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81 pages 2 hours read

Courtroom 302

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005

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Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 12 Summary: “Defective Products”

Judge Locallo sees Larry Bates again on June 4. During his time in lock-up, Bates was evaluated by Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities (TASC) and “deemed suitable for treatment” (193). Bates’s public defender, Kathryn Lisco, requests probation and drug treatment “in exchange for [Bates’s] guilty plea” (193). Judge Locallo would prefer boot camp for Bates—partly due to his bet with another judge “regarding who [would] send more defendants to the boot camp this year” (193)—but Bates is too old. Bates admits that he has never really addressed his addiction but would like a chance to do so now. Judge Locallo is skeptical of putting Bates into a treatment facility, worrying that he might take a bed away from someone who is serious about recovery. Lisco defends her client’s integrity, and Locallo gives in, but Bates has to remain in jail until a bed opens up for him at the treatment facility, which could take weeks—or even months. Locallo also allows Bates to attend his daughter’s high school graduation. Bates will be properly sentenced when he returns to court on Monday. Lisco worries about Bates “getting carried away during his weekend of freedom” and relapsing (196), which would make her look like a fool. 

Meanwhile, an incarcerated man named Dan Young Jr. who has an intellectual disability requests a retrial on a murder and sexual assault case, based on his having been too groggy from medication to stand trial. Young insists upon his innocence, claiming he had nothing to do with 39-year-old Kathy Morgan’s rape and murder, despite being implicated by supposed accomplice, Harold Hill. Young is one of many incarcerated individuals with intellectual disabilities, who are “more likely to be exploited and injured than other prisoners” (206).

During his weekend furlough, Larry Bates has to fend off repeated offers of alcohol. Five days before his graduation, Larry’s son is arrested for selling 0.2 grams of crack cocaine. He is released on an I-bond—meaning he won’t have to pay the fine. Bates blames his son’s slip on his cousins, who are local dealers. He also feels guilty about not being present to parent his son due to his incarceration. 

On the same Monday morning that Bates returns for sentencing, Judge Locallo handles the case of “two white defendants” who “were arrested in 1995” for possession of “2,182 pounds of marijuana” with the intent to deliver (209). Another pair of defendants are charged with possessing 1,163 grams of cocaine with intent to deliver. All of them are freed. Bates’s case involves 0.4 grams of cocaine. When he asks Judge Locallo if he can be assigned to an outpatient facility instead of an inpatient one so that he won’t have to remain in jail to wait for a bed to open, Judge Locallo refuses his request.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Fixes”

In 1982, when he was 22 years old, Dino Titone was arrested on a double murder charge. In 1998, he is 38. The judge who sentenced him is now in prison for accepting bribes, and Titone’s former attorney is on parole for doling out bribes. 

On December 12, 1983, Titone heard someone crying for help from inside the trunk of “a powder-blue Oldsmobile” parked near the Des Plaines River (210). Aldo Fratto was dead inside the trunk; he had been shot numerous times. His nephew, Tullio Infelise, had “four bullet wounds in his chest and abdomen” but was still alive (210). After having been rushed to the emergency room, Infelise whispered the name of the man who shot him: Dino. The police’s prime suspect was Robert Gacho, a fellow neighbor in Fratto and Infelise’s Bridgeport neighborhood. Gacho implicated two other men in the crime—Joseph Sorrentino and Dino Titone.

The shootings resulted from a drug deal gone bad. The two victims intended to sell cocaine to Gacho, Sorrentino, and Titone, and the alleged shooters decided to steal the drugs from the dealers. Sorrentino and Titone shot Fratto and Infelise while Gacho sat in a second car nearby with his mistress, Katherine De Wulf. Infelise died two weeks after he was shot. This meant that the three defendants faced “a minimum of natural life if convicted and a possible death sentence” (211). 

At trial, Sorrentino was sentenced to life in prison. Gacho first got a death sentence, which changed to a life sentence due to an error made by presiding Judge Thomas Maloney. Titone was also condemned to death, but in January 1990, Titone had a new lawyer, Ian Ayres, and asked for a new sentence. The new attorney argued that Titone’s father had given his son’s previous lawyer $10,000 to bribe Judge Maloney. The argument was that Titone was sentenced only because the fix hadn’t worked out. Ayres backed up his claims “with affidavits from Titone and his father, Salvatore” (213). 

Judge Maloney had a history of pocketing bribes. Ayres thought that his corruption and his experience with Titone’s case made him biased. So, he successfully petitioned to have the case reassigned to Judge Earl Strayhorn, who was known for being honest. Judge Strayhorn vacated the death sentence and agreed to a new sentencing hearing. However, he refused to grant a new trial “based on the fix allegations” (213). In 1993, Judge Maloney was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for taking bribes “to fix four cases” (213). 

In 1990, the Chicago Crime Commission conducted a survey that named Maloney the worst “of the county’s forty-five criminal court judges” and the worst “in how he treated witnesses and in how he treated lawyers” (219). Cohn recalled that Maloney behaved as though defendants should be convicted if they were unwilling to pay him. Federal judges and prosecutors described Maloney as a “mafia factotum” and a “racketeer” (220). 

During Titone’s new trial, the prosecutor told the jury how Titone described the shootings and how he laughed as the victims begged for their lives. Titone was represented by Frederick Cohn, who said that his client was playing in a card game miles away from Bridgeport at the time of the shootings and that there were witnesses to confirm his whereabouts. He discouraged the jury from believing De Wulf’s testimony implicating his client because she was trying to protect herself from being implicated or charged in the crime. De Wulf told the jury that Gacho had called her and told her to drive to his house in Bridgeport because he needed a second car. She said he had told her that they were going to drive Aldo and Tullio someplace where they could kill them. 

