Man serving 16-year sentence hires Lewis Gainor. He gets his client released 4 years early with post-conviction petition.

Lake County Case No. 02 CF 4156

 

Lake County criminal appeals lawyer Lewis Gainor recently represented a man who was serving a prison sentence in the Illinois Department of Corrections of 16 years. He was able to have the man released four years early, giving him his life back.

 

The client had been charged with aggravated battery with a firearm, a Class X felony in Illinois for which the sentencing range is 6 to 30 years. The man was accused of being the triggerman in a gang related drive-by shooting in Waukegan. The victim of the shooting was not killed.

 

The man hired another criminal lawyer from Chicago when he was held in custody of the Lake County jail. He turned down an offer for a plea bargain and went to trial. The case went to trial before a judge. The court found the man guilty of the Class X felony, despite weakness in the State’s evidence.

 

The court sentenced the man to 16 years, and he was transported to Stateville in Joliet to begin serving his sentence. The man had served five years of his sentence when he contacted Waukegan appeals attorney Lewis Gainor. The man asked him to represent him in a post-conviction petition. A post-conviction petition is a special appeals process for persons incarcerated in prison. They can use the post-conviction petition to contest the guilty verdict in their trial long after the verdict comes down.

 

Over the course of several months, Lewis Gainor communicated with his client by mail and telephone calls. In the summer of 2008, he went to Stateville to visit the man in prison and review the case.

 

The issue in the case was the weakness in the evidence pointing to the client as the shooter. There were no direct witnesses of the incident. The only evidence linking the man to the shooting was a statement from a witness that was later recanted.

 

Lewis Gainor appeared with the man in the Lake County courthouse in December 2008 and argued for a new trial. The State conceded that the evidence proving the client was the shooter was weak. As a result, the prosecution agreed to negotiate with attorney Lewis Gainor.

 

The sentence was vacated, and the Defendant was re-sentenced to 12 years in prison. Because he had been in custody for so long, the man was almost at a point where his sentence was considered time-served. The man was released only days after the court date, returning to his family four years early.

 

Gainor & Gosch PC focuses on criminal offenses that involve guns, weapons, and firearms in Lake County (Waukegan), including aggravated discharge of a firearm, aggravated battery with a firearm, attempted murder, first degree murder, unlawful use of a weapon, possession of a weapon by a felony, and gun trafficking.