a field on Route 59 near a Meijer service station. Gutierrez reportedly joined her for the meeting. Guttierez's attorneys, Jeff Tomczak and Paul Napolski, said their client shot Barrios in self-defense, and that…
Thursday, March 7, 2013
The jury deliberated for more than seven hours in the murder trial of Ricardo Gutierrez.
The deadlocked jury in the Ricardo Gutierrez murder trial was sent home for the night shortly before 8:30 p.m. Thursday and will resume deliberations Friday morning. Gutierrez, 23, allegedly gunned down Javier Barrios in October 2007. Barrios was 18 when he was killed. Barrios, a Romeoville resident, was first shot by his ex-girlfriend, 24-year-old Gabriela Escutia, police said. Escutia allegedly set up a rendezvous with Barrios in a field on Route 59 near a Meijer service station in Plainfield. Gutierrez reportedly joined her for the meeting. Guttierez's attorneys, Jeff Tomczak and Paul Napolski, said their client shot Barrios in self-defense, and that Escutia lived in fear of her former boyfriend. Escutia and Barrios reportedly had a …
Joseph Hosey
9:23 am on Saturday, May 18, 2013
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