Trial date for Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson still in limbo as lawyer objects to further delay
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A trial date for Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson remained in limbo Tuesday as a stacked court calendar and COVID-19 protocols at Chicago’s federal courthouse continued to make normally routine scheduling matters seem like a game of whack-a-mole.
Thompson, the 11th Ward alderman and grandson and nephew of two legendary Chicago mayors, had been set to go on trial this week on tax-related charges stemming from the collapse of a clout-heavy bank in his family’s longtime Bridgeport neighborhood.
That date was scuttled, however, after a relative of the lead prosecutor on the case suffered a health emergency last week.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama tried to reschedule the trial for March 1, but prosecutors said that wouldn’t work because other defendants in the related case against former managers and customers of the bank are set to go to trial that month.
That left the prospect of Thompson’s case being delayed until at least mid-May, which his attorney, Chris Gair, called “absolutely unacceptable” for such straightforward tax charges.
“This case could easily be tried in a week and a half, and other prosecutors could get up to speed on it in two weeks,” Gair said. “There is no basis for a six- or seven-month delay, and they’re creating an issue for appeal.”
Valderrama set another status hearing for Oct. 27, when he hoped to finally find a suitable date for trial.
Gair then tried to object to the typically routine exclusion of time under the Speedy Trial Act, but the judge overruled him.
With court calendars stacked due to COVID-19 protocols the logistics of moving a jury trial at the last minute at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse are complicated. Only one trial per floor can start on any given week, and each trial must have an overflow courtroom for spectators. Jurors, witnesses, and other trial participants are being tested tested for the virus twice a week.
Judges have also been told to give preference to defendants who unlike Thompson are in custody awaiting trial.
The conflict in Thompson’s case was set in motion last Tuesday when prosecutors revealed a family member of Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Netols, who is heading the government trial team, “was hospitalized and will remain hospitalized for an unknown period of time.”
Thompson, 51, who has served on the City Council since 2015, was charged in April in a seven-count indictment with filing false tax returns and lying to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials about $219,000 in loans and other payments he’d received from Washington Federal Bank for Savings before it was shuttered in 2017.
Thompson has pleaded not guilty.
Washington Federal’s collapse has also led to federal charges against a number of the bank’s executives and former customers alleging a multiyear, $31 million embezzlement scheme that preceded the institution’s failure.
