Lawyer Called ‘Poster Boy for Capital Litigation Abuse’ Appointed to New Case
An Illinois lawyer described as “the poster boy for capital litigation abuse” has been appointed to a new death penalty case.
Defense lawyer John Paul Carroll billed the state of Illinois more than $2 million for the defense of an accused child killer, including the time it took him to pack his van at his former home in Minnesota and drive to Illinois, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Legal fees amounted to $900,000 of the total.
Carroll’s client in the case, Cecil Sutherland, agreed to a death sentence in 2004. The theory was that the case could be quickly appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, the story says, but the appeal was not accepted. The high court had ruled favorably for Sutherland in an earlier appeal.
Carroll’s license was suspended for 18 months in the 1990s for filing false income tax returns, giving improper accounting to a client, and charging an excessive fee, the story says.
His new appointment came just one day after he admitted a serious legal error in a different case, the story says. Carroll said in a motion for a new trial that he did not tell a client, Edgar Castro, that the state had offered to let him plead guilty to armed violence in exchange for a dropped murder charge. The client was convicted of first-degree murder.
Kati Phillips, a spokeswoman for Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, called Carroll “the poster boy for capital litigation abuse” in an interview with the Post-Dispatch.
The judge who appointed Carroll to the new case, Judge Timothy Sheldon of Kane County in Chicago’s western suburbs, said he did not know Carroll was the lawyer at the center of the billing controversy. “I had heard about a lawyer who billed $2 million for a case, but I had no idea whatsoever it was our local John Paul Carroll,” he said.
Sheldon was also the judge in the Castro case.
