Legal Commentary

Bellicose Prosecutors Quietly Dismiss Charges

By TChris

The grapes are sour in the McLean County (Illinois) State's Attorney's Office but life is sweet for Alan Beaman. As TalkLeft discussed last summer, the Illinois Supreme Court vacated Beaman's 1995 murder conviction after concluding that the prosecution withheld evidence of his innocence. At the time, blustering prosecutors vowed to bring Beaman to trial again.

On January 29, prosecutors quietly filed a motion to dismiss all charges.

"After ignoring our phone calls and messages [the State's Attorney's Office] handed us a motion indicating they were dismissing the indictment," Jeff Urdangen, Beaman's defense lawyer for the last 12 years, said. "We are elated that Alan no longer has the cloud of a wrongful prosecution over his head."

The prosecutor, refusing to rule out Beaman as a suspect, said only that the case remained under investigation and that "all options for future prosecutions remain available." Those options being: (1) prosecute the innocent guy again; (2) try to prosecute the guy implicated by the concealed evidence despite repeated prosecutorial claims that Beaman is the murderer; or (3) never close the investigation and hope the public forgets what happened. The smart money is on option (3).

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 07, 2009 (boomark / email).