Harry Aleman was convicted of one murder, the 1972 killing of William Logan in Chicago, and he was convicted of it twenty years after a judge had acquitted him. The acquittal, delivered on May 24, 1977, after a bench trial before Judge Frank Wilson of the Circuit Court of Cook County, was bought. A former lawyer later testified that he had arranged a $10,000 payment to Wilson, and the Illinois courts found the bribery proved. Because the first trial was held to be a sham, in which Aleman was never truly at risk of conviction, no jeopardy had attached, and the State was allowed to try him again. A Cook County jury found him guilty of the Logan murder on September 30, 1997, and he was sentenced to not less than 100 nor more than 300 years.
Law enforcement officials attributed many more killings to him than the one for which he was convicted. Their estimates ranged from 15 to more than 20, and the Chicago Outfit, the city's organized crime syndicate, was said to have used him as a killer to order. Apart from the Logan case and a second murder charge that was brought and then not pursued, he was never charged with any of them. His conviction therefore stands alone, and everything else attributed to him remains attribution.
His case is also a landmark in American criminal law. It put to the Illinois courts, and then to the federal courts, the question of whether the constitutional bar on being tried twice for the same offense protects a defendant whose acquittal was purchased. Every court that considered the point answered no, and the United States Supreme Court declined to review it. Aleman died in custody in Illinois in May 2010, aged 71, still serving the sentence.
William Logan, known as Billy, was killed on September 27, 1972, in Chicago. The two men had one known connection: Logan had been married to a cousin of Aleman, the couple were divorced, and Logan and the cousin were in a custody dispute at the time of his death.
Aleman was identified as the person responsible.
A grand jury in Cook County indicted Aleman for the murder in December 1976. The charge was tried without a jury.
The trial was scheduled in the spring of 1977 before Judge Frank Wilson, a Cook County Circuit Court judge. The case was first called before another judge, was reassigned after a substitution of judges, and the second judge recused himself on March 8, 1977. A new defense lawyer filed an appearance on April 3, 1977. The circuit court later noted that Aleman dropped his objection to Wilson within ten weeks, and that he had been released on bond despite the seriousness of the charge.
The bribe was arranged through Robert Cooley, a former Chicago police officer who had become a criminal defense lawyer and who testified that he regularly paid judges, prosecutors, clerks and sheriff's personnel. He told the courts that he agreed with Wilson on a payment of $10,000 for an acquittal: $2,500 in advance and $7,500 after the verdict. He also testified that he told the defense lawyer the judge would throw the case out, and that he told Aleman the matter had been taken care of.
A second witness, a former Chicago police officer who had run an illegal bookmaking business, testified that Aleman told him in early 1977 that the murder case was "all taken care of". A fellow inmate, speaking in a later period when Aleman was held on other charges, gave evidence that Aleman had admitted fixing the trial.
On May 24, 1977, Wilson found Aleman not guilty. Cooley then delivered the second payment of $7,500. In the account Cooley gave at the 1997 retrial, Wilson looked into the envelope and asked whether that was all he was going to get. Cooley also told the courts that Wilson had complained the sum was too small and asked for more.
The acquittal brought sharp criticism of Wilson from the Cook County State's Attorney's office and the news media at the time. Wilson retired from the bench in 1980 and moved to Arizona. The Aleman case was the only bribery case known against Wilson.
In the 1980s a federal investigation of corruption in the Cook County courts, run by the FBI and known as Operation Greylord, led to the indictment of 92 officials, among them 17 judges and 48 lawyers. Cooley's cooperation began on March 13, 1986, when he went to the head of the Justice Department's organized crime strike force in Chicago and offered to help. For about three and a half years from 1986 he wore a recording device and gathered evidence against organized crime figures and public officials; the inquiry was named Operation Gambat. He entered the Federal Witness Protection Program.
The Aleman fix surfaced through him. An FBI agent interviewed Wilson in November 1989 about the allegation. Wilson failed to appear before a federal grand jury on December 6, 1989. He died by suicide in 1990, before he could be questioned on the matter further.
In a federal racketeering prosecution connected to a Chicago Outfit street crew, he pleaded guilty in 1990 and received a 12-year federal sentence. A prosecution of twenty defendants in the same Outfit case, in which he was a defendant-appellant, was decided by the Seventh Circuit on March 1, 1996. In the plea agreement he denied taking part in the Reitinger murder or in the bribery of Wilson. A predicate offense touching the Reitinger case was struck from the agreement; federal prosecutors had not had enough evidence to charge it separately.
In December 1993 the Cook County State's Attorney charged Aleman again with the Logan murder and, for the first time, with the murder of Anthony Reitinger. A grand jury returned indictments on both counts. Cooley and Vincent Rizza, the former police officer and bookmaker, had been in the Federal Witness Protection Program until 1993. Reitinger had been killed in October 1975 in Chicago; the State's case was that the killing was punishment for failing to pay a "street tax" on a bookmaking business to organized crime figures. Aleman had not been charged with it earlier, and the evidence that linked him to it came from Rizza.
Aleman moved to dismiss both indictments on grounds of double jeopardy, speedy trial and estoppel, and complained of pre-indictment delays of 21 years in the Logan case and 18 years in the Reitinger case. The State answered that the 1977 acquittal was a nullity because it was obtained by bribery.
The circuit court issued an interim ruling in October 1994 that nothing in law stood in the way of a trial if the State could prove the 1977 bribery. It held an evidentiary hearing on February 9, 1995, over Aleman's objection, and on March 9, 1995 entered a final ruling that there was sufficient evidence that Wilson had been bribed. It denied the motion to dismiss and found that the first trial was a sham.
