- The trial of a lawyer charged with letting her murder-suspect client use her cellphone in an Area 2 interrogation room two years ago started Tuesday with testimony from a Chicago Police officer who made the suspect get off the phone.
The video recording in the interrogation room had been turned off to maintain attorney-client privilege for suspect Timothy Herring Jr. and his lawyer, Sladjana Vuckovic. But when Lt. Brendan Deenihan walked by and heard the voice, he said Herring Jr. appeared to be talking to himself.
“It was a one-way conversation, which was odd since he was with his attorney,” Deenihan testified Tuesday, describing what he heard before he peered in and saw Herring chatting on Vuckovic’s cellphone. Herring had been arrested in connection with the fatal shootings of Chicago Police evidence technician Michael Flisk and former CHA Police Officer Stephen Peters.
Investigators will never know if or how Herring used those phone calls to advance his own case, Cook County prosecutors argued at the opening of Vuckovic’s trial.
Vuckovic, a CTA lawyer who was acting as a First Defense Legal Aid volunteer when she counseled Herring, is accused of bringing contraband to a penal institution, a charge that her attorney claims is excessive.
A CTA lawyer? That tells us "heavy" right there. And a bleeding heart to boot.
The trial continues in Room 402 (Judge Clay) today. Stop by if you want to see the face that abets the evil.