Judge Chmiel - the back story

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
June 23, 2010

Judge Chmiel's "little helpful deed" back in 2007 is back in the news, now that another Father's Day has come and gone. He's the judge (juvenile judge at the time) who got a call to come into the "office" (jail) and help out a friend's brother who didn't want to sit in the jug (with all those criminals) until Monday, like everyone else was going to.

Did he hold a bond court for all who were wanting to bond out? No, siree. Just for one. One David W. Miller, then 50, brother of Algonquin Township Commissioner Bob Miller.

Miller had been, as I recall, suspected of operating an over-weight truck and, when the officer tried to stop him, he drove away and onto his property, where he dumped the load. Pretty hard to measure the weight of a load on the ground, isn't it? Maybe the officer should have called for a spade and told Miller to put the load back in the truck!

What were the tickets and what happened to them?

07TR036963 Fleeing/Attempt to elude officer
07TR036964 Reckless driving
07TR036965 Failure to obey officer
07TR036966 Fail to stop for weighing
07TR036967 Open vehicle w/o cover, tarp
07TR036968 No splash guards
07TR036969 Fail to stop for weighing

Some of those look like pretty decent tickets. Maybe all of them do. But what happens in McHenry County Court when a handful of cases start down the slippery slide of justice?

Right away the Fleeing/Attempt to Elude case fell apart, because it apparently didn't make it past a Grand Jury.

All the rest of the cases plodded through the sytem, through 22 (that's TWENTY-TWO) court dates to December 17, 2008 (that's A YEAR AND A HALF after the tickets were issued) to a disposition of Nolle Prossed.

Initially, the cases bounced between Judges Prather and Condon, and then from April 25, 2008, on, no judge's name appears in the online court records.

Did the Village of Cary dump these cases?

What a (deleted) waste!

Oh, yes, Judge Chmiel? His day in "court" comes on August 18-19, when the Illinois Court Commission members will wipe the sweat off their brows and hear about friends and law and judicial responsibility and ... I wonder who Judge Chmiel will choose to represent him.

I guess the Northwest Herald editors don't think too much of Judge Chmiel, because in today's editorial they refer to him as "Chmiel".