• Illinois Vs Marc Prosperi in case # 08 300 1851 (snippets of the official transcript)
   
                                  STATE'S NARRATIVE OF DEFENDANTS CONDUCT
  
      STATE: Your Honor, in this matter if we were to proceed to trial the State would call Officer 4551 of the Illinois State Police Department who would testify that on March 10th, 2008, at about 11:22 p.m., the trooper observed a dark-colored sports utility vehicle in lane three of I90 eastbound at mile post 10.56.
      The vehicle passed several vehicles at an extremely high rate of speed. The trooper was traveling in the local lane at a slow speed and had to accelerate to try and catch up with this vehicle.
      The trooper observed the vehicle passing every vehicle on the road for over nine times. The trooper observed the vehicle make at least eight rapid unannounced lane changes while following the vehicles too closely.
      At least twice the trooper observed the vehicle turn off all of its light and continue to pass the vehicles and reactivate the lights further down the road.
      The officer then proceed to make a traffic stop and would identify the defendant in open court as the driver of that vehicle.
      All of the events occurred in Cook County, Illinois, and the defendant was 17 or older at the time.
      DEFENSE: So stipulated.
      COURT: ... it will be one year supervision. Terminates 3-27-09, and there's a fine of $500.00 plus mandatory court costs so it's a total of $988.00.
  
  Authors note: Here you see that a defendant can drive a car on a state highway:
• randomly turning on and off all vehicle lighting (near midnight)
• at a very high rate of speed, passing every car in sight
• recklessly changing lanes numerous times.



With practially no penalty at all.

Was all of this possible because of a phone call to the judge a day or two before court? According to the defendants own words to me, he was guaranteed the opportunity to avoid a conviction for an extremely reckless and dangerous crime. Should I interview other judges and ask them if this conduct would warrant their approval of a sentence of supervision?