Courtroom 302 (57 page)

The sheriffs eventually manage to steer most of the spectators out to the hallway. But the spectators stay close to the courtroom door—they’re going to wait for Mandeltort to emerge, they say. “You have to come out
some
time!” one of them yells. More epithets are hollered. A young man screams that Caruso got “
railroaded
!” A deputy asks him to lower his voice. “Fuck
you
,” the young man replies. “
Eight
years. What are they gonna do, make it
twenty
?”

The prosecutors wait in the courtroom until they’re told that the hallway has been cleared. Two retired Chicago police detectives, assigned by the state’s attorney’s office to guard the prosecutors throughout the case, escort them from the courtroom. A few Caruso supporters remain in the hallway. “They were still calling me names as we walked by,” Mandeltort will say later.

The tepid response of the sheriffs to the uproar stunned Mandeltort. The sheriffs “were useless,” she’ll say. “If someone had been getting beaten, the person would have been dead before the sheriffs did anything.” Had the case involved a black defendant, and had his supporters greeted the judge’s ruling with screams and curses in the gallery and hallway, the sheriffs “would have locked the whole group up,” Mandeltort will say.

She’s never before been frightened at 26th Street. “People have always said to me, ‘Aren’t you afraid to prosecute murderers and rapists?’ But to most defendants, who I am doesn’t matter. I’ve put people on death row, but until this moment in my career, it had never been taken personally. The defendants and their families realize that if I wasn’t trying them, somebody
else would be. Yeah, I was frightened when this happened, because it really was a mob mentality. But my feeling was, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. You don’t have to do DNA to find out where Frankie came from. These people all this time were saying, ‘Poor Frankie, he’s not that way,’ and, ‘We’re calm, peaceful, loving, law-abiding citizens’—and they were like animals.”

After almost everyone else has left the courtroom, Frank Junior’s uncle, labor leader Bruno Caruso, is still standing in the gallery aisle, staring at the judge’s empty bench. I ask him if he’ll proceed with the campaign to unseat Locallo. “I’ll treat him the same way I’d treat an arbitrator who makes a bad decision,” he says with a wave of an unlit cigar. “An arbitrator makes a bad decision, I certainly don’t want him sticking around. But it’s a personal campaign. It’s personal.”

After Bruno Caruso finally leaves, Locallo returns from his chambers to the bench to mop up his call. He issues continuances to a string of defendants represented by public defender Bob Galhotra. Galhotra, who was present for the mayhem, was amazed that Locallo allowed Caruso Senior to make his remarks. “You have a really thick skin, Judge,” the PD tells him between cases. “That went way beyond the call of duty.”

“Well, I’m Sicilian, too,” Locallo says with a laugh. Then he adds, “Hey, Bob, will you start my car?”

CARUSO SENIOR
“wanted to see me react,” Locallo says in his chambers after he’s finished his call. “Sure, he was out of line, but I think I handled it right. If I go down to his level, what does that show? So he makes his statement. So he gives his shot. Does it change anything? Is his son better off because of it?”

He’s reminded of a story another judge once told him, about what the judge had said to a defendant who called him an “asshole” under his breath after the judge sentenced him to prison. Locallo leans back in his chair and tells the tale gleefully:

“So this judge says to the defendant, ‘You know, sir, when I get done with my court call at the end of the day, I’m gonna take off my robe, drive home, and have a glass of wine and a nice dinner with my wife. Then I’ll watch a movie, or maybe read a book; and then I’ll go to sleep in my own bed. In the morning I’ll take a shower, have a nice breakfast, come down to work, and handle some cases. You, on the other hand—you’re going to leave this building in handcuffs. You’ll go back to the jail, where you’ll get a cold baloney sandwich. You’ll be taken back to your cell with no chance to shower. In the morning they’ll stick you on a bus that’ll take you to prison. So
who’s
the asshole here?’ ”

About the Carusos, the judge adds: “All this stuff about ‘racial healing’? It’s all bullshit. What happened today when their motion was denied? You see? Their true nature came out. Just like Frank Junior’s true nature came out on March 21, 1997.”