De Wulf “left the state twice in 1984 to try to avoid testifying at the previous proceeding” (221). She admitted that she had been worried about being charged for the shootings. De Wulf was convinced to help with the crime due to Gacho’s promises to marry her “just as soon as he beat the case and got out of jail” (222), which he could only do if she testified in his defense. Gacho told De Wulf to leave Illinois for a while. She went to her sister’s house in Arkansas. 

The jury didn’t hear much of the evidence incriminating Titone. The most salient evidence was the confessions from Gacho and Sorrentino naming Titone as their accomplice; there was also Infelise uttering Titone’s name on his deathbed. Finally, Titone never mentioned the card game when police questioned him. Instead, he refused to say anything about the crime. 

Titone was charged with another crime—armed robbery—in 1980, after being accused of “tying up a dock employee at gunpoint and taking 116 cartons of clothing worth an estimated $60,000” (222). When the two men were taken to trial, the dockworker testified that “he could no longer identify the defendants as the culprits” (222). As a result, Titone and his accomplice in the robbery, Robert Caparelli, were acquitted. Titone stated that he did commit this crime and implied that his father ensured his acquittal. 

Judy Gacho, Caparelli's wife, testified at her ex-husband’s first trial in 1984 and provided him with an alibi. By the time of the second trial, they were divorced, and she admitted that they had, indeed, left the house with Titone and Sorrentino sometime during the night in question. She admitted that in 1984, her husband and his attorney told her to lie. Her testimony confirmed De Wulf’s and discredited Titone’s alibi about being in a card game. 

While Titone argued that corruption was rife at the 26th Street Courthouse, Judge Locallo insisted it was no longer a problem, as judges’ salaries had increased. However, it was possible for clerks to be bribed so they would ignore the results of the Randomizer and send defendants to corrupt judges. The former judge Maloney had mob ties going back to his years as a defense lawyer. Some judges argued that Maloney’s corruption invalidated nearly “every guilty finding he made in his courtroom” (227). 

This time, Titone’s trial “was squeaky clean” (229), but the evidence against him was “overwhelming.” Titone still thought, however, that he could benefit from this second trial. He requested that Judge Locallo, not the jury, provide the sentencing. Given Locallo’s aversion to death sentences, Titone figured that he might get natural life. Locallo scheduled the sentencing hearing for October.

Chapter 14 Summary: “A Sensitive Area”

In July, Judge Locallo ruled that Leroy Orange deserved “an authentic sentencing hearing” (231). Locallo, however, didn’t believe Orange’s accusation that the police squeezed his testicles, given he had no visible bruising. His lawyer, however, insisted that Orange had been telling people about the torture he experienced at Area 2 long before it had become the subject of rumor. A friend of Orange’s recalled his telling her about the police shoving a cattle prod into his anus and attempting to suffocate him with a plastic bag. A doctor brought in from Northwestern University’s department of urology testified that it was possible for a patient to have squeezed testicles and “no signs of trauma” (233). Also, Orange’s account of the attempted suffocation, the doctor noted, was “consistent with that of someone who [had] actually experienced this event” (234). Locallo, however, continued to find fault in Orange’s accounts. He noted, for instance, that the rectal bleeding could have been the result of Orange’s “history of hemorrhoids” (234). 

Orange’s lawyer knew Locallo had recently granted Dino Titone a retrial—a man whose case was much weaker than that of Orange. Furthermore, Orange had “voiced his complaint almost immediately, whereas Titone had waited years” (234). In addition, Orange had one prior conviction, whereas Titone was a career criminal. Locallo interjected and mentioned Orange’s cocaine use. He then announced he would “rule in late September on the request for a hearing” (235).

Chapters 12-14 Analysis

Locallo’s bets with other judges to send defendants to boot camp in exchange for their guilty pleas is yet another example of his inappropriate habit of conducting pranks and bets at the expense of those brought into his courtroom. Bogira uses this habit to characterize Locallo as an emblem of a wider problem: Like other judges, prosecutors, and police, he pays insufficient heed to the impact his work has on other people’s lives. This behavior only comes to negatively impact him when he later moves to the civil court downtown and offends another judge, suggesting that Locallo’s behavior is only a problem when it impacts those with as much or more power than he possesses. 

Locallo’s preference for boot camp also infantilizes Bates—blaming Bates’s drug use on a lack of discipline instead of treating crack addiction as the health problem that it is. Bogira uses Bates to explore the cyclical nature of addiction. Bates’s public defender recognizes this problem to some degree, though she, like Locallo and others, seems more worried about how the case will impact her own professional career than in pursuing justice for her client. The fact that Bates’s son was arrested for a similar offense—possessing a sum of drugs small enough to cover the cost of copping more—suggests that struggles with poverty and drug use can pass down through generations. 

Locallo’s fixation on his idea of Bates as an incorrigible criminal contrasts sharply with his lenient attitude toward large-scale drug dealers—those truly responsible for the proliferation of cocaine in Bates’s community. Similarly, Chicago-based mobsters, such as those who were involved in the Titone case, also helped to spread drugs throughout the city with the complicity of corrupt cops and judges like Mahoney. The relative ease with which organized crime leaders escape consequences suggests The Influences of Corruption and Politics on Criminal Courts

Bogira then juxtaposes Locallo’s willingness to grant Titone another hearing with his initial refusal to do the same for Orange. The reader is further led to question Locallo’s biases—particularly in relation to his self-image as someone who was dedicated to fairness and racial justice. Bogira, quite responsibly, never explicitly points out where Locallo’s preferences lie but gives the reader enough information to draw their own conclusions.

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