On June 18, 1996, the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, affirmed. Presiding Justice Hartman, writing for the court, held that double jeopardy protections do not apply when an acquittal is procured through fraudulent means, and that a defendant who had benefited from a corrupt trial could not invoke the protection. The Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal, and on February 18, 1997 the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari.
Aleman then turned to the federal courts. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied his petition and his request for a stay in 1997. The Seventh Circuit affirmed on March 6, 1998, in an opinion by Judge Flaum. The court held that Aleman could not show by clear and convincing evidence that the bribery findings were wrong, and that the state courts' rulings were not contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, Supreme Court precedent. On the sham trial it wrote: "Aleman had to endure none of these risks because he 'fixed' his case." It also rejected the claim of delay, finding no actual and substantial prejudice and noting that Cooley and Rizza had been in the federal witness protection program until 1993.
The retrial of the Logan charge was heard by Judge Michael P. Toomin in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Cooley testified, and in describing the final payment to Wilson he broke down in tears. On September 30, 1997, the jury found Aleman guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to a term of not less than 100 years and not more than 300 years.
The State chose not to proceed on the Reitinger charge, and no conviction followed from it.
Aleman appealed the conviction. Among his claims were errors in the selection of the jury and the refusal of the trial judge to question individual jurors about possible outside conversations. The Illinois Appellate Court, First District, Fifth Division, in an opinion by Justice Hartman, affirmed the conviction and sentence on March 31, 2000; rehearing was denied on May 25, 2000. The Illinois Supreme Court denied leave to appeal, and on February 20, 2001 the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari.
In 2002 he petitioned the federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus. He raised the handling of communications with jurors, courtroom security, jury selection, evidentiary rulings that admitted evidence of the bribery and of his earlier conduct, prosecutorial remarks in closing argument, and judicial bias. Judge Conlon denied the petition on May 30, 2002, finding no fundamentally unfair trial, no unreasonable application of federal law, and no showing of innocence. The court held that the bribery evidence was relevant to consciousness of guilt and that the prosecutor's improper remarks were cured by instructions and outweighed by the strength of the evidence, including identification by witnesses.
The Seventh Circuit took one issue on a certificate of appealability: whether the prosecutor's comments on Aleman's decision not to testify violated due process. On February 19, 2003, in an opinion by Judge Easterbrook, it held that they did not. The trial judge had told the jury not to draw any inference from his silence, the prosecutor had not treated the silence as evidence of guilt, and any error was harmless.
The Fifth Amendment bars a second prosecution for the same offense after an acquittal. The Illinois decisions in Aleman's case rest on a narrow exception: where the acquittal was the product of the defendant's own corruption of the tribunal, the defendant was never in real jeopardy, and the verdict is treated as a nullity. The Seventh Circuit's phrase was that the first trial was a sham because Aleman was never truly at risk of conviction.
One 1995 law review article, by David S. Rudstein, argued that the Double Jeopardy Clause prevents retrial after an acquittal even where bribery, blackmail or intimidation produced it. The courts that decided Aleman's case took the opposite view.
The case also shaped later litigation. In a Chicago proceeding decided in January 2018, a man convicted by Wilson in 1977 of first-degree murder in the killing of a police officer, whose nonjury trial took place about seven months after the Aleman trial, argued that Wilson had given him a harsh sentence to calm public anger over the Aleman acquittal and to conceal his own corruption. Associate Judge Alfredo Maldonado wrote that "the fact that a judge was bribed in one case does not, in itself, establish that he was not impartial in others", and denied a new trial. The Illinois Appellate Court upheld that ruling.
The number of killings attributed to Aleman is uncertain, and no court has made a finding about any of them beyond Logan.
The State chose not to proceed on the Reitinger murder charge; the allegation that Aleman killed Reitinger over an unpaid "street tax" was the State's theory and was never tested before a jury. Aleman denied involvement in it in his federal plea.
Aleman died on Saturday, May 15, 2010, in custody in Galesburg, Illinois, aged 71. An Illinois Department of Corrections spokesperson said he had been ill and that there were no suspicious circumstances.
September 27, 1972: William Logan is killed in Chicago.
October 1975: Anthony Reitinger is killed in Chicago; no charge follows until 1993.
December 1976: a Cook County grand jury indicts Aleman for the Logan murder.
May 24, 1977: Judge Frank Wilson acquits him after a bench trial; the $10,000 bribe is later found proved.
1980: Wilson retires from the bench.
March 13, 1986: Robert Cooley approaches federal prosecutors and begins to cooperate.
November 1989: an FBI agent interviews Wilson; on December 6, 1989 he fails to appear before a grand jury.
1990: Wilson dies by suicide; Aleman pleads guilty in a federal racketeering case and receives a 12-year federal sentence.
December 1993: grand jury indicts Aleman for the Logan and Reitinger murders.
March 9, 1995: the circuit court rules that Wilson was bribed and denies the motion to dismiss.
June 18, 1996: the Illinois Appellate Court affirms the ruling.
February 18, 1997: the United States Supreme Court denies certiorari on the double jeopardy question.
September 30, 1997: a Cook County jury convicts Aleman of the Logan murder; he is sentenced to 100 to 300 years.
March 6, 1998: the Seventh Circuit affirms the denial of federal habeas relief on that question.
March 31, 2000: the Illinois Appellate Court affirms the conviction.
February 20, 2001: the United States Supreme Court denies certiorari.
May 30, 2002: the federal district court denies habeas relief.
February 19, 2003: the Seventh Circuit affirms.
May 15, 2010: Aleman dies in custody in Illinois, aged 71.