Locallo says he isn’t worried about his safety even though he has angered a reputed mob family. “It’d be different if there was an unholy alliance between me and them, and they had perceived that I was in their pocket, and I had disappointed them,” he says. “But I was just doing my job. My wife will probably be more concerned.” He’s anxious about the campaign to unseat him, though, he says.

But even this stormy day has had a ray of sun. Locallo shows me a letter he received today from Dino Titone. Titone wrote from prison to thank the judge for the contact visit he gave Titone with his family last week on the day Locallo sentenced him to natural life. “All of the time you allowed me with my family was special, and we are all very appreciative,” the letter said. “I have the utmost respect for you and your office.” The judge’s sentencing decision “brought peace to my father (and me), and was a sign that God has indeed been working in my life,” Titone wrote. He thanked Locallo “for being humane and Christ-like.”

DOMINIC DI FRISCO
, president emeritus of Chicago’s Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, was in the gallery when Locallo denied the motion to reconsider the sentence. For years, Di Frisco, a public relations executive and a friend of the Caruso family, has led the fight locally against negative stereotyping of Italian Americans, and especially against the mobster image. Locallo says Di Frisco called him before the hearing on the motion to reconsider and tried to persuade him to reduce Caruso’s sentence—an accusation Di Frisco vehemently denies.

After the Caruso trial but before Caruso was sentenced, Locallo says he bumped into Di Frisco at a Columbus Day reception. He says Di Frisco praised him effusively for how he conducted the trial. Di Frisco also mentioned that he’d be helping with the telecast of the Columbus Day parade the following week, and he’d make sure to mention Locallo’s name. Locallo was going to be riding on two floats in the parade—one for the retention judges, and one for the Justinian Society of Lawyers, an association of Italian American lawyers. Since he was up for retention, he’d appreciate the plug, he told Di Frisco. And Di Frisco came through: friends of Locallo’s told him they heard his name repeatedly during the telecast.

It was after Genson filed his motion to reconsider the sentence that Locallo got a call from Di Frisco, according to the judge. “He starts out
saying that the FBI has it in for Italians and that Italians are getting rougher treatment from the law. Then he says, ‘Could you show that you’re a compassionate judge by reducing Caruso’s sentence? Because I fear the consequences if you don’t.’ ”

Locallo says he was flabbergasted. He couldn’t believe the “boldness of somebody attempting to muscle me like that.” He didn’t know what “consequences” meant, “but I took it as a threat. I told him, ‘I’ll make my decision based on the law and the evidence and what I think is right. This conversation’s over.’ ”

Of Locallo’s version of events, Di Frisco says: “To call that a blatant lie would be the understatement of the century. I never threatened him in any way, nor did I ask him to reduce the sentence. I said that I trusted that God would guide him toward a just and proper sentence.” Moreover, Di Frisco says that when he called Locallo, he was only returning a call the judge had placed to him. “I was quite shocked to hear from him as a matter of fact. He asked me, ‘Would there be any repercussions if the matter doesn’t go the way the family wants it to go?’ I said I thought the only repercussions would be political.” Di Frisco allows that he did believe the sentence was too harsh and that Locallo gave it because he thought it would benefit him politically.

Locallo says it’s an “absolute lie” that he called Di Frisco.

He also says he thinks Di Frisco used his public relations skills to burnish the Caruso image while the case was pending. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he and the Carusos sat at a table and talked about what they could do to improve their image. He’s got the Caruso family going to these prayer services, members of the family carrying the rosary in court, Mr. Caruso carrying the Bible, showing up with his hair all white. It was a PR scheme all the way.” Genson unquestionably condoned this scheme, in Locallo’s view. “Anything Ed could use to his advantage, he was going to use it.”

Di Frisco says he attended the racial healing services but didn’t suggest them, nor did he play a role in any effort to enhance the Caruso image. “I wish I were that talented,” he says. Genson, likewise, says, “I didn’t condone anything” regarding attempts to improve the Caruso image. “I don’t involve myself in that sort of thing. If the family did that sort of thing, it was the family that did it.”

WITHIN DAYS
of Locallo’s rejection of the motion to reconsider, blue-and-white placards urging voters to “Vote No!” on Locallo bedeck the front windows or yards of every home on the 200 block of West 25th
Street—Frank Caruso’s block. Other anti-Locallo signs are scattered throughout Bridgeport, but they’re a rare sight elsewhere in the county.

