County search warrants stay sealed

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WOODSTOCK – Court records detail some of the steps that police took to find who gave a gun to the man who killed himself and his former girlfriend Feb. 24 in Huntley.

A search warrant affidavit details that police believed that David Griner, a convicted felon without authority to carry a gun, shot Jennifer Beaudion four times with a semi-automatic handgun and then took his own life with a single shot to the head.

Police sought, and received permission April 13 for access to e-mail and phone records for multiple phone numbers and e-mail addresses in an attempt to determine who provided the gun – facts that could have led to criminal charges. The search warrants were executed, and the records associated with it were filed about a month later.

But those records are among the few search warrant return files available to the public in McHenry County, despite the legal presumption that they should be public record unless a prosecutor or police officer shows a judge a good reason to seal them.

As of Friday, 140 search warrant cases were filed this year, but only 33 of those are available for viewing by the public, McHenry County Circuit Clerk Kathy Keefe said.

Fourteen of the 98 search warrant cases filed last year are open, Keefe said.

In Kane County, by comparison, four of the 237 search warrant returns filed this year are sealed, Kane County Circuit Clerk Deborah Seyller said.

The initial search warrant is impounded automatically, but once the search is finished and that paperwork is filed, the entire case is supposed to be open unless a judge orders otherwise.

“It does seem that on a fairly regular basis, the judges are impounding them for whatever reason,” Keefe said.

McHenry County State’s Attorney Louis Bianchi said his office planned to work with police and judges to change that. Search warrant returns are given to defense attorneys as a criminal case proceeds, but that does not affect whether the underlying search warrant case is open to the public.

“As a practical matter, many of them haven’t been opened,” Bianchi said. “But we want to reverse that in the future.”

Bianchi said a judge recently discussed the issue with him after a judge in St. Clair County ordered prosecutors to provide detailed affidavits on why 27 such cases should remain sealed or else the judge would release them for public inspection.

Bianchi said he supported sealing search warrant returns in limited situations, such as when police are pursuing additional targets in an investigation or the investigation related to that material is still on-going.

“I’d say nine times out of 10 when the search warrant is returned, the investigation is over,” said Nichole Owens, chief of Bianchi’s Criminal Division.

Maintaining open search warrant records is an important piece in maintaining an open court, media attorney Donald Craven said. An affidavit supporting the request for a search warrant shows what information police used to justify the search, so it ultimately could show whether police are abusing their power.

“How else is someone going to know if a police officer lied if we can’t look at the underlying documents?” Craven said.

In McHenry County, finding the dozens of search warrant return cases that are public record can be difficult. The scanned documents are available in public viewing rooms if one knows the case number involved, but the county’s new case-management software doesn’t reveal those cases in searches.

Keefe said the new software recognizes the initial search warrant is automatically impounded but does not provide a way for her clerks to release the information when the return is filed and the case is opened. She has asked the vendor to fix that.

“We do hope to get the ICIS situation resolved soon when our vendor flips that switch for us,” Keefe said.

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