SALINE CO.—Just a quick update to one of the hot stories from back in 2010: Roger Hutchison has been sentenced in his pot trafficking case.
Roger Hutchison
In another loss for Franklin County attorney Bryan Drew, who was apparently trying to build himself a career such as the one his father the late John Drew had (wherein he was supposedly “THE” go-to criminal defense lawyer), a couple of months ago Hutch came to a plea agreement with the court in order to get out of the heftiness of the MULTIPLE counts of Delivery of Cannabis 30-500 grams (and in one of the dismissed charges, 500-2,000 grams). He entered a plea of guilty to one of the counts, and today accepted a DOC sentence of 5 years…and a loss of all the cash found in his home (which he said had come from the sale of a car, conveniently occurring right before the June 2010 raid on his house…when all the pot was found). The cash was around $15,000…..and today, fines and fees were tacked on to that, bringing the grand total to $19,279 that Saline County comes out ahead. Of course, his bond applied, so $15k has been paid…now he’s going to owe the $4,279, which will be hard to raise from DOC (unless, of course, he has another car to sell.)
This case was one that prompted this terribly misleading article by the left-leaning McClatchy news service, which appeared in the Belleville News Democrat and prompted us to produce an article in our May paper telling the truth about such plea deals. Sure you can say someone “bought” his way out of trouble by spinning such plea deals as being based on how much money a defendant has to pour into the case in fines and fees…but holding the bond money as payment for such fines and fees is done EVERYWHERE. McClatchy was trying to make people think this is an exclusively backwoods southern Illinois thing…but seriously….what corrupt Chicago public official couldn’t have it said about him that he “bought” his way out of a case by having enough money to pay a high-priced attorney to do the behind-the-scenes dickering for him? The BND should know this….that kind of shit goes on all the TIME in St. Clair/Madison counties (Metro-East)…that’s why it’s called the “judicial hell-hole” of downstate Illinois.
Anyway, when ol Rog gets a new DOC mug, we’ll post it.