“
JUDGE DAN LOCALLO LET THE TWO WHITE BOYS GO FREE,
” screams
a large ad in the
Chicago Defender
, the African American daily, ten days before the election. “
NO JUSTICE
!
NO PEACE
!
VOTE NO
!
NO
!
NO
!” The ad bears the name of the Inner City Youth Foundation, a south-side not-for-profit whose executive director, Maurice Perkins, is a Caruso ally. (Perkins was among those who’d written Locallo letters on Caruso’s behalf before his sentencing. His foundation had also given Caruso Senior a
humanitarian award two days before Caruso Junior was sentenced.)

On Halloween, Caruso supporters pass out flyers in various Cook County locations asking voters to no longer allow Locallo “to play trick or treat with the lives of the people of this county.” According to the flyers, Locallo tried to appease African American voters by giving Caruso a stiff sentence and white voters by giving probation to Jasas and Kwidzinski, thereby dividing a community “very much in the midst of racial healing.” To permit Locallo to stay on the bench “is in itself a
travesty of justice,” the flyers say. “If you vote for only one thing, let it be to stop the injustice of Daniel Locallo.”

Locallo is hardly without support, however. In fact, the campaign to oust him elevates him overnight into a cause célèbre. “
By all accounts, Locallo is a fair and honorable judge who deserves to retain his seat,” a
Sun-Times
editorial says.
Sun-Times
columnist Steve Neal writes that the “travesty of justice” would be “if Locallo is punished by the voters for doing the right thing.”
Tribune
columnist R. Bruce Dold calls Locallo one of the best judges in Cook County. “
He’s fair, he explains the law to people in his courtroom, and he works like a dog. And if he loses his job in this election because he handled a tough case, every judge in Cook County will know what that means: Don’t be a hero. Locallo’s election shouldn’t be in question. We ought to be holding a parade for him.”

Leaders of bar groups and civic organizations pepper the city’s dailies with letters supporting the judge. “I will never hesitate to present a case or stand before Locallo for any reason,” writes William Hooks, the first African American president of the Chicago chapter of the Federal Bar Association. “His integrity is above reproach, and he is certainly not a racist.”

Locallo even gets help from John Hillebrand, the foreperson in the first Kevin Betts murder trial earlier this year. Hillebrand sends letters to the jurors who served with him, alerting them to the anti–Locallo campaign. “I
for one plan to tell my friends that Judge Locallo should be returned to the bench. I hope you will join me,” Hillebrand’s letter says.

Genson says he counseled the Carusos not to oppose Locallo’s retention. The campaign against the judge “makes no sense,” Genson says. “You have a guy who, as judges go, is extraordinarily competent, who works hard, who tries to do the right thing.” He’s confident that Locallo will be retained regardless. “But he doesn’t just want to be retained,” Genson says. “He wants to be on the appellate court, and he wants to be on the supreme court, and he wants to be king of the world.”

THE CARUSOS
’ “
vindictive” campaign against Locallo “provides yet another compelling reason to dump the traditional process of electing judges in favor of a nonpartisan merit-selection system,” a
Sun-Times
editorial observes.

In other democracies judges are almost always appointed, as they are in the U.S. federal system. The idea is that a judge shouldn’t have to worry about popular opinion when making a decision.

In the nineteenth century, fears of government power caused states entering the union to opt to elect their judges, and still today most elect some or all of their judges.
In fifteen states, however, judges are now picked through some form of “merit selection,” under which a commission typically nominates candidates, and the governor, the legislature, or the state supreme court makes the final choices.

Those lobbying for a switch to merit in Illinois contend that an expert nominating commission will produce more qualified candidates for the bench than do the ward bosses who choose most of the candidates now. Merit proponents also point out that even the most conscientious voters can’t vote intelligently on so many judicial seats. In a survey of Cook County voters after the 1998 primary, half those polled said they based their judicial votes on “
hardly any” or “no” information; five percent said their votes were based on a “great deal” of information. Voters in the primary were faced with choices in sixteen judicial races. In the coming general election, they’ll have in addition the seventy-two retention judges to consider.