Chicago City Wire

The prosecution rested its case against Nick Trutenko and another former assistant state’s attorney on Nov. 14, and defense attorneys immediately filed a motion and argued for the dismissal of all charges. 

The case is now scheduled to resume on Dec. 3 where Lake County Judge Daniel Shanes – presiding due to a conflict in Cook County – indicated he will consider the motion, a “directed finding” motion under Illinois law.

Following the trial a source told Chicago City Wire that the defense plans to have witnesses ready in case the judge does not dismiss some or all of the charges.

Trutenko was hit with 14 criminal charges, including perjury, back in March 2023. Andrew Horvat, who represented Trutenko during a 2020 trial at the center of the case, faces an official misconduct charge. 

The 2020 trial was the third in the legal saga of Jackie Wilson, who along with his brother Andrew, was convicted in 1983 of the execution style murder of two Chicago police officers a year before on the Southside. It was Trutenko who prosecuted Jackie Wilson in 1989 when he was tried separately from his brother; he was acquitted of one of the murders but convicted of the other. He was again sentenced to life in prison.

The third trial against Wilson blew up when his attorney Elliot Slosar of the Chicago firm of Loevy & Loevy pressed Trutenko on a friendship he had with a prison witness, William Coleman, against Wilson in his 1989 trial. Trutenko pointed out that the friendship with Coleman, which led to Trutenko becoming godfather to Coleman’s daughter, was irrelevant since it began years after the trial ended. Nonetheless, the prosecution quickly dropped all charges against Jackie Wilson.

As reported by former Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) spokesman Martin Preib in his Substack column “Crooked City,” defense attorney for Jim McKay who cross examined Slosar during Trutenko’s criminal trial suggested Slosar violated the rules of evidence when he didn’t turn over to special prosecutors a crucial baptismal certificate showing that Trutenko was godfather to [William] Coleman’s [a witness in the second Wilson trial) daughter. 

McKay’s line of questioning implied that Slosar kept this evidence from prosecutors in the hopes of a big "aha" moment when the document was revealed in court—a moment that Slosar assumed would have compelled Trutenko "to lie about his relationship to Coleman in an effort to protect the special prosecutors from their errant claims that Coleman could not be located.”

The case against Trutenko resumed on Monday, Oct. 28 after an 11-month hiatus due to a rare interlocutory appeal (an appeal in the middle of the trial) of Judge Shanes’ ruling that a relationship between Trutenko and other assistant state’s attorney, Paul Fangman, was one of attorney-client privilege, making any conversations between the two of the off-limits in the trial. Fangman had been called as a witness against Trutenko. The Illinois Appellate Court overruled the judge.

In June 2021, Jackie Wilson sued for wrongful conviction in federal court. Slosar is Wilson’s attorney. In May, Cook County settled for $17 million. A separate settlement with the city is pending.