Monday, March 8, 2010

Casciaro to be in court again on Mar. 19

How will the disappearance and probable murder of Brian Carrick be handled in McHenry County?

Mario Casciaro is sitting in McHenry County Jail on murder charges, unable to bond out on his $5,000,000 bail. His charges? Five counts of murder and one of concealing a homicide.

According to Saturday’s Northwest Herald, “The indictment alleged that Casciaro, or someone for whose conduct he was legally responsible, hit Brian Carrick on the head while committing the offenses of intimidation, mob action and unlawful restraint.”

Robert Render was previously accused of concealing a homicide in this case, but the charges were dropped in mid-January. As I recall, they were dropped without prejudice, meaning that they can be re-filed.

Further on in the article, there was printed, “Another man, Alan Lippert, testified in August that Casciaro had told him what happened to Carrick. Casciaro told (Shane) Lamb to ‘scare’ Carrick over an outstanding debt and ‘things got out of hand’.”

Lamb has reportedly cut an immunity deal with the McHenry County State’s Attorney’s office. If he testifies truthfully and completely in the Casciaro case, he will not be charged in connection with the Carrick case.

Now, what’s wrong with this picture?

If one connects the dots from news stories, then it would be easy to infer that Lamb may be the one for whom things got out of hand. If “getting out of hand” means that Lamb didn’t just “intimidate” Carrick to get him to square up on his debt (what was that debt for?), does it mean that Lamb's actions resulted in Carrick's death?

If that is what happened, should an immunity deal be offered to the one who is suspected of actually causing a death? Could this mean that an actual killer could skate on a murder charge, as long as he testifies truthfully that someone else got him to do something?

Keep in mind that anyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Casciaro should not be tried in the press.

Maybe there shouldn’t be any news in the press about what leads up to a trial. It wasn’t all that long ago that Gary Gauger was tried, convicted, imprisoned, and sent to Death Row. And then released and then exonerated, when the real killers were caught.

Casciaro is due in Judge Prather's court again on March 19. And on March 26 Judge Prather will hear a motion for a subpoena request.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ya know, you do allot of re-hash of news... stuff already published in the media. Why dont you stick with the dirt that "isn't" out there... stuff the public would be interested in behind the scenes. You got a big enough nose sticking in where it doensnt belong... that's the stuff that makes your blogosphere worth reading. Doh.

Joe Ptak said...

Great article Gus! Maybe there will be some way for the real murderer to be discovered, tried and sentenced as he should be.

This plea bargain agreement stuff stinks real bad. Who is the DA protecting and what is his intention?

Another Lawyer said...

I guess you have to decide. Do you give someone immunity and "solve" the case, or just not solve the case (if the testimony is your only shot).

I guess you could say, "Nope, no immunity." And when your case fails, you could blame it on ....

(insert excuse here)

Some cases are tough, and declarations that a person shouldn't get away with something, don't shed any light on how tough they are.

Joe Ptak said...

I have not read anywhere that Mario C. actually committed the murder. If not, does that mean the case will be closed and the actual murderer will be free(d) to commit another murder in the future?

The DA will then be indirectly responsible. Hope he/she doesn't have any political ambitions.