Former Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Nicholas Trutenko called the prosecution that he won in 1989 against Jackie Wilson the “crown jewel of his career,” according to prosecutors.
But the conviction didn’t stick, and Wilson, whose high-profile case was integral to unveiling systemic practices of torture at the Chicago Police Department, was tried again, this time by special prosecutors because of conflicts with the state’s attorney’s office.
Thus, three decades later, the matter came back to haunt Trutenko, prosecutors alleged, and he sought to conceal a longtime friendship with a key witness in the case.
After about eight days of trial that spanned more than a year, attorneys on Wednesday delivered closing arguments in the case against Trutenko and a second former Cook County assistant state’s attorney accused of wrongdoing, capping off a long and sometimes contentious trial.
Closely watched by Chicago’s legal community, the case is unusual for its accusations against former assistant state’s attorneys in connection with a wrongful conviction case and shed a light on a tumultuous period for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
“The actions of these two defendants tainted and warped the integrity of the system and the administration of justice,” special prosecutor David Hoffman said. “These appalling actions are the true opposite of the integrity that the laws and system demand.”
Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes, who has said throughout the trial that some aspects of the indictment are unprecedented, will issue a decision at a later date.
Trutenko, 69, and Andrew Horvat, 49, have been standing trial before Shanes, with Trutenko charged with perjury, official misconduct, obstruction of justice and violating a local records act in relation to his testimony as a witness at Wilson’s 2020 trial. Horvat, who represented Trutenko in that proceeding when he was an attorney with the office’s Civil Actions Bureau, is accused of official misconduct.
The trial ends at a transition point for the state’s attorney’s office. Shortly before she left office, former State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told the Tribune the explosive events that led to the criminal charges were “jarring” for the office and prompted them to review training and policies. Her successor, Eileen O’Neill Burke, took her oath of office in a ceremony Monday.
Attorneys made their final arguments to the judge in a courtroom at a branch courthouse in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows, following years of investigation and subsequent trial, spawned by a series events in 2020 that led to prosecutors dropping all charges against Wilson, who stood accused in the murders of Chicago police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien.
“In this situation, the law required them to act with integrity, with honesty to fulfill their legal duties,” Hoffman said. “They did not act with integrity. They violated the law.”
Defense attorneys, though, railed against the proceedings, accusing the special prosecutors of having a mandate to collect “scalps” from the state’s attorney’s office after a public embarrassment. They suggested that under the prosecution’s theory of the law, the prosecutors and their witnesses perhaps could be at risk of criminal investigation.
“I can’t think of a case I’ve defended which bothers me more than this case,” said Horvat’s defense attorney Terry Ekl. “I do not believe this is a good-faith prosecution and do not make that comment lightly.”
The allegations hinge around a decades-long friendship between Trutentko and a key witness who testified against Wilson in his second trial, which was prosecuted by Trutenko. The career prosecutor even flew to London to serve as godfather to one of William Coleman’s children.
In 1982, Jackie Wilson, then 21, was behind the wheel of a car with his brother Andrew Wilson, who shot and killed the two officers. Wilson has said he did not know his brother would shoot the officers, but in 1989, at his second trial, Coleman, a jailhouse snitch, testified that Wilson had admitted his role in the crime while they were locked up together in the county jail.
So Coleman was a critical witness sought by the special prosecutors trying Wilson in 2020, but they testified they could not locate him and believed him dead.
The special prosecutors in this case, Hoffman and Lawrence Oliver, have accused Trutenko of concealing his friendship with Coleman, an international con man with a long rap sheet, and then lying on the witness stand about whether Coleman came up in pretrial prep sessions with the prosecutors who were trying to find him. The prosecutors contended that the concealment violated Wilson’s rights because it meant his attorneys would not be able to confront an accuser, a fundamental constitutional right.
“He has a long, ongoing relationship with Coleman … that has to be considered one of the most unusual friendships between Trutenko and a convicted felon that one can imagine,” Hoffman said.
The prosecutors also alleged that Horvat furthered the concealment when he was assigned to represent Trutenko. Hoffman said that when he learned of the relationship, he instructed prosecutors on the case to not ask about it, stating that it’s “nothing illegal, it’s nothing unethical, but it’s just weird.”
“This is outrageous that this experienced lawyer who has heard this disclosure … not only sits on but goes up to the special prosecutor and asks him not to act on it,” Hoffman said.
But the defense lawyers have argued that Trutenko simply misspoke on the stand, and Horvat was bound by attorney-client privilege.
“Nick made a mistake and his mistake was more innocent than the under-oath lies by the witnesses in this courtroom,” Trutenko’s attorney Jim McKay argued.
Ekl further argued that “no lawyer should be prosecuted because he was trying to protect his client’s confidentiality.”
During the trial — which was previously delayed for about a year due to a rare, mid-trial appeal filed by the special prosecutors — nearly all the witnesses called were attorneys themselves. The questioning at times veered into the territory of personal insults and accusations of wrongdoing by attorneys not charged in the indictment.
After the state rested its case last month, defense attorneys on Tuesday presented two witnesses, Trutenko’s son Joseph Trutenko and Coleman’s former public defender.
Joseph Trutenko, who lives with his dad, testified that he helped his father do a factory reset on his work phone because his father wanted to remove personal photos and contacts before turning in the phone. He recalled his dad coming home angry and upset the night he was fired.
“He asked for my assistance. He is not too technically sound,” Joseph Trutenko testified. “At that point I proposed the idea of factory resetting his iPhone. It would just be quicker essentially.”
Prosecutors had accused Trutenko of wiping his iPhone to further conceal the nature of his relationship with Coleman.
